The United States of Coen
Over 35 years Joel & Ethan Coen (aka the Coen Brothers) have released an astonishing 18 feature films, which averages out to one new film every two years. Their prolific filmography is notable not just for its pace but for its consistent quality. All but two of their films are Certified Fresh and at least one of those rare Rotten scores, The Hudsucker Proxy (at 58%) is overdue for reappraisal. Also significant to their filmography—and the primary focus of this analysis—is a trademark exploration of Time and Place. If we dig into these two subjects and use them as frameworks to view and understand their films, we discover that the Coen Brothers are significant chroniclers and creators of American 20th-century mythology. The very nature of their filmography, its longevity, quantity, and scope provide a unique opportunity for this study, and the following offers a practical guide for audiences, as well as personal insights and production histories.
It’s hard to imagine what could be considered to be a spoiler for a Coen Brothers film, but consider this your Spoiler Warning.
Time & Place
Time and Place matter to the Coen Brothers. They are essential components of their work, vitally important to both theme and story. They provide the core tools for their worldbuilding. They inform dialogue and character. In many instances, they are characters.
Each of the 18 Coen Brothers films is set in a different time. There are no overlaps, no double-ups. They span most of the 20th century, with only five exceptions: two that are set in the 19th century, being True Grit and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and three in the 21st century, being Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers, and Burn After Reading. The latter three films are the only ones that take place in their date of release, their present-day. They are strange outliers where time has little relevance to the story. Each could have easily been set in different eras with a few minor details changed, and we will explore why this might be the case a little further on. Of these films, perhaps The Ladykillers is the most anachronistic, the most “out of time” in terms of its look and feel. Anachronisms are not uncommon features of the Coen Brothers filmography. This is important to note: while their filmography is strongly focused on time, it is not in thrall to any era-specific details that get in the way of the story. Story always comes first. Time and Place are devices for the telling.
The Coen Brothers films are also deeply embedded in their various locations, which, perhaps more than those of any other filmmakers, are spread right across the country. Furthermore, their films are exclusively set in the United States. While, like many of their peers, there is a high concentration of storytelling that takes place on the East and West coasts, the Coen Brothers have an equally strong focus on Southern and Heartland states. Place provides the personality of each film, its voice, both literally and figuratively. Essentially, their films are about the places they are set in.
One practical thing to note before we wade further in is that the Coen Brothers do not cleanly end a film and then begin a new one. They have a constant stream of original ideas in development. Famously they tend to start writing a film only to pause it at some point to complete a draft of a different, earlier story. Several films can be made before a script is completed, so there is often very little correlation between when these films were produced and when they were conceived. This may be one reason why so few of their films are set in the present day, but, of course, they are far more interested in the nature of being and the foibles of humanity than current affairs.
It’s also important to underscore the notion of the Coen Brothers as makers of myth. These are cinematic works, not historical records. Even the myths that appear within the films themselves—such as the Yiddish folk tale that opens A Serious Man— are invented. If you want to meet the “real” The Dude or go inside the “actual” Llewyn Davis you can, elsewhere. The “true” story of Eddie Mannix is perhaps one better suited to Scorsese. The Eddie Mannix of Hail, Caesar! is a different breed, a conduit for a different story. The Coen Brothers’ work is drawn from life, reimagined, and then woven back in. It is the world through a glass darkly.
Something that will not be revealed here is the existence of a purposeful grand narrative. Instead, a better way to think of these films is as parts of an epic anthology. Literature is an enormously important influence on the Coen Brothers work. They are, after all, writers first with the majority of their credits being for screenplays. The anthology structure is actually something that has been embedded in their process for some time too. Back in 2012 they spoke about an unmade film called The Contemplations. Ethan explains this project in more detail: “Over the years we’ve written a bunch of shorts to be used in an anthology, The Contemplations. It starts with a guy going through this dusty old library and he finds this old leather-bound book called The Contemplations. Each contemplation is then a chapter of the movie”. Allegedly, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn’t There and A Serious Man all originated from The Contemplations which would mean that this anthology was in the works from at least the mid-90s. Most recently, the Coen Brothers made The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, itself an anthology film which The Contemplations may have effectively evolved into. At any rate, this is not a search for a unified theory of the Coen Brothers but rather a method of study that uses the qualities of Time and Place as ways to sequence or program their filmography. As such it provides a system for audiences to unlock their own viewing experiences and make new critical connections within their work.
