Coen brothers
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Coen brothers, are American filmmakers known for their stylish neo-noir films that combine elements of comedy and drama and often centre on eccentric characters and convoluted plots. Though both brothers contributed to all phases of the filmmaking process, Joel Coen (b. November 29, 1955, St. Louis Park, Minnesota, U.S.) was usually solely credited as the director, and Ethan Coen (b. September 21, 1958, St. Louis Park) was nominally the producer, with the brothers sharing screenwriting credit and using the pseudonym “Roderick Jaynes” for editing.
(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)
The children of university professors, the brothers showed an early interest in filmmaking, shooting home movies of their friends with a Super-8 camera. Joel refined his craft at the New York University Film School and after graduation found work as an assistant editor on low-budget horror films. Ethan, meanwhile, studied philosophy at Princeton University. After graduation he joined his brother in New York City, and together they began writing scripts for independent producers.
The brothers garnered much attention in 1984 with Blood Simple, a sleek thriller that they cowrote and financed through private investors. The critical success of the film enabled the brothers to make a deal with an independent production company that granted them complete creative control. The films that followed highlighted the Coens’ versatility and firmly established their reputation as idiosyncratic talents. Raising Arizona (1987) was an irreverent comedy about babies, Harley Davidsons, and high explosives, and the period drama Miller’s Crossing (1990) focused on gangsters. Barton Fink, about an edgy, neurotic would-be writer, claimed the best picture, best director, and best actor awards at the 1991 Cannes film festival, the first such sweep in the event’s history. These early films were also notable for featuring several actors—including Frances McDormand (the wife of Joel Coen), Steve Buscemi, and John Goodman—who frequently appeared in later movies by the brothers.
The Coens turned to Hollywood to produce their fifth feature, The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), a fairy tale in which a small-town hayseed becomes the head of a big-time corporation. Written a decade earlier by the brothers and director Sam Raimi, the project boasted an all-star cast that included Paul Newman and Tim Robbins, but it was a critical and financial flop. Fargo (1996) marked a return to both small-budget, independent filmmaking and the brothers’ Minnesota roots. The film—a dark comedy that revolves around a botched kidnapping and the small-town police officer (played by McDormand) who investigates it—was nominated for seven Academy Awards and won two (including a best original screenplay Oscar for the Coens).
The brothers’ next film, The Big Lebowski (1998), was a box-office disappointment but gained a massive cult following when it was released on video and DVD. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), a reimagining of Homer’s Odyssey set in the Depression-era American South and starring George Clooney, earned the brothers their second Oscar nomination for screenwriting. The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) won rave reviews for its pitch-perfect film noir style.
After a pair of broad comedies that failed to excite either the public or critics, the brothers earned accolades in 2007 with their atmospheric meditation on good and evil, No Country for Old Men, an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name. The film won four Academy Awards, and the Coens received Oscars for best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay. They followed that with Burn After Reading (2008), a CIA comedy starring Clooney, McDormand, and Brad Pitt, and the dark comedy A Serious Man (2009), which centred on a Jewish family in the late 1960s and earned Academy Award nominations for best picture and best original screenplay.
In 2010 the brothers filmed an adaptation of Charles Portis’s western novel True Grit, with Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, a role originated on-screen by John Wayne in 1969. The film captured 10 Oscar nominations, including best picture, best director, and best adapted screenplay. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) was an impressionistic paean to the 1960s folk music scene in New York City that centred on the travails of a talented but hapless musician. The Coen brothers sent up the mannerisms and excess of the golden age of Hollywood in the caper Hail, Caesar! (2016), and they later told six short tales of the Old West in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).
The brothers cowrote the screenplay for Unbroken (2014), based on the true story of an Olympic runner and U.S. Air Force officer who became a Japanese prisoner of war after a plane crash; the film was directed by Angelina Jolie. They also cowrote (with Matt Charman) the screenplay for Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies (2015), based on the story of American lawyer James Donovan’s defense of Soviet spy Rudolf Abel and subsequent arbitration of Abel’s exchange for American pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was captured by the Soviets. A script the brothers wrote in the 1980s about an idyllic 1950s suburb where an episode of insurance fraud goes awry was adapted by Clooney for the dark comedy Suburbicon (2017).
In 2021 Joel released his first solo directorial effort, The Tragedy of Macbeth, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s play; he was also credited with writing it for the screen. The acclaimed drama starred Denzel Washington and McDormand.