The Coen Brothers are, far and away, my favorite filmmakers. I have seen every movie they've co-written, produced and directed, most of them more than once. I've also seen Crimewave, which they co-wrote and was directed by Sam Raimi before he became Mr. Big Shot Spider-Man director AND I've seen Paris, Je T'Aime, which is a collection of vignettes by different filmmakers about Paris, to which they contributed.
I've noticed something about their work though and that is: it usually takes me more than one viewing to really understand what it is I've just watched. The Big Lebowski is my favorite movie, one I've seen easily 50 times or more, and yet, the first time I saw it, I shrugged and said "Eh, it was okay, I guess." The same thing happened to me when I watched Fargo for the first time. I remember it getting rave reviews and then being somewhat underwhelmed after I saw it.
Some of this is probably due to my relative youth when I first watched both of these movies (Fargo came out in 1996 when I was 15 and Lebowski came out in 1998 when I was 17), but even in my adulthood, I've found myself unsure of how I felt about certain Coen films after the first viewing (particularly No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man). I think their extremely dark humor and stylized dialogue just lend themselves rather well to additional viewings. Once you're on solid ground with the characters and you know where the story is going, it's easier to just sit back, relax and absorb everything.
So, spurred on by my recent purchase of The Coen Brothers Collection on Blu-ray (and the release of O Brother Where Art Thou? on Blu-ray later this month!), I've decided to re-watch the Coens' entire oeuvre (God I love that word) in chronological order and write about each movie on this here blog. Hopefully I'll have interesting things to say about each movie and hopefully I'll discover something new about each movie, even the ones I've seen more than a handful of times.
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