Blood Simple - Death and Texas

When deciding what story would be most fitting for their low-budget debut feature, the Coen Brothers claim to have taken a very pragmatic approach - a seedy erotic noir-tinged thriller seemed like the best way to make a mark with very little resources. Both the high passions of the lustful leads and the sweaty machinations of their grimy antagonists lent themselves to stylistic flourishes that would immediately signal the Coens as a filmmaking duo to be taken very seriously.

Drawing equal inspiration from James M Cain and EC Comics, the film is intensely atmospheric, all neon, sweat, and blood. It was while serving as Assistant Editor on his friend Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead that Joel got the idea for he and his brother to self-finance a feature of their own, and indeed the older brother's time in the trenches of low-budget horror flicks shows in such details as the seemingly invincible Loren Visser's stalking of Abby through the film's climax, or the grisly fate of Julian Marty (whose overall battering throughout the film is the first example of the typically beset Coen lead character, a progenitor of Jerry Lundergaard and Larry Gopnik). 

Indeed, many of the Coens' hallmarks are very much present in their debut. Hapless would-be criminal masterminds instigating and then being overrun by plots that become much too complex and chaotic for them to navigate.  Colorfully venal, yet compellingly likable supporting characters. And perhaps most importantly, a very specific sense of tone and place. The backwoods Texas of Blood Simple may be one that is indebted more to the illusory cultural construction of the Lone Star State than to any tangible reality, just as the plot takes all of the necessary tropes of the genre (a macho loner with a blemished past, the jealous restaurant/bar owner with the sex-pot wife who has long since grown tired of him, the seedy, low-rent private eye) and turns them on their heads and making them new all over again by fleshing them out in ways somehow both broad and incredibly detailed. 

Not every aspect of the Coens' style is fully formed just yet. Some of the actors seem stuck somewhere between stylization and realism, and the line readings sometimes work towards accentuating the more baroque moments rather than downplaying and contextualizing them within the heightened reality. Equally refined later on would become the stylistic nuances - while there are hints of humor both black and absurd here, it feels a bit more tentative than in later efforts.  Yet these are nothing more than the blips of a very assured pair of artists taking the first step towards translating their vision into cinematic reality (and indeed by their next feature, the madcap Raising Arizona, everything would be quickly locked right into place). As the opening statement of a career, and as a rough map of everything that would follow, Blood Simple is nothing less than one of the most remarkable debut films of all time.

Blood Simple screens tonight at 9:30, and again Sunday at 1:00, as a part of our Fall Focus on Directors. don't forget, Festival members get into all screenings in this series for free. Buy tickets in advance or at the door.

Christopher Sailor is the Programmer of Education for the Atlanta Film Festival. He also waxes cinematic at chrissailor.com

Fall Focus on Directors - Joel & Ethan Coen

Joel (l) and Ethan Coen (r) have been successfuly making highly original films on their own terms for nearly thirty years.

Upon accepting one of the three Oscars that he and his brother would each collect for their 2007 masterpiece No Country for Old Men, Joel Coen harkened back to some of their earliest childhood efforts - including "a movie about shuttle diplomacy called Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go" - and confessed, "what we do now doesn't feel that much different."

There is no further explanation than that needed for the enduring cinematic success of the Brothers Coen. Indeed, the pair cannot help but frustrate the critics and interviewers who would attempt to glean some explanatory insight into their process, some trick for keeping their cinematic odysseys from ever growing stale or uninspired, because there is no secret. They are merely a pair of brilliant and talented guys who have honed their storytelling gifts and followed their own interests without deviation for the entirety of their lives, let alone for that of their 30-year careers as filmmakers. They are a testament to the fragile promise that if an artist stays true to their own vision, no matter how personal or specific, the audience will not only find you but follow you anywhere. 

You will be hard-pressed to find filmmakers with an output that has been, by every definition of the word, as consistent as that of the Coens. At an average of one film every other year, with only one arguable stumble during that whole span (Ladykillers defenders, make your presence known in the comments!), the Coens are mystifying in their ability to hop so effortlessly over lines of genre and tone while maintaining a level of quality that leaves their fans in constant awe and delight . 

And they're only getting better. 

Atlanta Film Festival 365 is proud to present local cinephiles a chance to view a sampling of the Coens' best films on the big screen. We're starting with their debut feature, Blood Simple, this Thursday at 9:00 with an encore Sunday afternoon at 1:00. An equal mix of James M Cain and EC Comics, the film shows how fully-formed the skills and sensibilities of the brothers were right out of the box. It's also the first instance of the duo giving their unique twist on the Film Noir genre, a thread that continues through the rest of the series as we present No Country for Old Men on October 10th and 13th, Fargo on October 17th and 20th, and The Big Lebowski on October 24th and 27th.

Showtimes for all screenings are 9:00pm for Thursday shows and 1:00pm for Sunday matinees. Don't forget that members get in free, so tell all of your non-member friends to buy a pass to this year's festival and enjoy some of the best movies of the last 30 years on us. I'll be in the center row, grinning like an idiot the whole time, and I hope to see you there.

- cs

Christopher Sailor is the Programmer of Education for the Atlanta Film Festival. He also waxes cinematic at  chrissailor.com.