Blood
Simple--director's
cut
Rated
R
Cinema
21
616 NW 21st
Ave., 223-4515
Friday-Thursday,
July 21-27
7 and 9:10 pm, plus 2:30 and 4:45 pm Saturday-Sunday
$6
Blood Simple
marked the debut for cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld, who
went on to direct The Addams Family and Men in
Black.
The Coens' Oh
Brother, Where Art Thou?, due later this year, stars
George Clooney in an adaptation of The Odyssey about
escaped prisoners in the Depression-era Deep South.
There's a scene a few minutes into Blood Simple,
Joel and Ethan Coen's 1984 debut, in which a jilted husband
dejectedly rifles through photos of his wife in bed with
another man. As the husband winces at his wife's betrayal
and his own humiliation, the private detective who took
the photos says with a twisted smile, "I know where you
can get those framed."
That's the Coen Brothers for you--dirty deeds done sugar-sweet.
Now the so-called "director's cut" of Blood Simple comes
to Cinema 21, with a remixed soundtrack and a running time
five minutes shorter than the original version--a welcome
respite from multi-hour indulgences by the likes of Costner
and Stone. It seems the Coens are not only sweet but self-aware.
When Blood Simple originally came out, the once-proud
genre known as film noir had produced few classics since
its heyday in the 1940s and '50s (Le Samourai and
Chinatown notwithstanding). But, for two recent film-school
grads eager to make an impression, it was the perfect stage.
Born of Prohibition-era gangsterism and the disillusionment
of returning vets after World War II, film noir embodies
the somber shadow of the American dream, where the best-laid
plans can be annihilated by greed, lust or just plain bad
luck. And taking its cue from the German Expressionism of
the 1930s, noir has also featured some of cinema's most
imaginative and vivid displays of visual style. It suited
the Coens' talents to a tee.
Blood Simple's story involves a proprietor of a
sleepy Texas honkytonk (Dan Hedaya) who hires a detective
(M. Emmet Walsh) to murder his wife (Frances McDormand)
and her lover (John Getz). But the detective pulls a surprise
doublecross, which sets in motion a series of labyrinthine
plot twists too numerous to mention and too difficult to
explain. Rest assured, however, that there's a generous
ration of noir's familiar sex, lies and murder with extra
doses of Raimi-esque gore and that patented Coen brothers
black comedy.
Like most of their fellow film school-trained colleagues,
the Coen brothers studied their predecessors well. Drawing
from Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep and countless
noir classics, Blood Simple bristles with fatalism,
moral ambiguity and the genre's extraordinary visual technique.
If anything, the film feels more like a brilliant forgery
than a unique work of its own, the Coens manipulating it
all with detached ironic glee.
Reexamining Blood Simple with the hindsight of their
now long and fruitful career, one notices that, aside from
Miller's Crossing, the Coen brothers have moved far
beyond traditional noir even as they've taken its underlying
themes along for the ride. Whether it's the baby snatchers
of Raising Arizona, a failed screenwriter in Barton
Fink or a debt-ridden car salesman in Fargo,
most of the later denizens of Coenland are far removed from
the fedora-wearing tough guys and sultry femmes fatales
of classic noir. Yet nearly all share a common thread of
disillusionment and desperation, clinging to hopeless dreams
like a life preserver. That's noir in a nutshell.
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