As someone who fervently believes in and admires the genius of the Coen Brothers, I sometimes find myself pondering the question of their artistic fallibility. What I mean is: no artist stands above criticism, but geniuses are usually out ahead of their critics in most cases. Take for example the case of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Professional academic critics have been attacking the play for years on the grounds that it is a work of the most depraved misogyny ever in the English language. Well, Lear’s tragic flaw is his misogyny. You might not like him (who “likes” Lear or Macbeth, or Hamlet anyway?) but claiming that Shakespeare and his art are unethical, never mind unsuccessful, is critically disingenuous.
The Coen Brothers deepest artistic instinct is a form of what one might call “dark silliness,” but when they punch that up to eleven in the most glorious fashion, those who like them, but don’t love them, frown. There are a lot of folks out there who claim to be Coens fanatics who think The Lady Killers is not only the worst movie they ever made, but one of the worst movies of all time. That movie is a spectacularly self-indulgent homage to existential stupidity, but it means every frame of what it says and shows, it’s not a “misfire” or “mistake.”
I would not argue against the idea that their very best movies are the one’s where they find some kind of balance in, or restraint of, their most excessive impulses. But we as their audience should be grateful, not offended, that they are not shy. They are brothers having a good time writing crazy movies. They show us more about America’s special form of dumbness by occasionally making movies like The Lady Killers, or Burn After Reading than if they always made their go-to neo-noir.
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