5. “Fargo” (1996)
Almost as unlikely as the Coens ever finding mainstream acceptance and awards without compromising was the idea that someone not named Joel or Ethan could make “Fargo” into a TV series and for it to turn out to be terrific. But as good as Noah Hawley’s take on frozen crime capers is, it doesn’t quite match up to the original, a film that once and forever proved that the Coens had as much heart as they had brains, and also that their brains were god-damn enormous. While other Coen crime films feel like they were homaging one great literary master of the genre or another, “Fargo,” and its story of a botched kidnapping organized by the money-desperate used-car salesman (William H. Macy) of his wife, feels comparable to nobody other than the Coens. And in large part, that’s down to Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), the most memorable of all the Coens’ creations and then some, a heavily pregnant police chief whose total competence and warmth makes her stand as a beacon of goodness in a chaotic, violent world. It’s a theme that the directors have repeatedly returned to, but it’s never felt as hopeful as when their camera is on Marge.
4. “Barton Fink” (1991)
Every writer gets writer’s block, and probably every writer wants to write about writer’s block as a way of getting over it, but only once in every ten blue moons could a writer turn it into something worth reading, or watching. In fact, it’s basically the Coens and Charlie Kaufmans (with “Adaptation”) who’ve done it successfully on screen. And based on the greatness of “Barton Fink,” which they blasted out in a few weeks (in script form, anyway) while stuck on “Miller’s Crossing,” maybe they should get writer’s block more often. Turning their eye to Hollywood for the first time, it sees the titular left-wing playwright (John Turturro) fly to California to write for Hollywood, holing up in an eerie hotel to pen a wrestling picture while he falls in with his neighbor, salesman Charlie (John Goodman), and begins an affair with secretary Audrey (Judy Davis). It’s still arguably their strangest film, their hardest to compare with anything before or since, a terrifying nightmare full of disarming humor and a melancholy for the way that Hollywood can chew up and spit out artists (while never seeming self-indulgent or self-pitying). And in the process, it pushed the Coens into the upper echelons of the filmmaking world (and won them the Palme d’Or in the process).
3. “Raising Arizona” (1987)
H.I. McDonough is dealing with a whole host of problems. His jailbird buddies, who just busted out of prison, are looking for a place to hide out. His wife Ed desperately wants a baby at almost any cost, and before his next few days are over, he’ll be tangling with police, a furniture magnate and oh yeah, The Lone Biker Of The Apocalypse. In their sophomore film “Raising Arizona,” the Coen Brothers would establish a motif they would return to time and again through their career: the regular, middle-of-the-road everyman who endures a Job-like struggle to keep his head above water. The line from this film to later pictures like “The Big Lebowski,” “A Serious Man” and their latest “Inside Llewyn Davis” can be clearly drawn, but the sibling directors can thank one of Nicolas Cage’s finest performances as the reason it has continued to stand the test of time. Finding the pitch-perfect tone between being overwhelmed by everything he’s forced to deal with, and being utterly devoted to his wife’s happiness, H.I. is a creation that one can’t imagine in the hands of anyone besides Cage. It’s a surprisingly low-key turn for the actor, but his energy level is made up for by the filmmaking, which has a gonzo, Looney Tunes energy closer to the Coens’ friend Sam Raimi than anything else in their canon. Wrongly dismissed by some who prefer their more serious-minded work, the film stands as ample evidence of how soon the filmmakers showed their ability to combine pitch-perfect tone, heightened style and a unique, distinct sensibility that is always changing, yet always instantly recognizable.
2. “A Serious Man” (2009)
As distinctive as their work is, you’d perhaps hesitate to use the term ‘personal’ about much of the Coens’ earlier movies. They’re clearly all from the same mind, but unlike, say, a Martin Scorsese or a Steven Spielberg, their preoccupations seem thematic rather than autobiographical. But “A Serious Man” does both, seemingly, returning to their themes of morality, existential despair and the search for meaning, while drawing for the first time on their own upbringing, being set in their own home-town of St. Louis Park, Minnesota. You suspect that it doesn’t quite reflect their own upbringing or their lives of the parents, given that the film (after a curveball prologue about a dybbuk in early-20th century Poland) is a loose riff on the story of Job, as Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) must weather divorce, hellish relatives, work trouble and money problems. Novelistic and almost mystical in a way that many of their other films aren’t, and eschewing the big-name casts they’d become used to (though Michael Stuhlbarg gives one of the great Coens performances in the lead, and Fred Melamed’s Sy Ableman is one of their great creations), it comes close to making text their eternal subtext: that existence is madness and the world is a cosmic joke. And yet for all the cruelty of the film, there’s so much love and affection for Larry, so much detail in the world they create, that you suspect they secretly adore being alive.
1. “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013)
If the Ernest Hemingway quote “you make your own luck” is true, then Llewyn Davis, the titular character of the Coen Brothers’ masterful, comedic and bitter ’60s folk-scene picture “Inside Llewyn Davis,” is someone who unknowingly sabotages whatever remnants of good fortune he has at every turn. Loosely based on the story of Greenwich village folkie Dave Van Ronk, who saw his popularity never quite catch on once Bob Dylan arrived on the scene, the Coens take this basic idea and leverage it as a jumping-off point to explore failure (the successful-rock-star story having been told the world over). The Coens, having deftly realized in recent years that life is a matter-of-fact, cruel, tragic comedy, almost let this character lose in the milieu of this world, watching him fuck up every opportunity he’s presented. Anchored by Oscar Isaac‘s terrific performance, he imbues Llewyn Davis with an artistic integrity that becomes a noose. It doesn’t help the character is a bit of a bona-fide asshole. But it’s a testament to the actors and filmmakers that we still empathize with the character’s attraction to self-destruction, whether it’s fucking his best friend’s girlfriend or the colossal miscalculation of playing a depressing song about abortion at his first big-break audition. Ultimately, though surely not their intention, the Coens create a funny and morose cautionary tale about artistic endeavors: It doesn’t matter how talented you are if you’re your own worst enemy. Chance, fate and good timing are nice, but what makes a memorable loser is, indeed, practice.
Completists would also want to check out the handful of movies on which the Coens have writing credit, but didn’t direct — the uneven but fun Sam Raimi-directed “Crimewave,” the oft-forgotten wrestling comedy “The Naked Man” (penned by Ethan Coen with regular storyboard artist J. Todd Anderson), the dreadful remake of “Gambit” starring Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz, the decidedly un-Coens like Angelina Jolie-directed WW2 film “Unbroken,” and the Spielberg-directed “Bridge Of Spies.” None, it should be said, are as good as unfiltered Coens fare.
— Oliver Lyttelton, Drew Taylor, Erik McLanahan, Diana Drumm