On Time
“The future, that’s something you can never tell about. But the past, well, that’s another story”
Moses the Clock Man
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Coen Brothers filmography is so broad, so diverse, that it presents numerous ways to actually engage with it. If you have never seen a Coen Brothers film, the question is simply: where do I begin? A question for existing fans might be: how do I gain a fresh perspective? Naturally, one can start in the order of release, which would mean beginning with Blood Simple their first feature film, released in 1984. This is a fine place to start. Blood Simple establishes much of their style, themes, and interests which all continue to develop in the decades to come. It’s also a legitimate classic in its own right and remarkable for a debut. Blood Simple in combination with their second feature Raising Arizona actually establishes a pattern that would largely repeat throughout their career: the making of a “serious” or “prestige” picture (often crime based) followed by a more experimental comedy. See also: Fargo & The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men & Burn After Reading, Inside Llewyn Davis & Hail, Caesar!. These odd pairings work well together as double features, with the second film providing a respite from the intensity of the film that came before. It’s amusing to think now that The Big Lebowski following Fargo was such a controversial, head-scratching moment for many critics in the late 90s. The dynamic was very much baked into their filmography from the start. In fact, Joel has linked this pattern to childhood, to a local TV network the brothers used to watch which would play films of different genres indiscriminately, leading to unexpected combinations of movies and shows such as 8½ (1963) back to back with The Sons of Hercules or a Doris Day film. The genre-hopping and genre-blending of their career comes from deep love of cinema that was not formally segregated for them in any way until later in life
Throughout the rest of this study, we will not only be playing with the sequencing of their filmography using Time and Place, but we will be highlighting individual phases or eras of interest within those different sequences, starting with the one below. One could consider these to be discrete collections for viewing, even mini Coen film festivals, tied together by the various strands of connective tissue that run through their work.
A notable section to focus in on is the 2000s, a ten year period that opens with O Brother Where Art Thou and closes with True Grit. I refer to this as their Adaptation Phase. While all of their films are loosely informed by existing texts, films, and real-life characters, it is in this period that their work is almost exclusively adapted from other source material. O Brother Where Art Thou is an adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. No Country For Old Men and True Grit are also direct adaptations of books, by Cormac McCarthy and Charles Portis respectively. Intolerable Cruelty was based on an idea pitched by author John Romano. This film is notable for being their first fully realised work-for-hire project. While they had written screenplays for other filmmakers—as far back as 1986, with Sam Raimi’s Crimewave—this is the first time they directed a script they were hired to write. The film had been passed around the industry until the Coen’s accepted the job in the wake of their longtime passion project To The White Sea collapsing due to financing issues. Ironically, To The White Sea was yet another book adaptation, this time by James Dickey of Deliverance fame. Immediately after Intolerable Cruelty came The Ladykillers, their one and only remake, an update and continental transplant of the 1955 British film of the same name. It is unarguably the Coen Brothers nadir, though not without its defenders. Their inability to make To The White Sea seems to have lead to the creation of two films, rare failures, that set a path that could have easily have lead to career ruin. They are films of opposite extremes. Intolerable Cruelty shaves off their many quirks, resulting in something more anonymous and forgettable, while The Ladykillers leaned so hard into them that it became garishly overblown. As a side note, what those stylistic quirks really are is a combination of regional flavour and references to theatrical and cinematic traditions— further underscoring the import role that Time and Place play in this filmography.
