* So they actually made the Commies the bad guys?
Hard to believe. Is this some kind of sea change? This is mainstream Hollywood, where the memo is that the various trans/gay/questioning/racial/ethnic/gender groups have been oppressed via reactionary politics and a revolution is needed to throw the yoke of oppression off of the truly meritocratic people of this land who are capable of building a wonderful society once the wrong people are replaced.
Maybe our politics will catch up someday. Meanwhile, I have to listen to Bernie and Hillary try to top each other over who can promise the most free stuff.
* Judging by their films, the Coens tend toward a bleak, pessimistic conservatism. They’re certainly not Hollywood progressives or even neo-liberals. Watch The Ladykillers on Netflix. Probably the least interesting of their films, but no anti-racist progressive would have made that movie.
* “Disappointed With Europe, Thousands of Iraqi Migrants Return Home”
Amusing article about migrants returning home because they don’t like European food, the chilly weather, and find cigarettes too expensive. Not once did the reporter raise the critical question of whether a legitimate refugee would return home for such reason. Didn’t bother to ask the migrant why did they claim refugee status and did not ask the EU why they granted these people refugee status.
* What really interests me about A Serious Man is how the movie subtly critiques modern Jewish-American treatments of theology and mysticism, especially in contrast to Catholics. A Jewish man goes through immense suffering and his religious leaders basically blow him off and tell him to walk it off and offer nothing about God. This contrasts with a usual Catholic pastor, who would give nice parables about suffering and the problem of evil, which at least give their flock some kind of psychological fat to chew over and help them deal emotionally with their problems.
The key to the movie is the opening scene about the the possibility of a dybbuk (that is murdered) and the Parable of the Goy’s Teeth. In both circumstances (the presence of an evil ghost and the miracle of a message from God written on the back of teeth), the Christian reaction—especially Catholic—would be to investigate them as miracles/supernatural events and make big deals out of both and think about them a lot. Exorcism and miracle investigation are important in Catholicism.
For the Jews in the story, however, such an investigation seems boring and banal; for a people who think a lot about a lot of things, they don’t seem to care when God is literally talking to them. Except the protagonist, of course.
Also noteworthy is how the Jewish religious leaders in the movie make no effort to force morality on the cheating wife/neighbor, and how they take their jobs as sinecures.
All in all, the Cohens are basically wondering what their ethnic religion offers to their people, as it gives them no tools to deal with suffering, miracles, moral failings, or even care for others.
* Miller’s Crossing. Its more of a generic roaring twenties mob movie with a special twist that the mobs in question are seething with homosexual intrigues. I invite you to consider the following: The plot appears to be driven — and in fact is entirely driven — by homosexual liaisons of one sort or another, e.g., Bernie and Mink, Mink and the Dane and, as the astute viewer eventually realizes, Tom’s unrequited fixation on Leo. Is Tom a homosexual? The clues are pretty obvious. He’s connected to every homosexual in the movie and knows all details of the seething homosexual ferment in Millers Crossing to which most of the straights in the movie seem oblivious. He never actually gets it on with Verna except maybe when he’s drunk out of his mind and he certainly never acts from any tenderness towards her. The last scene in the movie is a fade on the crushed Tom as Leo walks away from him and into his new marriage.
BTW, I’m firmly heterosexual and socially conservative but this is perhaps my all-time favorite movie, not least for Carter Burwell’s lush and brilliant musical score. I’ve probably seen this movie a dozen times. The first time the homosexual content registered but didn’t seem that important. Subsequent viewings have convinced me that this is an essential – maybe the essential – aspect of the movie that aside from artistic quality makes it a uniquely Coen Brothers movie.
The war between Leo and Johnny Caspar starts because someone is learning what the fix is in Caspar’s boxing matches and betting accordingly thus cutting into Caspar’s profits. (This is the irony behind Caspar’s opening lecture on “ethics”.) We learn much later that Mink and Bernie Bernbaum are homosexual lovers and this is their racket. Mink is the insider in Caspar’s gang and Bernie is making the bets. Mink is also the Dane’s lover. The Dane is Caspar’s enforcer. Bernie kills Mink and, because the Dane is unsure who did this, turns the Dane into a loose cannon. The Dane’s rant about Mink in front of Johnny Caspar is what convinces Caspar that Tom is telling him the truth and Dane is a traitor. This is what causes Caspar to kill his loyal enforcer and ultimate weapon in the war between Caspar and Leo, a war which Tom has instigated to eliminate Caspar and give his boss, Tom, control of Miller’s Crossing. With the Dane out of the way Caspar is doomed. All of this is laid out clearly in various dialogues within the movie. If you’ve missed this I can’t help you.
