Why you’re not supposed to get the Coen brothers: “You should just be able to watch it”
There are some films that aren’t designed to be figured out, with no clear answers or foreseeable logic that helps you make sense of their puzzles. It could be the infamous work of David Lynch, with his films encouraging you to embrace the unknown and create a meaning that is personal to you, or it could be the mystifying power of Personal Shopper, 3 Women or Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, which are created with the sole intention of leading you on an emotional journey that defies our immediate understanding.
However, there is another filmmaking team that also translates these qualities into nearly ever single one of their films, with the Coen brothers becoming known for their elusive and ambiguous stories that play on feelings we are all familiar with, but in situations that are completely foreign, creating mysterious and unsettling films that play on our fears of uncertainty.
Uncertainty is a thematic strand that crops up in nearly all of the Coen brothers’ films, but it explores characters who deal with it in very different ways. Whether it be the main character in A Serious Man, who is going through what can only be described as the worst time of life and dealing with it in a very bad way, or the laid-back attitude of ‘The Dude’ after being met with a web of unfolding mysteries after his rug is stolen, each story comes back to this one central idea that we cannot control our fate, and sometimes, the best thing to do is simply let it unravel and accept our lack of control.
But while this philosophy might be clear to some people, there are many audiences who don’t take kindly to this message, with the filmmaking duo describing their frustration with being asked to explain certain films and the critics who try to make sense of something that is deliberately nonsensical.
When asked about this, Joel Coen said, “I suppose when you’re landed with a question you don’t really know how to deal with you clam up. People interviewing us often look at the movies in different ways from ours, and when they present them on their own terms and ask the meaning of this or that, it’s sometimes hard to know what to make of the questions”.
Sometimes discussions about your work can be incredibly difficult to navigate, not wanting to give too much away and influence how people see it, but also wanting to communicate your key ideas. The director expanded on the complications that this brings, saying, “People read things into our work we didn’t know existed. In certain films we’ve done, where there is an ambiguity designed into the movie, it’s frequently the case that the reviewer won’t let it rest as being simply ambiguity”.
Adding: “And the audience then feel that they’re missing something, not understanding something, and have to analyze something into a concrete answer when in fact the movie itself is designed so that you should just be able to watch it and enjoy it. Those journalists have a hard job. They could say, ‘This is a kind of funny movie and I laughed at it,’ and leave it at that, but they have to write a certain number of words, so they indulge in all sorts of things that will justify that number”.
Perhaps critics are the true enemy, with some definitely ruining the magic of filmmaking by over-explaining and trying to simplify something that cannot be put into words. The medium exists to communicate ideas that cannot be put into words, but for some, this is an unbearable concept to fathom, slightly ruining the magic of film.
