Click here for the blurbs.
It’s funny what happens when you see so many (5) films by the same director(s) in such a short time (1.5 weeks). You start seeing patterns, recurring motifs. The movies stay separate, each in their own neatly defined little period of history, each built on the foundations of a different genre, but through them you start seeing the brains at work.
Miller’s Crossing takes place during prohibition. Barton Fink in 1941. The Hudsucker Proxy in 1958. The former is a pretty straightforward (at least for the Coens) variation on the lone-guy-playing-two-crime-syndicates-against-one-another story – as seen in Yojimbo & A Fistful of Dollars, but truly going on the way back to two Dashiell Hammett novels, Red Harvest & the Glass Key. Barton Fink is almost a horror film, creepy and with a grand apocalyptic finale, a tale about writing and pretension. The Hudsucker Proxy is kind of a screwball comedy. Still, I don’t really want to discuss them one by one as separate, free-standing entities. Instead, I want to talk about the echos and reflections I saw.
As Cool As A Fruitstand 