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That rumble you hear is the approach of one of the hippest dog-and-pony shows at this year's Toronto International Film Festival: the Coen brothers' new film, Burn After Reading, and its ne plus ultra cast: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand. This past week, they yukked it up at the Venice Film Festival; on Sept. 5 and 6, Pitt, Malkovich, Swinton and the Coens are swooping into Toronto for select (read: scant) appearances, just in time to milk as much free publicity as possible before the film opens Sept. 12.
Pitt, of course, sets the press aflutter every time he crosses the street. But this year much of the excitement is beamed at brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, who co-write, co-produce, co-direct, and often (under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes) co-edit their films.
Their last effort, 2007's brilliant No Country for Old Men, pulled off the rare feat of winning Academy Awards for best picture, director and screenplay. (Only five other people have done that, and one of them was Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather: Part II.) It also nabbed a supporting-actor Oscar for Javier Bardem, and a slew of other American and international awards.
Joel, 53, is the taller one who's married to McDormand; Ethan, 50, is the ginger-haired, usually more bearded one. But they function as one, speaking a shared secret language of mumbled brilliance, like Asperger twins who were accidentally born three years apart. And they are riding into TIFF, a festival always friendly to artful directors, trailing their No Country glory in a year when their creative peers aren't faring quite as well.
Ethan Coen, left, and Joel Coen: They're attracting much of the attention at the Toronto International Film Festival, where their latest film, Burn After Reading, will play. (Jim Ruymen/Reuters)
For every critic who's anticipating Steven Soderbergh's Che, a two-part biopic of Che Guevara starring Benicio Del Toro, there are several more intimidated by its 262-minute running time. Neither The Wrestler, from director Darren Aronofsky ( Requiem for a Dream), nor Me and Orson Welles, from director Richard Linklater ( Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise), has yet to secure U.S. distribution. Blindness, from Fernando Meirelles ( City of God, The Constant Gardener), about a mysterious epidemic, was slammed in Cannes. And the reaction to Synecdoche, New York, the reality-bending directorial debut of renowned screenwriter Charlie Kaufman ( Being John Malkovich, Adaptation), starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as a depressed playwright, has been nothing short of horrified.
The Coens, on the other hand, have managed to hang onto, and even improve upon, their early genius.
Cinephiles still remember the moment in their first film, Blood Simple (1984), when their camera, skimming the surface of a long bar, skipped up and over a drunk slumped in its way. In that film, and in many that followed, including Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990) and Fargo (1996), they helped create a new, hybrid genre of deadpan yet slapstick humour punctuated by sudden, gruesome violence, finished off with genuine emotion. (I'll never forget the pained, puzzled look on McDormand's face near the end of Fargo, as she contemplates the horrible violence she's witnessed, and quietly adds, “And it's a beautiful day.”)
The brothers' mash-up style has since been copied by everyone from Quentin Tarantino (whose Reservoir Dogs didn't arrive until 1992) to Judd Apatow.
Always gorgeously shot by the world's foremost cinematographers, the Coens' movies live in the odd corners where bland meets inexplicable, and are peopled by eccentrics with odd enthusiasms: the stormily sobbing policewoman (Holly Hunter) who pines for a baby in Raising Arizona; the mild-mannered businessman (Tim Robbins) who dreams up an idea “for kids!” in 1994's The Hudsucker Proxy; the wildlife painter whose fondest dream is for his work to be on a postage stamp in Fargo. The Big Lebowski is a free-for-all of wacko characters and lines that have entered the lexicon (especially Jeff Bridges's immortal “The Dude abides,” though I prefer, “Hey, careful, man, there's a beverage here!”). Throughout this year – Lebowski's 10th anniversary – bowling alleys were filled with Valkyries drinking White Russians in its honour.
The Coens are beloved by the suits and the talent alike. “Joel and Ethan Coen rank among the greatest writers and directors of all time,” says uber-producer Harvey Weinstein, who worked with the brothers on several movies. “I always highly anticipate seeing their films, as I know I will be in for something exceptional.”
When I interviewed George Clooney in 2000, he had just finished shooting his first Coen brothers film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? – for which, he said, he willingly sacrificed his three-year relationship with the model Celine Balitran. “Celine said, ‘How about a vacation?'” Clooney remembered. “But the Coen brothers had sent me a script which I knew would probably be the best movie I'll ever be in, in my life. A script based on Homer's Odyssey, and I'd get to play Ulysses. I looked at that and went, ‘I have to do it. I have to. I don't know how to turn that down.'”
And film critics dote on the Coens, too – we're suckers for verbal dexterity, and who among us can't identify with the terrifying writer's block suffered by John Turturro in 1991's Barton Fink? As well, the brothers provided my favourite moment in the last Oscar telecast, though if you blinked you probably missed it: Nominees for best adapted screenplay were announced accompanied by a little video of each writer tip-tapping earnestly on his or her laptop – except for the Coens, who were filmed lying on twin couches, asleep or in despair, with their scripts over their faces.
But that show also highlighted what a lot of people don't like about the Coens: Their affectless, barely articulate acceptance speeches and scruffy hairdos struck many viewers as snobbish or ungrateful. And their inside humour can leave some people feeling out in the cold. Consider this entry for “Roderick Jaynes” in the press notes for Burn After Reading: “Jaynes began his film career minding the tea cart at Shepperton Studios in the 1930s. … He remains widely admired in the film industry for his impeccable grooming and is the world's foremost collector of Margaret Thatcher nudes, many of them drawn from life.”
No Country is by far the Coens' sparest, saddest and most serious film (and it must be pointed out, their only one adapted from a great novel, by Cormac McCarthy). It deserved it rapturous reception. But it was a gargantuan leap from the slight, jokey fare upon which they squandered the early 2000s: forgettable films such as The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), Intolerable Cruelty (2003) and The Ladykillers (2004). In Burn After Reading, they return to broad farce – put it this way: The sanest people in the film work for the CIA – and it's a safe bet they won't be sweeping the Oscars this year.
But based on the eagerness with which fans are buying tickets, and on the stack of films listed as “in pre-production” on the brothers' Internet Movie Database pages, and on their past triumphs and all their A-list BFFs, the Coens can coast for a while longer – through this year's TIFF, at least.
