director
Joel Coen
screenwriters
Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
producer
Ethan Coen
music
Carter Burwell
Jim Roberge
cinematographer
Barry Sonnenfeld
editors
"Roderick Jaynes"
(the Coens)
Don Wiegmann
cast
John Getz (Ray)
Frances McDormand (Abby)
Dan Hedaya (Julian Marty)
M. Emmet Walsh (Loren Visser)
Samm-Art Williams (Meurice)
Deborah Neumann (Debra)
Holly Hunter (voice on answering machine)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 97m
u.s.
release: January 18,
1985
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other coen
bros. films
reviewed on this website:
- barton
fink
- the
big lebowski
- fargo
- the
hudsucker proxy
- intolerable
cruelty
- the
ladykillers
- the
man who wasn't there
- miller's
crossing
- o
brother, where art thou?
- raising
arizona
|
When the fifteenth anniversary
of Joel and Ethan Coen's debut Blood Simple rolled around
in 2000, the brothers reportedly tweaked it a bit for its re-release,
making some trims and additions. You'd be forgiven for doubting
this: it would be just like the prankish Coens to re-release
their first film, claiming to have made it new in some way (in
keeping with the current trend in "special editions"
with new or altered footage, since apparently a movie in and
of itself isn't worth re-releasing any more) but actually not
changing it at all. (These, after all, are the same jokers who
routinely credit the editing on their movies to one "Roderick
Jaynes," actually the Coens themselves. It was a nice joke
when "Jaynes" got his first Oscar nomination for editing
Fargo.)
And indeed, I can't find much
of anything new added to, or anything old missing from, the newly
restored Blood Simple. A consultation of the Internet
Movie Database's alternate
versions page on the movie reveals no changes except
that the movie has reverted to its original end-credits song
as heard in the 1985 theatrical release ("It's the Same
Old Song" by the Four Tops -- for years on home video it
was Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer," probably due to
rights issues). Roger Ebert, in his review
of the re-release, reports that the Coens simply tightened some
dialogue scenes. Again, not much tightening appears to have been
done -- Blood Simple still moves about as fast as clotted
blood.
I'm on record as an unreserved
Coens fan -- "never made a bad movie" and all that
-- yet, oddly, the movie that got them noticed and won them comparisons
to Hitchcock and Welles does the least for me, at least nowadays.
Perhaps it's because many critics, back in 1985, saw great promise
in the Coens' debut, whereas I've seen all the stuff they've
done in the years since and therefore know they went on to much
better things. Blood Simple isn't bad, just self-consciously
poky and austere -- a James M. Cain homage, rural-art-film division.
The Coens did know how to plot
their thriller as immaculately as Cain did. Pathetic roadhouse
owner Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) suspects his wife Abby (Frances
McDormand) of cheating on him. She is -- with one of Marty's
bartenders, Ray (John Getz). Marty hires a slimy "private
investigator," Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh), to follow
Abby; after Visser has brought back proof and specifics, Marty
offers Visser $10,000 to kill Abby and Ray. What follows is a
series of double-crosses and stupid decisions -- as Pauline Kael
pointed out in her review, the audience knows everything, but
the characters don't, and we watch them fuck up constantly. It
doesn't help that most of the protagonists are none too bright
-- Ray is such a yo-yo he tries to mop up blood with a windbreaker.
It also doesn't help that the
leads, Abby and Ray, are fairly colorless -- maybe the Coens
were commenting on the traditional blankness of film noir
heroes and heroines, hollowed out and leaving nothing except
greed, desperation, paranoia. Getz would give a zesty performance
two years later as Geena Davis's snide ex-lover in David Cronenberg's
The Fly, and we all know Frances McDormand would go on
to do great work, not least in Fargo. Their performances
here, though, are calculatedly laconic; the Coens are a bit too
willing to let you see their hands moving these pawns. I'll admit
it's interesting to see the usual film noir confrontation
scenes underplayed at a crawl -- Getz lets out a small, bitter
chuckle during one such scene with McDormand, and it makes you
aware of how little emotion you've been seeing.
The Coens seem to view Abby
and Ray as nothing more than mechanisms pushing the plot forward.
They seem more interested in film-geek overhead shots (have there
ever been so many ceiling-fan-POV shots in one movie?)
and in weird touches like a pair of dead fish and a glass of
milk left to rot and curdle on a table, or the way even freshly
spilled gore has a dark and syrupy consistency, as if the victim's
blood already knew it would be running soon and decided to clot
ahead of time. Blood Simple's centerpiece is the celebrated
buried-alive scene, whose effect on us depends on our detachment
from the characters. Abby and Ray begin to distrust each other,
but from what we can see there's no great love lost between them;
they're hardly even in lust.
Happily, there are other people
to watch on the margins. Dan Hedaya's Marty, a slob Rasputin,
quietly conveys a man who wants to seem tougher than he is, who
doesn't really have the stomach for rough Texas revenge (literally
-- he vomits no less than three times). And M. Emmet Walsh's
Visser is a cheerfully gelatinous creation, the most entertaining
bucket of pus to slime his way through a movie since Orson Welles
in Touch of Evil. The Coens come up with some great cynical
dialogue for him (everyone else's lines are rather naturalistic
and dulled-out), and the baroque final scene they devise for
him is eminently worthy of both Visser and his portrayer. Blood
Simple ultimately seems to be about Visser, easily the film's
most compelling addition to film noir history. When he
speaks, you hear the future voice of the Coens loud and clear.
|
