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By Rob Woollard, AFP
HOLLYWOOD: Regarded as two of the most
innovative directors in the world, Joel and Ethan Coen have been
rolling back the boundaries of movie-making for nearly three
decades.
Since exploding onto the scene in 1984 with
their noir thriller “Blood Simple,” the Coens have reeled off a
dozen films each notable for their distinctive quirky humor or
macabre themes.
The commercial and critical success of No
Country for Old Men, which earned the brothers the best director
Oscar here Sunday, confirmed their status among the leading
filmmakers of their generation.
A dark meditation on violence and human
mortality shot through with black humor and striking cinematography,
No Country is a classic example of the Coen brothers’ genre.
The siblings are known as the “two-headed
director” within the movie world for their seamless ability to
work alongside each other.
Josh Brolin, one of the stars of No Country,
jokingly described the Coens as “freaky little people who made a
freaky little movie” as the film collected top prize at the Screen
Actors Guild Awards earlier this month.
Working with the two brothers is a unique
experience, Brolin said in a recent interview. “It’s kind of
strange,” he said.
“They’re like one guy with two heads, but
they have an understanding of their own sensibilities that allow
them to do what they do.”
Joel, 53, and Ethan, 50, grew up in St Louis
Park, Minnesota as the children of college professors and had an
interest in film from an early age, remaking movies seen on
television with a Super-8 camera.
After graduating at Simon’s Rock College of
Bard in Massachusetts, Joel Coen spent four years studying film at
New York University while Ethan attended Princeton where he
graduated in philosophy in 1979.
Joel Coen’s early experience involved working
as an assistant editor on Sam Raimi’s 1981 film The Evil Dead and
it was another three years before the two brothers arrived with
Blood Simple, which they wrote and directed.
Intended as a tribute to the fiction of crime
writer James M. Cain, the film about a bar owner who hires a hitman
to kill his wife and her lover contains themes that have become Coen
brothers hallmarks.
The film is notable for the appearance of
Frances McDormand, who would later marry Joel before appearing in
several of their films.
The Coens followed up Blood Simple with their
screwball 1987 comedy Raising Arizona, starring Nicolas Cage and
Holly Hunter as a married couple who steal a baby to raise as their
own.
The start of the next decade saw the Coens pay
homage to gangster films with the 1990 film Miller’s Crossing,
featuring a youthful Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney and John Turturro.
Two memorable comedies—Barton Fink and The
Hudsucker Proxy—came next before arguably the Coens’ best-known
film, Fargo, in 1996.
The movie, about a bungling car salesman
(William H. Macy) who sets up a bogus kidnap plot involving his wife
with disastrous consequences, earned two Oscars: best actress for
McDormand and original screenplay for the Coens.
A dramatic change of tone was to follow with
1998’s The Big Lebowski, a surreal comedy about an ageing
Californian slacker (Jeff Bridges) who is mistaken for a millionaire
with hilarious consequences.
Another comedy, O Brother, Where Art Thou?
starring George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson as three
convicts on the run in 1930s Mississippi came in 2000. The film, a
loose interpretation of Homer’s The Odyssey was nominated for two
Oscars.
The Coens returned to neo-noir in their next
film, The Man Who Wasn’t There, a black-and-white mystery about a
taciturn, cuckolded barber (Billy Bob Thornton) who ends up
embroiled in a murder investigation.
A second collaboration with George Clooney came
in 2003’s offbeat comedy Intolerable Cruelty, with Clooney playing
a slippery divorce lawyer dueling against an avaricious Catherine
Zeta-Jones.
A remake of the classic Ealing comedy The
Ladykillers, starring Tom Hanks, came in 2004 before No Country for
Old Men.
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