A Coen brothers movie. I saw this in the theater with my father… it’s actually one of the only movies my father and I saw in the theater together.
There are a few small problems with this movie, but I’ve never minded them. It’s a little bit longer than it should be, but it’s still time well spent. For some reason, this movie has one of the weakest reputations of the Coen pictures.
This time through, I paid a lot more attention to the writing than I usually have, especially since I’m working on writing a romance right now.
Every character is tightly defined by specific traits. That’s pretty normal. But I’ve noticed that they actually focus on the character trait so strongly that the characters push that trait to the exclusion of everything else. When Gus Petch is introduced, his conversation with Marylin is him not understanding her, and talking about what he wants to talk about. We learn everything we need to, but the scene remains entertaining because of his cluelessness. The same thing happens when Howard Doyle is introduced. Even minor characters like Marge the waitress just hammer their traits in place, and focus on not understanding other characters.
I think I’ve learned a lot about characters from this movie. For comedic purposes, multifaceted characters are wasted. Every scene should be a joke, and progression of the plot isn’t the primary purpose. The goal is to keep people entertained, and to focus on the plot after they’ve been focused on the comedy.
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