The Coen brothers, between satire and jubilation

“It’s more enjoyable to recreate a world that no longer exists than to invent one which has never existed. Including when you go back just a few years in time, like in Fargo or The Big Lebowski. Accurately rendering the tiniest details, and trying to put forward an original outlook… The past seems more exotic than the present or the future.”

Joel Coen

In 2013, Inside Llewyn Davis marked Joel and Ethan Coen’s sixteenth feature film collaboration. Recognised with the Festival de Cannes Grand Prix, the story of a young folk singer in the musical world of Greenwich Village in 1961 won the approval of a criticism already taken by the duo’s enrolment in an independent cinema which delivers the history and culture of modern America in juicy chunks.

A Madcap Cartography of the United States

The Texas border in the 1980s (No Country for Old Men), California in the summer of 1949 (The Man Who Wasn’t There), the Great Depression in Mississippi (O’Brother), winter in North Dakota in 1987 (Fargo), Hollywood in 1941 (Barton Fink)…the scenes are set and draw out a madcap cartography of the United States. Masters in the art of narrative, the Coen brothers set up larger than life characters, willingly mistreated by the dark humour and unbridled imagination of their creators.

Satire and Jubilation

Since Blood Simple in 1983, Joel and Ethan Coen have established their style and their affection for the codes of film noir by revisiting genres from thriller to comedy (The Big Lebowsky), from romance (Intolerable Cruelty) to western (True Grit). In twenty years, the inseparable duo, who have won multiple Oscars for Fargo and No Country for Old Men, and who are also Palme d’or laureates for Barton Fink, have produced satirical and jubilant work, where the most tragic situations can be disarmed by breathtaking imagination.

The Winning Credits

Credited alone as director until 2003, from The Ladykillers onwards Joel Cohen is joined by Ethan, already screenwriter and producer of their previous films. Loyal in their collaboration, Joel and Ethan Coen, sometimes called the “two-headed director”, are also known for the consistency of their credits which often feature the same team: actors, director of photography, and composer, without forgetting the editor Roderick Jaynes, who is in fact an alias of…the Coen brothers.

► Revisiting their Filmography in Extracts and Trailers

1984 – BLOOD SIMPLE