My personal observation of what happened with two film slump of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers—and I think both films have merit—is that they show a lack of artistic and personal investment resulting from their disappointment with To The White Sea. Full credit for what works in The Ladykillers must be given to production designer Dennis Gassner, costume designer Mary Zophres, and star Irma P. Hall. That time plays such an insignificant role here, I believe, is because the Coens simply weren’t that attached to the projects. They didn’t come from them and they hadn’t properly recalibrated and figured out where they were headed once To The White Sea fell through. Of course, when they did recalibrate, they did so with a vengeance, and in the end, it was an adaptation that saved them.
In many ways, No Country For Old Men—released after a three-year gap, their longest between films—allowed them to creatively satisfy some of what must have attracted them to To The White Sea in the first place, with both stories being lean, quiet, tense thrillers about men in hostile landscapes, trying to survive. During the incredibly competitive 80th Academy Awards, it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor — with many more nominations still. It was an incredible course correction that has not faltered since. It’s fair to call this the start of a career second act, and it’s worth noting that No Country For Old Men returns them to the genre, place, time period where they began with Blood Simple.
Finally, there is a question mark around A Serious Man, which may or may not be an adaptation of the biblical Book of Job. The Coens have never officially acknowledged this, so it’s up for interpretation. If you do accept this idea, that means 6 of the 8 films produced in this decade are all adaptations in some form or another. It’s also worth noting that there was at least one more unproduced adaptation that was in the works at this time: Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. A film that they wrote a script for then mysteriously walked away from.
A completely different viewing order, one quite unique to the Coen Brothers, is to watch their films chronologically, in order of when the films are set. A very different picture emerges in this sequence, compared to the order of release. Interestingly, the Coen Brothers have no films set in the 1970s, but plenty on either side of that decade.
Technically, the first to watch would be their most recent, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs however for the purposes of this analysis we will not be looking at that film. It is an outlier in their filmography for numerous reasons, but is particularly difficult to position in this study is due to it being an anthology with six stories that are all set in different times and places. Next in line and thus our chronological starting place is True Grit, which is set in 1878.
True Grit makes an ideal starting point to what we might call The Coen Brothers Great American Storybook in its exploration of the last days of frontier lawlessness and of the great mythic characters of the west fading out to make way for a new generation. It begins at the moment in which the mythical origin story of the U.S.A. ends. This is the most distant past of the Coen Brothers universe and there is a significant time jump of 51 years to the next film, Miller’s Crossing. Set in 1929 towards the end of prohibition and in the beginning stages of The Great Depression, this a time which could be regarded as the true birth of the 20th century in America. These are the interwar years, where the great cities have been built and the battle for their control is underway. From this film onwards the timescale is much tighter and stories are much closer together historically.
At the other end of the scale, the final film in the chronology is Burn After Reading, set in 2008, its year of release. This means we can, at least for now, consider this their final chapter, which means the film’s final remarks take on very funny metatextual quality. For filmmakers well known and regarded for their endings, it’s hard to think of a better one to cap off their entire oeuvre, as well as a final statement on their key subject of America, than this:
CIA Supervisor: “Jesus Fucking Christ. What did we learn, Palmer?”
Palmer: “I don’t know sir”
CIA Supervisor: “I don’t fucking know either. I guess we learned not to do it again. I’m fucked if I know what we did”
Within the chronological sequence, there are also two particular periods of note. The first is a concentration of films that I will refer to as the Post War Era. This begins with Barton Fink which of course takes place very much during World War II, however, it feels creatively connected to the films that follow so I will take a small liberty with it. This storytelling era is clearly a rich goldmine of material for the brothers and the fact that they have continued to revisit these particular decades reveals much about their larger preoccupations. Their birthdates also fit neatly in there, with Joel being born in 1954 and Ethan in 1957, right between Hail, Caesar! and The Hudsucker Proxy. These films incorporate the start of the atomic age (explicitly, though subtly, referenced in Hail, Caesar!) and the cold war. There is a strong focus here on family, the film industry, the challenges of being an artist, and of men attempting to overcome their biggest obstacle: themselves. They are also often centered around a man having to make an important decision that will affect the rest of his life. Most of these films are coastal, set in California and New York. Only A Serious Man, which caps off the era, is set elsewhere—specifically the suburbs of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, where the Coens were born and raised.
