The Coen Brothers' Comedy Films: Style, Humanity, and Moral Parables

Introduction: The Coen Brothers' Signature Style

Joel and Ethan Coen have created a very unique place for themselves within the realm of American cinema. As a writing and directing team who appear to be relatively interchangeable and complementary, the Coens have developed a particular style that results in a distinctness readily identifiable as a "Coen" film. Speaking specifically to their comedies — Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou? — what the Coens achieve is a seemingly impossible mix of rich darkness in the action (kidnapping, murder, prison breaks, sexual assault, blackmail, deals with the devil, animal cruelty, and extortion) with an undeniable soul that allows us to genuinely root for the direction of the film and the deep humanity of it all.

Including the Devil in O Brother, every character in each of these films is someone whom we can understand and believe in from within their particular context. This, then, is perhaps the most significant and idiosyncratic of the Coens' accomplishments — the absolute insistence that, regardless of who they are, all players in their world are relatable and reflect the more basic, and essentially silly or unreasonable, parts of ourselves and our desires.

All four of the Coen brothers' films discussed here reflect the directors' personal histories. They spent long months in their childhood home in Minnesota, locked away by the weather, which forced them to see the world through the prism of television and movies. It is little wonder, then, that they see the world in terms of Frank Capra and Raymond Chandler. To see the thread that weaves between all four of these movies, we must look at their structure, dialogue, casting, and direction. As a team, Joel and Ethan Coen have written, directed, and produced a total of fifteen films. Among those are four significant comedies — both light and dark — that epitomize the "Coen style": deeply human characters who show us parts of ourselves, a mimicry or version of a particular style or genre of film, a dedication to the delivery of a particular place or time (or both), and an absolute consistency of construction from beginning to end.

Raising Arizona: The American Dream in an Altered Reality

Raising Arizona, set in a "current" Arizona, seems dated now but represents a visionary combination of deeply poetic and emotionally complex characters juxtaposed with a sparse physical setting. This is the American Dream movie: boy meets girl, they get married, get a house, and create a family — even if they have to steal a baby to achieve their final goal. So much of this film is dedicated to the idea that both rich and poor can achieve satisfaction and happiness if they pursue the moral path of doing the right thing.

H.I. is a good man, even though he kidnaps a baby. Edwina is a good woman, even though she violates her professional code and participates in the kidnapping. And Nathan Arizona is a good man, even though he is rich and hires a homicidal, bunny-killing agent of Satan to track down his missing child. In this film, we are submerged in an alternative reality: we know we are being told a story, yet it remains close enough to us that when H.I. goes on a very funny foot-race with the police through houses and back yards — with his full-leg stockings hanging off his head like a demented, diaper-stealing rabbit — we are fully along for the ride. That image also recalls the grenading of a bunny by Leonard Smalls, the inappropriately tamely named biker/hit man.

H.I. and Ed do not commit violence or cruelty; they steal to survive because they see no other way out of their immediate predicament. Essentially, they are poorly formed adults who continue to respond to passion rather than reason, and only through the commission of a "wrong" do they finally understand how to live their lives "right."

O Brother, Where Art Thou?: Good, Evil, and Southern Mythology

O Brother, Where Art Thou? employs many of the same elements present in Raising Arizona. There is a very specific immersion in a particular place, with the addition of time as well. There are deeply flawed but essentially good characters who want their lives to be better but do not know how to make that happen without resorting to crime. There is a clearly altered reality, made evident from the very beginning of the film with the fortune-telling blind man moving his rail cart down the line. And there is the sense that even the villains are guided by more than mere temptation — they are antagonists because of their role, not because of who they fundamentally are.

This is also another example of a film in which the Coens explore the nature of good and evil within a religious parable. Leonard Smalls, Big Dan Teague (played by John Goodman in his third role in a Coen Brothers film), and Sheriff Cooley are representations of hell and evil, yet they remain absolutely true to themselves. They serve as the counterpoint — in their absolute clarity of purpose — to the muddle that the characters on the "good" side experience. What the Coens continue to say here, as they did in Arizona, is that good people trying to live their lives do so with great complexity, while the world around them seems filled with absolutes they cannot control. The true human struggle is in doing what is good and right; absolutes prevent us from growing or changing. Emmett is clearly an insecure, semi-intellectual bully who could not truly hurt a fly — his crimes are ones of convenience, with little forethought or complex planning, just as the kidnapping of Nathan Jr. was.

In O Brother, the world is both real and absolutely artificial. It is familiar from our collective imagination, as shaped by the screwball comedies of the 1940s and 1950s. The laws of nature are ignored, and the people are over-simplified into caricatures, yet the whole is an absolutely perfectly orchestrated chaos of personalities, all showing us that when we are true to ourselves, we achieve peace. In both films, this is the parable that is woven.

Conclusion: Morality, Humanity, and the Coen Universe

In all of these movies, we see people who are struggling to survive when they do the wrong thing and who find peace when they do the right thing. This is the strongest of the Coen consistencies. But a moral theme is only part of what makes a Coen film theirs. Immersion in semi-fantastic but wholly familiar environments, characters whose mouths are filled with deep and meaningful yet often overly simplified thoughts, and very complicated lives — these are the hallmarks of their craft. The Coens are dedicated to creating an absolutely controlled world in which their parables of good and evil are played out among very mortal people.

Each film succeeds in giving us compelling characters that make us simultaneously reflect on our own lives and enjoy the ride. The Coen Brothers have built a body of work that is unmistakably their own — rooted in a deep belief that human beings, however flawed, confused, or criminal, are worthy of our attention and our empathy.