Written by John Shea
The DVD itself is a bit thin. My favorites discs are the ones that spend a lot of time on the making of the movie. The process always fascinates me, so the more of that I get to see the better. This DVD doesn't have much of that. For extras, there are three behind the scenes videos. One talks about George Clooney making his third film with the Coen brothers. Um. Yeah. A second is the standard behind the scenes video. It's full of interviews in which everyone talks about how great it is to work with everyone else. You've seen it before, trust me. The other video goes through the major roles one at a time. The actors talk about how they developed their characters and perhaps most interestingly, the costume designer talks about how the clothes were chosen for everyone. That's the closest this disc gets to the sorts of features I like to see. Sadly, there is no commentary track of any kind. But the movie looks and sounds great. I actually picked out some details watching it at home that I had missed in the theater.
With that out of the way, let's get to what I really want to talk about with this movie. It's a pet peeve that's bugged me for many years, one that pops up almost every time the Coen brothers make a movie. It's the critic who complains that the filmmakers didn't like the characters and was too mean to them. This line of thought makes my head hurt every time I hear it. First off, let's state the painfully obvious. These are fictional characters. We aren't talking about being mean to real people. We're talking about being cruel to figments of someone's imagination. It's akin to accusing someone of mental cruelty to an imaginary friend.
Yes, the Coen's have written a collection of particularly stupid characters. But don't they get credit for writing complex idiots? Every single character in this movie thinks they are the star. The story spins out of control the way it does for that very reason. Things get way too complicated for every character because they can't recognize their own limitations and/or lack of importance to a situation. The Coens aren't being cruel here. What they are doing is recognizing that is very funny to watch events go completely overboard simply because none of the participants understands when to reel themselves in.
The writing in this film, and in virtually all Coen brothers movies, is superb. They write really complex characters and then pen them all in together so that they can't escape their own or anyone else's limitations. The humor doesn't come from laughing at how stupid they are. The humor comes at how badly they can screw up situations. It is the weaknesses of these characters that sets up the laughs, not the weaknesses themselves. This is why the very best scene is the last one, when two side characters scratch their heads trying to figure out just what happened and why. I see people doing these sorts of things (to a lesser degree obviously) in real life all the time. And I laugh at the crazy situations they manage to get themselves into. It's not the people I find funny, it's the results.
Is this really so hard to understand? If you disagree, let me hear it. I'm genuinely curious how critics come to this idea. In the mean time, make sure to check out this movie.
Wednesday, 17 December 2008 01:27
I've previously reviewed Burn After Reading, so I'm not going to spend much time on that. It's a slow burn comedy that starts fairly serious and ends just shy of slapstick. Critics were generally underwhelmed with it but I found it entertaining. Often my reviews say that a movie falls apart the more you think about it. Burn After Reading is the reverse. The more thought I give it, the more I like it. A second viewing actually improves things as little details pop up that weren't noticeable the first time around. The performances are revealed to be considerably more nuanced than you might think them the first time though. I suspect this will be a lot like The Big Lebowski, which many people just didn't get at first but came to love over time. So, in my opinion, it's definitely worth checking out. This movie grows on you like a fungus, but in a less creepy, actually good manner. The DVD itself is a bit thin. My favorites discs are the ones that spend a lot of time on the making of the movie. The process always fascinates me, so the more of that I get to see the better. This DVD doesn't have much of that. For extras, there are three behind the scenes videos. One talks about George Clooney making his third film with the Coen brothers. Um. Yeah. A second is the standard behind the scenes video. It's full of interviews in which everyone talks about how great it is to work with everyone else. You've seen it before, trust me. The other video goes through the major roles one at a time. The actors talk about how they developed their characters and perhaps most interestingly, the costume designer talks about how the clothes were chosen for everyone. That's the closest this disc gets to the sorts of features I like to see. Sadly, there is no commentary track of any kind. But the movie looks and sounds great. I actually picked out some details watching it at home that I had missed in the theater.With that out of the way, let's get to what I really want to talk about with this movie. It's a pet peeve that's bugged me for many years, one that pops up almost every time the Coen brothers make a movie. It's the critic who complains that the filmmakers didn't like the characters and was too mean to them. This line of thought makes my head hurt every time I hear it. First off, let's state the painfully obvious. These are fictional characters. We aren't talking about being mean to real people. We're talking about being cruel to figments of someone's imagination. It's akin to accusing someone of mental cruelty to an imaginary friend.
Yes, the Coen's have written a collection of particularly stupid characters. But don't they get credit for writing complex idiots? Every single character in this movie thinks they are the star. The story spins out of control the way it does for that very reason. Things get way too complicated for every character because they can't recognize their own limitations and/or lack of importance to a situation. The Coens aren't being cruel here. What they are doing is recognizing that is very funny to watch events go completely overboard simply because none of the participants understands when to reel themselves in.
The writing in this film, and in virtually all Coen brothers movies, is superb. They write really complex characters and then pen them all in together so that they can't escape their own or anyone else's limitations. The humor doesn't come from laughing at how stupid they are. The humor comes at how badly they can screw up situations. It is the weaknesses of these characters that sets up the laughs, not the weaknesses themselves. This is why the very best scene is the last one, when two side characters scratch their heads trying to figure out just what happened and why. I see people doing these sorts of things (to a lesser degree obviously) in real life all the time. And I laugh at the crazy situations they manage to get themselves into. It's not the people I find funny, it's the results.
Is this really so hard to understand? If you disagree, let me hear it. I'm genuinely curious how critics come to this idea. In the mean time, make sure to check out this movie.