We then make a significant jump forward in time to another highly concentrated era of storytelling: The 80s.
The 80s are when the Coens filmmaking career begins and it features their highest concentration of films that take place within a single decade. This period also immediately follows their one major blackspot in the 20th century: the 70s. Here the focus is primarily on crime, with three of the four films containing a major plot point about obtaining and then losing a small fortune. These stories are in fact bookended by the pursuit of briefcases full of money that fall into the wrong hands. There is also a recurring motif of driving, particularly on highways. Cars play a role in these films in a way that none of their others do, perhaps with the exception of The Big Lebowski, but with that film’s 1991 setting (their last 20th-century film) it really is on the cusp of this cluster and could almost be included. These films, while not without their humor (Raising Arizona is ostensibly a comedy, and Fargo is a comedy/thriller hybrid or black comedy) are quite serious, with high stakes and a high body count. The 80s films are arguably their most violent.
These highlighted sections should provide great little thematic programs for both study and casual viewing. There are more to discover within this frame and more that follow on the subject of location below.
In Place
“What business is it of yours where I’m from, friendo?”
Anton Chigurh
No Country for Old Men
In addition to watching these films chronologically, you can also watch them geographically. The continental spread of their storytelling and it’s specific, resolute focus on the U.S.A. makes this a unique proposition. And a fun one. Begin anywhere you like. You could start in the middle and then head East or West and then loop back around. Or you could start on one coast and work your way to the other. My recommendation is to start on the West coast and head East. You could call it Coens on the Interstate and while it clearly doesn’t include every state, one could argue that it offers a fairly comprehensive representation of the country.
By starting on the West coast and working — in chronological order — eastwards you begin the filmography with Barton Fink, which is the tale of a New York playwright who comes to California to try and make it in the film industry, only to descend into madness. This sequence ends with Inside Llewyn Davis, a fascinating bookend to Barton Fink. Both films are about struggling artists whose lives are coming undone. Inside Llewyn Davis is a film about cycles, about fate, about the struggle for integrity, and about being your own worst enemy. As an endnote to this sequence, there is plenty of room for interpretation on whether or not it is one of hope or despair, which is a typical Coen Brothers quality and a very satisfying example in itself. The two films almost lead into one another. The spirit of Llewyn Davis, who has perhaps reached the natural endpoint for his career and abilities in New York, is passed into that of Barton Fink. Talent is subsumed into hubris. This spirit then travels the entirety of the country, passing from film to film, until it makes its way back home, more experienced but ultimately no wiser to the machinations of the universe and still very much at its mercy. This search for meaning in the universe hits its zenith with A Serious Man, just past the middle of this ordering of films and right in the physical center of the country. As mentioned, this also takes place in the childhood hometown of the Coen brothers. It makes sense that their epic story would meet its crescendo here.
With the considerable help of longtime cinematographer Roger Deakins, each location in a Coen Brothers film is shot in a way that both complements and reveals the story. They manage to simultaneously find the spirit of a place, translate it in a way that makes sense for their story, and also filter it through their particular perspective. This makes their filmography cohesive while also making each film a unique and distinct experience. For example, consider the New York City settings for The Hudsucker Proxy and Inside Lllewyn Davis. Both films are set in the city in winter and take place just three years apart, making them an ideal pairing for comparison. The vision of New York City in The Hudsucker Proxy is a theatrical one. It feels staged, designed — and given that it features actual models, it is very much a fabrication. It’s the New York City of industry titans and fast-talking dames. It is in every way the image conjured up when you think of the phrase The Big Apple, featuring big buildings, big boardrooms, big props, even big characters. Compare this to Inside Llewyn Davis, which feels much more intimate and lived-in, a street-level version of New York City. The New York City of beat poets and hep cats. It is soft and cool, set largely set in cafes, bars, and cramped apartments.