Tom’s homosexuality and his hopeless infatuation with Leo is more subtle. But it’s Tom’s only reasonable motive for doing what he does. Although Verna is chasing Tom, Tom shows no interest in her. He has to be dead drunk to even share a bed with her. If you missed the other stuff, you’ll never get this.
An amusing wink at the audience is when Albert Finney (not his Leo character) goes in drag for the scene where Tom is beaten by a woman in a women’s bathroom.
* The Coens anti-white? Most of my favorite movies of theirs have working class white people as the heroes. Unless for some reason you were upset at the Coens portraying the KKK as evil goofballs, O Brother Where Art Thou? presented the South in a respectable light. Despite being lower class, most characters spoke wittily with a King James Bible vocabulary. Hell the movie spawned a Grammy winning album full of American Folk music, a true art of Scots-Irish southerners . (Inside Llewyn Davis also has an awesome soundtrack btw). Fargo has one of my favorite heroines and portrays a simple working class white (if you insist of viewing everything critically through a political lens like leftists) middle aged woman as a hero without resorting to making her an Ellen Ripley clone like the rest of modern cinema does with female heroes. Plus, if you have to interpret a meaning out of The Big Lebowski, it seemed to me to be about the ludicrousness of the New World Order (referenced with Bush’s speech in the beginning) of post-modernist feminists (Julianne Moore), posturing plutocrats (old man Lebowski and his little urban achievers), and nihilists (say what you will about National Socialism, but at least its an ethos). The movie instead hopes that we take comfort in the existence of simpletons like the Dude, for like the earth in Ecclesiastes, the dude abides. If the Coens show disdain towards any group consistently, its stuck up intellectuals. In Barton Fink John Goodman dramatically calls out the eponymous pretentious little screenwriter for being a self absorbed asshole the whole movie. Inside Llewyn Davis is the story of a folk singer who never makes it big because, like Barton Fink, he’s a self absorbed asshole who views himself as some grand artist instead of an entertainer. How can any conservative dislike that?
* The consequences of a Nazi victory in Europe would have been quite unpleasant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
As it is, Hitler racked up a highly impressive kill-count during the period 1939-45:
Soviet POWS starved to death by the Nazis during the Winter of 41-42: Approx 3 million
European Jews killed during the Holocaust: 5 million+
European civilians killed in Nazi “reprisal” operations: Approx 700,000
civilians who starved to death during the Nazi siege of Leningrad: 670,000
etc, etc
And American intervention was chiefly important in terms of preventing Stalin from dominating the entire continent. Sans American involvement, Soviet rule would have extended at least to the Rhine….
* In the light of the Bernie Bernbaum character (Tarturro), it’s lucky for the Coens that they’re Jewish, or there’d always be mutterings about anti-Semitism whenever the film is mentioned. You can’t get a much worse form of chutzpah than blackmailing your would-be assassin because he took pity on you and spared your life.
* The Coens’ acknowledged photographic inspiration for Miller’s Crossing is Bertolucci’s 1970 Italian movie The Conformist. That movie’s gay Fascist collaborator protagonist probably served as inspiration for Tom in Miller’s Crossing, right down to his woodsy moral reckoning.
* Recall DeNiro clapping heartily for the heroic Elia Kazan’s honorary Oscar while Nick Nolte and many others sat there stone-faced. You can forgive “Rocky and Bullwinkle” and at least one “Fockers” movie after that.
* I saw Hail Caesar! last night. I will not be as respectful and nice as Sailor. The movie sucked donkey balls. It was awful. My wife and I fell asleep at points. At best it might be seen as cleverly amusing if you had a lot of interest in Hollywood during the McCarthy era and the Red Scare, and had read up on it.
I’m so sick of debased schlock. I wish Gentiles would get back into the movie-making business. Not only is money the root of life evil, apparently it’s also the root of the vulgarization of art and literature in Western civilization.
* “The Conformist” is good by itself, and very interesting for it’s obvious influence on 1970s American movies. I’ve never seen an analysis of the role of ethnic pride in 1970s Italian-American directing and acting, but I have to imagine that a lot of Italian-Americans saw Italian films like The Conformist and gained confidence that they could do something that stylish too.
