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