The Invisible Counterpoint

The critic Richard Brody has written that in Hail, Caesar the Coen brothers are exploring their own 1950s origins. So that would be two men of 2016 looking back on a very patriarchal society where father knows best and where the majority of families were still raised in a conservative fashion (this wasn't a time where you were supposed to float free and discover your own calling, but still mostly follow through with what your ostensibly "did it all for you," "self-sacrificing" parents expected of you). And so we might presume there would be some criticism of this previous social order—the women we see confined to supplementary roles would show the capacity to actually lead companies if only they were in the 21st; those we see shepherded into accomplishing what others expect of them would betray something rote about their efforts that would be absent if they'd had the freedom and encouragement to discover what they themselves wanted in life. Yet we do n...

Any good interview, even one that’s entirely friendly on the surface, should have a slight adversarial quality, since the reporter and the subject have inherently different goals. The Coens don’t always suffer fools gladly, but they give good copy, even in one-word answers to questions that don’t interest them. (“Do you get excited about the Cannes competition?” one reporter asked them. “Does that get your heart pumping?” Ethan Coen: “No.”) Over the years the Coens have developed a routine that lies somewhere between practiced shtick and a psychological coping mechanism. Ethan, the younger, shorter, lighter-haired brother, delivers brief responses, often glib or acrid in tone, and then the taller, older and more loquacious Joel bails him out, expounding generously on the original question or diverting it into friendlier terrain. [. . .] Well, I feel like one aspect of that is that your movies almost always reward a second viewing. There’s always stuff I didn’t see o...

But, my God, we don’t watch our own movies. No. You work on it for a year, a year and a half, and especially by the final stage when you’re fussing over every little thing — and we cut them ourselves — and everything is problem-solving, fixing stuff up. There’s a job involved, and beyond that when there’s nothing to be done, why would you look at it again? I mean, you know how it comes out. ( interview with Coen brothers by Andrew O'hehir, at Salon.com) - - - - - "Don't watch our own movies" I hate that answer. It's designed to make them seem remote from us, as if we're rabidly chasing down appetites they're removed from. There's no way they haven't replayed the experience of making the movies — key scenes, reverberating portrayals — many times, even as they go about their next projects. Piecemeal, over time, they've seen them as much as any of us ... I, personally, would have made this clear. Join the rest of us, Coens, an...