Both versions are identifiable as New York City and neither are simply generic backdrops. Their locations are absolutely essential. What they do, individually, is creatively exaggerate or at least enhance particular qualities of their locations in order to visualise the world of the story. It’s not quite a transformation, it’s more of a gaze, and it provides a perspective that accommodates the characters, the time period, and of course the stories, while remaining true to the genius loci. Strangely they somehow feel more real than if they weren’t so stylised, if they were more naturalistic. In fact, it is through their mythologised quality that they become visible. In both instances, you immediately recognise and are drawn into these different versions of New York City. In each case, you believe that you are seeing the most “authentic” version of New York City. And yet, you have two films, two cities, that could not be any more different. They are different not simply because they are different stories but they are told with different storytelling palettes. Their differences are not superficial. It’s not just about how they look, it is their tone, their language, and how they feel. This is the magic of the Coen Brothers' use of place.
Pictured above are four sets of trilogies, pulled directly from geographical sequencing. They are connected to one another through Place. A California Trilogy, a New York Trilogy, a Deep South Trilogy (incorporating Lousiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina) and finally a Badlands Trilogy (incorporating Texas and Oklahoma). These provide four further examples of how this process of reprogramming the Coen Brothers filmography can create unexpected and interesting ways to view their work and to uncover unique story combinations within their larger project of 20th century Americana. The micros within the macros.
California Trilogy.
These three films provide a fascinating portrayal of Hollywood. You have the (delusional) young artist who is trying to break in only to break down, you have the studio head trying to keep productions together as the Golden Age begins to fade out, and you have the aftermath of the glory days, with the vultures of the ’90s independent and porn scenes lurking behind the scenes, ultimately revealing the true culture of Los Angeles, the chaos and detritus behind the glitz and glamour. They work as a sort of Tinseltown rise and fall story, where, in the end, it’s all for nothing.
New York Trilogy.
There is actually little subject matter to connect the stories here (also, technically Burn After Reading is set close by in Washington D.C. it was primarily filmed in New York), which makes them perfectly suited to New York. You could almost view them as the Coen’s own version of New York Stories. These are tales from different walks of life, different dimensions, from the scheming corporate players in their high-rises, to the listless middle classes in their homes and workplaces, down to the underground art scene where people drift in and out of each other's lives and through the cities crowded streets. What they have in common is that nobody really gets what they want, although as Coen Brothers themes go, this is far from exclusive to these three films.
The Deep South Trilogy.
It’s all about culture. The language and the locations. The costumes and the characters. From the farm to the church to the city. While often messy, these films are some of the Coen Brother’s most purely entertaining, featuring a strong focus on music and the terrible yet often hilarious ways the schemes and dreams of men can fall to pieces. Curiously these three films also feature the groups and organisations of people trying to work together to achieve a common goal, despite many personal differences.
Badlands Trilogy
There is much to be said here about men and women trying to make good in an unforgiving landscape. About the ways in which a crime, a transgression, can set off a chain reaction that leads to destruction. And about trying to make sense of a world that often makes no sense. There is also often a thread about vengeance, about correcting wrongdoings. These tough, meditative films feature some of the Coen Brothers' most memorable characters and moments, peppered with sparse yet unforgettable dialogue. Viewed in order of release or chronologically, these three films are bookended by the stories of tough women who overcome the cruelty of men who come into their lives.
As a final bonus collection, we have The Numbskull Quartet (or, alternatively, The Idiot Tetralogy), which comprises the four Coen Brothers films starring George Clooney. The Coens have referred to this over the years as The Numbskull Trilogy however there’s seemingly no reason to leave Burn After Reading out of the equation. One can then use Time and Place to sequence a collection like this. In the above graphic, the films are set by default in order of release, itself a fine way to watch, particularly as you can see Clooney comically mature and grow more clueless over the 16 year period.
The End
In the simplest terms, this analysis was designed to break down the Coen Brothers filmography into meaningful categories in order to create some sort of system for viewing beyond standard release dates or pure randomness. But, as can be seen, interesting things happen when we start to mine and overlap the unique Time and Place data inherent to each film. What is revealed is a mythic, multi-dimensional portrait of the United States across the 20th century, and a prismatic, adaptable way of accessing it. Hopefully, you can use it to make your own discoveries. I would love to know what you find.
