Raising Arizona, (1987)
Nicolas Cage is Herbert "H.I." McDonnough
It's embarrassing to say but the Coen brothers' dramatic movies leave me cold. They're master craftsmen with an eye for great set pieces, an ear for dialogue and an ability to work within any genre, paying homage and subverting it in equal measure. But the key word there is craftsmen. In a 1987 piece for American Film David Edelstein quotes the Coens' acclaimed cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld saying:
"It's not an emotional thing at all. Given any topic, [the Coens] could write an excellent script. Topics are incredibly unimportant to them - it's structure and style and words. If you ask them for their priorities, they'll tell you script, editing, coverage and lighting."The Coens made an unexpected splash with their independently funded 1985 noir Blood Simple. With their follow-up, Raising Arizona, the two brothers made a point to make a movie that existed on the opposite side of the spectrum from their debut. Where Blood Simple was ponderous and cynical, Raising Arizona was a speedy, big-hearted romp. Edelstein presses Joel Coen on the difference between creating a movie around a murder and creating one around a baby. Joel responds:
"You have a scene in a movie when someone gets shot, right? Bang! And the squib goes off and the blood runs down and you get a reaction, right? It's movie fodder, you know what I mean? And in a really different way, a baby's face is movie fodder. You just wanna take elements that are good fodder and do something different with them."Both Sonnenfeld and Coen himself are spelling out the reasons that I respect the hell out of movies like Fargo, Miller's Crossing and No Country for Old Men but can't make myself love them. The Coens seem to view humanity from an ironic distance. Reality is messy and emotional and, to my eyes, the Coens' sensibility erases that messiness with an overabundance of control.
