![]() ![]() The Coens have added one significant change: a moment when the old man is caught by an owl trying to steal its eggs. Likewise, when the old man calls an enemy a “measly skunk” over and over again. Pocket,” which feels like Coen brothers dialogue but is actually taken directly from London. London’s adventure story, about an old gold miner all alone and facing nature (and one flesh-and-blood foe) consists of him narrating out loud and calling the underground gold he’s hunting “Mr. ![]() Their Western anthology film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, pulls off a similar trick in one of its tales, “All Gold Canyon,” an adaptation of a short story by Jack London. Take only so much as you can afford to have taken from you, and if you don’t get too greedy, you’ll probably wind up fine. Even with No Country for Old Men, they pull off the trick of making McCarthy’s dialogue (largely used verbatim in the film) feel like the work of the brothers. Source material, for the Coens, seems to be picked based on how much they can Coen-ize it. Even in the latter, though they hew fairly closely to the text, one feels like they’d abandon it at any moment if it suited them. Their two proper adaptations, O Brother Where Art Thou? (Homer, The Odyssey) and No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy), feel decidedly irreverent. A Serious Man positions itself as a retelling of a Jewish folk tale. Inside Llewyn Davis cribs from an entire world of 60s folk music and seems to be based on the story of one almost-was in particular. Fargo claims, erroneously, to be based on a true story. Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, and The Big Lebowski are detective films (yes, Lebowski is absolutely a detective film) that feel like adaptations of 40s- and 50s-era pulp novels. ![]() The Coens have always had a somewhat squirrelly relationship with adaptation, in part because they’re inveterate jokesters and cribbers of texts. ![]() (Oh, I’m also pretty sure there’s a slight age difference between them, but I’m not gonna bother to fact check that, because what does it really matter?)īoth Lee and the Coens began their careers in the mid-1980s, crested for a time (late-80s through late-90s), made some mid-career masterpieces that were initially underrated (for Lee, 25th Hour for the Coens, The Big Lebowski), endured a fallow period (for Lee, this included Inside Man for the Coens, it included The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, films so bad it seemed, at the time, impossible they could ever bounce back), and then entered a stately late-career boom, though the Coens’ came a little earlier than Lee’s, with No Country for Old Men, probably the best film they’ve ever made (though these days I also feel compelled to make a case for Inside Llewyn Davis, another late-career masterwork). Apart from those things-and the fact that, in interviews, one (Joel) tends to talk more than the other (Ethan)-I’m hard pressed to tell you the exact difference between them. It’s tough after all this time to separate the Coens, Joel and Ethan, once referred to as the “two-headed director.” One of them writes short stories the other one is married to Frances McDormand. This year’s Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar race contains two filmmakers who have survived in this business longer than nearly anyone manages to: Spike Lee and the Coen brothers. ![]()
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