Bogus Nights
The critic Terrence Rafferty
has a sensible column in the current GQ on the vapidity of independent
film. "In 1997," Rafferty writes, "independent movie after independent movie
arrived in theaters on waves of critical admiration, and moviegoers
unaccustomed to the peculiar moral universe of indie-ness must have emerged
from these experiences deeply perplexed: wondering, perhaps, how the reviewers
who carped about studio films like Steven Spielberg's majestic, flawed
Amistad could embrace wholeheartedly stuff as dubious as
Deconstructing Harry , The Sweet Hereafter , Boogie Nights ,
[and] In the Company of Men ." Rafferty correctly identifies indie film's
"air of smugness." Because its supposed anti-commercial values are pre-approved
by a youngish, left-of-center audience, indie filmmakers are encouraged to be
"less rigorous with themselves--to accept limitations that they'd be better off
trying to correct or transcend."
This is a
familiar debate, but Rafferty turns the usual cant around. It's the
hypercapitalist studio mentality that is usually deemed corrupt. Independent
films, no matter how incompetent, are thought to be well-meaning. Rafferty
passes over obvious chances to criticize the indies in technical terms--no
review of Boogie Nights prepared me for what a patchy, tedious film it
was--and instead finds something morally defective in them. He has in
mind Woody Allen, Anthony Minghella ( The English Patient ), Neil LaBute
( In the Company of Men ), and Quentin Tarantino. This rather disparate
group is tied together by a desire to resist the strictures of studio
filmmaking and to advertise that resistance to a discerning audience. So
instead of uplifting stories we get studiously downbeat ones; instead of good
vs. evil we get calculated ambiguity; instead of violence as plot device we get
violence as happenstance; and instead of a corporate worldview we get
self-expression and self-regard.
Rafferty uses the word "moral" quite pointedly. He thinks
that these movies are destructive, that they enjoy degradation. I think he's
mostly right. Tarantino, notably, manipulates our capacity to be aroused by
death. No less offensive, however, is the automatic presumption of quality in
work that defines itself merely by its choice of subject matter and mannerism.
Because a Martin Scorsese epigone named Paul Thomas Anderson announced a film
on the subject of L.A. porn--because he promised to show some dick--he was
celebrated as a poetic chronicler of subcultures. Meanwhile,
better-than-average studio films--I'd name Titanic and The Devil's
Advocate --are picked apart by highbrow critics, even by those who admitted
enjoying them. (Tony Gilroy and Jonathan Lemkin's script for The Devil's
Advocate was witty and literate; Anderson's for Boogie Nights was
not.)
Most
freethinking filmgoers will admit the existence of morally repugnant indie
poseurs. But what does that species have in common with the almost universally
admired Coen brothers? This writing-directing-producing team--Joel Coen
directs, Ethan Coen produces, both write--has cannily outlasted the cyclical
faddishness of indie-dom. Their movies-- Blood Simple , Raising
Arizona , Miller's Crossing , Barton Fink , The Hudsucker
Proxy , Fargo, and now The Big Lebowski --have been eccentric
in the best sense, avoiding both mainstream studio practices and the indie
mentality that mindlessly reacts against them. And yet something is not
working. Every Coen opus after Blood Simple has, in one way or another,
fallen flat.
I don't subscribe to the standard critique of
the Coens--that they are too cool and too clever by half, that they care more
for wordplay than for flesh-and-blood characters. In fact, they have a
tremendous gift for character. They can write a role, and find an actor for it,
in a way that creates a small myth on the screen. I'm thinking in particular of
Frances McDormand's unflappable pregnant cop in Fargo ; John Turturro's
Barton Fink, the mediocre leftist playwright who tries to go Hollywood; and in
the new film, Jeff Bridges' incarnation of Jeff Lebowski, a k a the Dude, an
amiable stoner who is drawn into a Big Sleep -inspired kidnap scheme.
What these characters have in common is an instantly plausible blend of
idiosyncrasy and stereotype. The Dude is burdened with all the clichés of his
kind, but he also shows pleasing eccentricities, such as an eye for interior
decor. ("That rug really tied the room together," he says, after one of the bad
guys urinates on it.) His bowling buddies and co-conspirators--John Goodman's
character, a gun-toting Vietnam vet with an intellectual streak, and Steve
Buscemi's, a nice guy who's always one step behind--are also neatly drawn. As
long as they are simply chatting together at the bowling alley, the film is
charming and alive.
The
trouble starts with the plot. The great flaw in most of the Coens' work is,
surprisingly, an inability to sustain a plot over a two-hour span. I say
surprising because their first movie, Blood Simple , came so close to
perfection. Its plot really was simple--man hires hit man to kill philandering
wife--and appeared complicated only to the characters in the film. The plot of
Lebowski , on the other hand, is a mystery to all. It has to do with the
kidnapping of the young wife of a millionaire (also named Lebowski) and debts
owed to a porn impresario. I won't describe it in more detail because it
crumbles to nothing long before the end. Careless plotting first cropped up in
the Coens' murky gangster picture Miller's Crossing , and it hurt
Fargo , the best of their recent films. (If a character buries a suitcase
full of money, we should find out what happens to it.) In Lebowski , we
lose track not only of plot devices but of whole characters, who come and go
without finding a reason to be. Turturro is wasted as a bowler named Jesus, a
convicted pedophile in Spandex. He is an amazing creation, but he has no
function.
The crux of the Coens' plot problem is climax. Over and
over, they have imposed an artificial resolution on a sequence of brilliant
character studies. In Barton Fink , for example, Fink's adventures in
'30s Hollywood lead him through a splendid gallery of vintage Los Angeles
creatures--a madcap studio head, a gin-soaked Faulkneresque novelist, a
seemingly ordinary insurance salesman (Goodman again) who makes strange noises
in the hotel room next door. Then what? The Coens put a dead woman in Fink's
bed and set fire to the hotel. In Fargo , the kidnapping-turned-murder
scheme never finds a satisfying second act, and the Coens create an illusion of
climax only by having one thug kill another in a giant geyser of blood. In
The Big Lebowski , the climax is so farcically arbitrary--one character
drops dead of a heart attack--that the Coens seem to be laughing at their own
inability to wrap things up. Anyone who's tried to write a screenplay knows the
difficulty of writing a climax. The process is always artificial. The art is in
hiding the artifice. The Coens shrug off that task with annoying arrogance.
Do these
enormously talented filmmakers show a moral failing in the sense that
Rafferty developed in his piece? I think they do. Their sin is pride. The Coens
have reached a stage where they no longer question their ideas or flesh them
out. You can catch them in the act, as it were, by comparing a shooting script
with the final product. I have such a script for Barton
Fink .
(The "shooting script" is the script as it stands before filming begins; the
script that you can buy in book form is a "continuity script," which has been
edited to match the film.) The degree to which the shooting script matches the
film is astonishing. Page after page has been shot word for word. This,
needless to say, is unusual; even directors who write their own scripts very
often make major changes during production. The Coens had shot everything
verbatim, right down to unfinished sentences ("I don't know ... I mean--") and
hesitations ("uh," "er"). If the script were airtight, such faithfulness to
self would be admirable. But when the script is flawed ...
The moral is that the Coens might actually be
able to make further artistic advances if they shackled themselves to the evil
studio system. Someone needs to speak to them in time-tested studio
platitudes--to say that the script goes nowhere in the third act or that there
are too many marginal characters. They might also profit from filming others'
scripts. But the hype that greeted Blood Simple appears to have
convinced them that they are sufficient unto themselves. They've reserved an
independence they haven't earned.
