Book description
In 2008 No Country for Old Men won the Academy Award for Best Picture,
adding to the reputation of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who were
already known for pushing the boundaries of genre. They had already made
films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the
fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many
Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to
understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they
inhabit. To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, all Coen films explore
“the life of the mind” and show that the human condition can often be
simultaneously comic and tragic, profound and absurd. In The Philosophy
of the Coen Brothers, editor Mark T. Conard and other noted scholars
explore the challenging moral and philosophical terrain of the Coen
repertoire. Several authors connect the Coens' most widely known plots
and characters to the shadowy, violent, and morally ambiguous world of
classic film noir and its modern counterpart, neo-noir. As these essays
reveal, Coen films often share noir's essential philosophical
assumptions: power corrupts, evil is real, and human control of fate is
an illusion. In Fargo, not even Minnesota's blankets of snow can hide
Jerry Lundegaard's crimes or brighten his long, dark night of the soul.
Coen films that stylistically depart from film noir still bear the
influence of the genre's prevailing philosophical systems. The tale of
love, marriage, betrayal, and divorce in Intolerable Cruelty transcends
the plight of the characters to illuminate competing theories of
justice. Even in lighter fare, such as Raising Arizona and The Big
Lebowski, the comedy emerges from characters' journeys to the brink of
an amoral abyss. However, the Coens often knowingly and gleefully
subvert conventions and occasionally offer symbolic rebirths and other
hopeful outcomes. At the end of The Big Lebowski, the Dude abides, his
laziness has become a virtue, and the human comedy is perpetuating
itself with the promised arrival of a newborn Lebowski. The Philosophy
of the Coen Brothers sheds new light on these cinematic visionaries and
their films' stirring philosophical insights. From Blood Simple to No
Country for Old Men, the Coens' films feature characters who hunger for
meaning in shared human experience-they are looking for answers. A
select few of their protagonists find affirmation and redemption, but
for many others, the quest for answers leads, at best, only to more
questions. Mark T. Conard is assistant professor of philosophy at
Marymount College. He is the series editor of The Philosophy of Popular
Culture series and the editor of numerous books, including The
Philosophy of Film Noir, The Philosophy of Neo-Noir, and The Philosophy
of Martin Scorsese.
