Ulysses Everett McGill: Hold on, I don’t want this pomade. I want Dapper Dan.
Pomade Vendor: I don’t carry Dapper Dan, I carry Fop.
Ulysses Everett McGill: Well, I don’t want Fop, goddamn it! I’m a Dapper Dan man!

- dialogue from O Brother, Where Art Thou

It’s strange how things reveal themselves to you - the hidden pattern that underlies everything. Ever since 1984’s BLOOD SIMPLE, I have been a huge fan of the Coen Brothers. They make unique, brainy movies that you never quite seem able to understand, they have a beautifully lush cinematic eye. They’re like Stanley Kubrick, only there are two of them and they let you in on the joke most of the time.

Their most recent film, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, is getting apt praise for its bleak screenplay but more so for the standout character of Anton Chigurh, played with a demented efficiency by Javier Bardem. He is depicted to your left, carrying a compressed-air tank.

It’s beautifully acted, well-written, skillfully put together all around; but it ends on a curiously unresolved note, the kind that would drive Syd Field or Robert McKee crazy. You leave the theatre wondering what happened that you missed. Or did anything happen that you missed, at all? When I see a movie like that I start looking for clues in the body of work. And I think I’ve discovered something.

Most Coen Brothers movies have elements in common. There is, for example, the repertory company. Usually you can count on seeing Frances McDormand, and in many of the others you’d find John Goodman, Jon Turturro, Steve Buscemi (who is almost always killed) or Bruce Campbell.

Also crew. A frequent early cinematographer for the Coens was Barry (MEN IN BLACK, RV, THE ADDAMS FAMILY) Sonnenfeld. Scoring duties are almost always handled by Carter Burwell.

The Coens are also skilled at digging up obscure period slang, or if it takes place in the present day, obscure regional slang. I’ve got other fish to fry, but check it out some time.

This all tells us nothing about what their movies mean though. Frequently lead characters of Coen Brothers movies are self-deluded. Think of Barton Fink, the playwrite hero of BARTON FINK, who comes to Hollywood to change the face of cinema even though he is so severly blocked he can’t even start a screenplay. The childless couple in RAISING ARIZONA kidnap one of set of sextuplets on the theory that the family won’t mind since they still have five left. BLOOD SIMPLE sports an entire cast of characters who wind up murdering each other because of various misunderstandings. The leads of FARGO, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY and THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE are in so far over their heads they haven’t got a chance.

Crime seems to figure into every Coen movie. Often, as in the current movie, it’s stealing from other criminals. And like in the current movie, a small crime tends to lead to a cascading series of larger ones. And usually these accelerating criminal acts doom the protagonist. They certainly seem to here.

I say “seem to” because I’m leading up to my great discovery, the thing I have finally spotted after 25 years of Coen-watching. In NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Josh Brolin seems to be the lead character. He’s a guy who lives in a trailer park, keeps his wits about him. He discovers a satchel of money in the desert and spends the movie trying to avoid this Chigurh fellow, who will kill anyone at the drop of a hat to get the money back. Or just to kill them. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that Brolin is supporting cast, the element that motivates Chigurh. And how do I know?

Hair.

In Coen Brothers movies, the protagonist is the one with the interesting hair.

Look at Barton Fink’s Eraserhead coif. Nick Cage’s untamed outlaw mane in RAISING ARIZONA. Check out George Clooney’s fight to get a tin of Dapper Dan Pomade in O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU. In THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, no only does Billy Bob Thornton have a teriffic buzz cut, he’s a barber! There is a whole monolog devoted to popular early fifties haircuts like “the executive” and “the sportsman.” And I tell you this, the first thing you notice about Anton Chiguhr is not the fact that he carries a 15-gallon compressed air tank at all times. It’s his weird pageboy hairstyle. Therefore, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is about Anton Chigurh.

Knowing that you’re seeing Anton’s story doesn’t necessarily make the ending less enigmatic, but you have a pretty clear idea that the rest of the movie is about the nature of evil, and why evil will usually win. So when you watch it (or watch it again) you can thank yours truly for the clue. Yes, that’s me to the right. Obviously hair is very very important to me.
-daniel k.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 11:05 pm and is filed under General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.