TOP 5 COEN BROS MOVIES (RANKED)

Dear Readers/Subscribers,

It’s gotten colder here today in England, and I’m warming up my brain this afternoon—before it freezes over—by considering what my top five Coen Brothers movies are.

Hard though it is to whittle down their entire filmography to just five, especially considering there are a few masterpieces I’ve left out that could easily fit in (I even considered adding the exquisite Near Algodones short starring James Franco)—I decided to apply the criteria of cinematic craft combined with rewatchability, and this is what I ended up with.

It might change tomorrow, but I’m pretty certain that at least four of these five would most likely remain unchanged.

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5. Fargo (1996)

I wasn’t the biggest fan of Fargo when it first came out, as it seemed a stark departure in style from the Coen Brothers earlier films, especially in terms of visual flair and snappy dialogue. Over the years, though, I’ve come to realise that they were simply flexing new muscles and needed to shake off some of their glorious early affectations that had perhaps reached their zenith in their first commercial flop, The Hudsucker Proxy.

Now, as I look at the film nearly thirty years later, I find it contains a subtle indicator of why the Coens have managed to remain forever on the outside of the Hollywood table (or at least appear to do so). They capture relatable truths about the world that no doubt derive from their remote upbringing in rural Minnesota where their dislocation from urban living inured them to colder realties .

Perhaps, then, Fargo is a return to their roots after various experiments with genre—noir, comedy, gangster, and screwball—and a rediscovery of a core cinematic ethos: the banality of evil versus the banality of goodness. It is in this exploration of how events unravel through misunderstandings, miscommunication, and characters trapped inside their own heads that Fargo created a term and a genre of crime fiction all its own, one later expanded into a successful television series.

And although hero protagonist Marge (Frances McDormand) irritates me with her forever sunny disposition (which is the point), she is beautifully contrasted with her devoted, stamp-painting husband, Norm. In their domestic normality (pun intended), they provide a fairytale warmth to a dark tale of greed and sadistic violence.

Though I might relate more to Inside Llewyn Davis and Barton Fink, and could easily put them in this top-five list, objectively Fargo is hard to deny as a masterpiece of craft from the Coens, and its rewatchability is becoming increasingly undeniable.

4. No Country For Old Men (2007)

In 2007 No Country for Old Men came out around the same time as Paul Thomas Anderson’s grossly legendised and overrated There Will Be Blood, and all I could think about was the perfection of the Coen Brothers’ cinematic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. Not one frame or line of dialogue is out of place; the film is executed with the precision of well-seasoned hitmen, utterly focused on the target at hand.

A feature of both the film and the novel that I always appreciate is its head, stomach and tail structure, with Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) as the hunted, Anton Chigurgh (Javier Bardem) as the hunter, and Sherriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) as the tail, both symbolically and literally.

Having perfected their visual storytelling to its purest form and honed their dialogue to ice cut perfection, it's hard to think of a higher cinematic summit for the brothers to ascend after this one, though I’ll be more than happy if they do.

The cherry on top of this already perfect film is the final scene, in which the existential dread and doubt of a lawman coming to terms with the never-ending chaos of a world that has no place for tidy resolutions is rendered with chilling restraint. The resolved equilibrium of Marge and Norm in Fargo is undone here by Tommy Lee Jones’s doubt-ridden sheriff, as his final monologue at the kitchen table hard-cuts to black, offering no consolation to us or his stiff-jawed despair.

3. The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)

An existential film noir set amid the Atomic Age and Cold War paranoia of 1950s America. In terms of its flawless style, this may well be the most purely artistic film the Coen Brothers ever produced, combining their visual genius with the inscrutable ambiguity of one of their most intriguing protagonists, who ironically is also a kind of non-entity, driven more by passive observance of others around him and their passions than by any volition of his own.

Coens sweep us up in this strange cause and effect narrative of a type of Americana suspended between the old world and the new in a way that is truly hypnotic, and it feels wholly poetic the way we reach the ending having lived inside the head of the barber (played by Billy Bob Thornton) with no clear sense of whether he is a real human being or a type of alien observer.

The effective use of Beethoven’s Pathétique piano sonata throughout the film provides a metronomic sense of pathos to what could be perceived as a sort of ghost story filtered through the conventions of noir.

A masterpiece.

2. Raising Arizona (1987)

Purely for the sheer joy it induces with its madcap Road Runner energy, it’s hard to deny the genius of Raising Arizona, especially considering it was only the brothers’ second movie. The dazzling camerawork alone places it near the top, with an almost e-numbered colour palette that perfectly matches the relentless, cartoon-like tone of the story, which is surely the closest any film has come to replicating an actual cartoon.

Nicholas Cage has never been better than as convict HI “Hi” McDunnough, who steals a baby on behalf of his barren spouse Edwina (Holly Hunter) from successful businessman Nathan Arizona and his wife, who have been blessed with quintuplets.

Setting a pace from the first scene that is unmatched in terms of sustaining comic ingenuity, Raising Arizona is a film that could almost be labelled a trailer-trash bible story, in the way it plays with the themes of good and evil as they unfold like a manic fever dream in the conflicted conscience of Hi, who is torn between his wife’s wishes and the temptations of his criminal past.

What I love most about this film over the years is its insane rewatchability and the fact that it offers total cinematic escapism, something that seems only possible from the unique minds of Joel and Ethan Coen.

It proved that second-album syndrome did not apply where these Minnesotan geniuses were concerned.

And if one sequence were needed to prove its greatness, look no further than the supermarket chase, in which Hi steals a pair of nappies for his and Edwina’s stolen baby.

1. Miller's Crossing (1990)

By this stage in my life, and considering I’ve travelled through the decades with Miller’s Crossing since it first came out, it seems unlikely that it will ever be removed from the top spot in the Coen Brothers’ filmography—especially given that they no longer seem to be working together. And while they’ve made many incredible films, none has quite so firmly held my affections as this one.

Similar to how Raising Arizona created a unique universe all its own, Miller’s Crossing, coming after that zany comedy masterpiece, brought a kind of mature meditation on the gangster genre. It combines a sublime use of rich, warm red and green autumn colours with a beautifully Celtic-infused score and a script and story that are matchless in terms of character and motive. The plot is a faultless construct, and I still marvel at its twisty ingenuity, like a screenwriting labyrinth of tricks and red herrings that ultimately resolve in an ending that ranks alongside Casablanca in terms of its emotional resolution—or unresolution, as the case may be.

And let us never forget the greatest machine-gun scene ever, accompanied by the operatic strains of Danny Boy.