The Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple (1984)

What is it about Joel and Ethan Coen, the Coen brothers, that makes them such an engaging duo of filmmakers. The brothers, who grew up here in St. Louis Park, MN, have directed countless features like Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and most recently No Country for Old Men. They do comedies, thrillers, period pieces, and other strange adventures, in a genre that could only be called ‘A Coen Brothers Film.’ And auteur theory may be the only way to describe them, as there are elements that run through everyone of their movies, beginning with their first here—Blood Simple.

Blood Simple, the first winner of the Sundance Film Festival in 1984, shows the Coens doing what they do best. The film has a simple setup that only results in more and more complications. Julian (Dan Hedeya) knows his wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is cheating on him with Ray (John Getz), so he hires a private detective named Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill them. There’s money, there’s murder, and a lot that can go wrong, does in fact go wrong.

I remember when No Country got its first look by the American critics who were saying that this was radically different from anything the brothers have ever attempted. True—it’s very different from their comedies, but Blood Simple deals with much of the same material. The opening of the film, in which Visser talks about the problem of fate, is directly referenced with Tommy Lee Jones in No Country.

What Blood Simple does best is never let details go. As each step of the plot advances, another complicated issue arises. Double crosses become triple crosses. Innocents become murderers without pulling a trigger. Nothing is simple in the world of the Coens.

Yet it has a dark sense of humor to it, making the strangest of jokes out of the weirdest of situations. A man may be dying, but the Coens are there to point out the absurdity, and even if you don’t laugh, there’s at least a twisted smile on your face. The choice of music always adds another ironic touch, especially as the film ends.

Is this film what we could call a neo-noir? Well that definition has always been hard to say. There is a private cynical detective, but he’s not the protagonist. There’s a woman, but she isn’t a femme fatale. The film is dark, but definitely not shot like the old ‘40s movies. Neo-noir is a genre that I believe we want to exist, but doesn’t. Just as the term ‘noir’ never existed in the minds of Billy Wilder, Raoul Walsh, or Carol Reed, neo-noir probably is a genre that only exists in terms of our desires to see homage to the past. And it is certainly true that the Coens are taking from Double Indemnity, but they owe as much to cheesy B-movies of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

So maybe, we should just call Blood Simple a Coen Brothers film. It’s sadistically funny, darkly serious, and always engaging, just like any film by the Minnesota duo should be.

Peter Labuza
Film Club President Emeritus

Alex Cox’s Repo Man (1984)

“The life of a repo man is always intense.” “The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.” “No one is innocent.” These, and other lessons, can be learned from the mid-‘80s film Repo Man, written and directed by Alex Cox.

Repo Man follows the path of a disaffected young punk named Otto (Emilio Estevez), whose odyssey is a result of his disillusionment with his friends, his parents, and his life. His girlfriend dumps him for his friend who recently got out of prison. His parents send the money in his college fund to a televangelist. And he loses his mindless job in a grocery store. Otto is an individual with no direction until he meets Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) and learns what the life of a repo man offers. Otto does not find direction immediately, but after a while on the staff he finds what he wants do with his life and what is really important to him.

But Repo Man is no typical coming-of-age or message movie. It’s a howling satirical attack on the substancelessness of American culture. Instead of being about typical American existence, which is about buying and getting items, Repo Man is about repo men, whose only function in society is taking things away from people. Cox increases the irony when he calls attention to American consumerism by highlighting the absence of glaring product labels. In Repo Man, for example, there are no corporate labels on food, or anything else. Beer is “Beer,” Corn Flakes are “Corn Flakes,” Canned Beans are “Canned Beans,” etc. The products may be generic, but it reminds us that we are surrounded by advertisement. This simplicity clashes with the American identity that is the consumer.

The life of a repo man is simple as well. As the quote “repo man’s got all night” shows, all that a repo man does is pick up cars. Again, Cox is tweaking our sense of irony, making heroes (or at least protagonists) out of a profession that is more likely to be reviled by anyone who takes the time to think about it. The entire movie could be defined as similarly counter-culture, from the ‘80s punk soundtrack to the anti-consumerist actions of the repo men to the focus on people who repossess vehicles. And we haven’t even mentioned the UFOs and deadly top-secret (possibly alien) substance in the back of that Chevy Malibu.

The surrealism of Repo Man is what makes it so funny. Through another character’s eyes, Otto’s world could be a horror film. However, we watch as Otto encounters goofy people, gets into goofy situations, and says goofy things. What happens to Otto is so strange and unrealistic that it is funny, especially the nature of what happens to him.

Sam Rock
Film Club