Formal Film Studies: The Coen Brothers

For my Formal Film Studies I choose three movies of the Coen-Brothers: The Big Lebowski, a comedy crime movie;  No Country for Old Men, a neo-Western thriller: and Fargo, .

 The Big Lebowski is a comedy crime movie about Jeff 'the Dude' Lebowski who gets in a lot of trouble helping to find the trophy wife of a multi-millonaire.

 Fargo is about a car salesman, Jerry Lundegaard, who is so desperate for money that he hires two criminals to kidnap his wife to get a big ransom by his wealthy father-in-law.
The whole deal and the life of Jerry gets messed up, even more than it seemed before.

No Country for Old Men is about  Llewelyn Moss who finds at a aftermath of a failed drug deal $2000000 and tries to flee with it, but always chased by a crazy, aggressive hitman who is hired to get the money back.

The culture that is shown in these movies seems negatively stereotypically American with guns and violence. An example of this in Fargo is when the dad of the woman and Steve Buscemi are in the parking ramp and they start shooting at each other. I think that people in other countries think that gun violence is stereotypically for the USA. Another example of violence is seen in No Country for Old Men when the Mexican guys are at the shootout in the desert and everything is dead and bloody. No one knows what really happened there but it was a drug exchange deal where somehow everyone was shot. In The Big Lebowski, the character Walter is a Vietnam Veteran. He gets out a gun in the bowling alley and threatening to shoot someone after he becomes angry. The theme of violence and guns is evident in these three movies.

The cinematic style of the use of color in these three Coen brothers movies is similar. In Fargo there are many scenes where it is white and there is no difference in the color between the ground and the sky. This has the effect on the viewer of making them feel like it is a boring and unvaried environment. In No Country for Old Men the color is more orange-ish or yellow-ish. I think the directors used these colors because it is shot in the desert and it is hot and it shows that tempers can flare in heat. The main character, Anton, seems like he has a fire burning inside. The Big Lebowski is very colorful and I think its because the main character takes drugs and drinks. It seems like the colors are used to exemplify the comedy in this crime comedy film.

The camera angles in these three films are in some scenes similar, but not in the entire movie. In Fargo, wide shots are used quite a few times. For example when Steve Buscemi is digging a hole to hide the money. When he looks around you only see a fence, snow and a few trees far away. In No Country for Old Men you see those wide shots in the desert and again you only see nature. This shows that the characters are alone and it makes their whole situation seem weird. In The Big Lebowski, this camera angle is not used as much because “the Dude” is not alone and always has friends with him. In the end after “the Dude” loses one of his best friends a wide angle shot is used this one time. It shows his loneliness after one of his friends dies.

The thing that stood out the most to me in these three movies is that in every movie one of the main characters lives is messed up. In Fargo, Jerry Lundegaard is desperate for money. He tries to get his wife kidnapped so he can get money from her dad. This doesn’t work out for him because his wife, her dad, and 7 other people die because of the kidnapping and basically messes up Jerry’s whole life even more. In No Country for Old Men Llewellyn Moss is hunting antelope and he comes across a battlefield from a failed drug deal. After he finds $2 million he is hunted down by Anton, who is a crazy person, who is not a very communicative person. Llewellyn is hunted and chased by Anton throughout the movie and this ruins his life. In The Big Lebowski Jeff “the Dude” Lebowski is mistaken with the wrong person and gets attacked. Later the Big Lebowski wants “the Dude” to help him find his wife who was kidnapped and that leads into a big mess. His whole life changes, but in the end “the Dude abides”.

Two other things that stood out were the violence used in the movies. It is a very weird and senseless kind of violence. It’s also that one life of a main character just keeps going like it is.

Movieguide says the same thing about No Country for Old Men; that it is a disturbing kind of violence. They say, “The biggest turn off is the relentless violence and disturbing depiction of multiple murders, not to mention the movie’s nihilistic, hopeless ending. While the killings aren’t as gory as other movies, they still leave the viewer feeling “dirty” for being exposed to so much senseless violence.”  Movieguide also agrees that Fargo is realistic and brutal too.