Language Abides

Remove one element from every Coen Brothers movie — indeed the exact same element from each — and what you’re left with is normal, run-of-the-mill movies of no great importance, mediocre flicks that garner sub-par reviews and moderate box-office takes.

Yes, their direction is exceptionally good, but in each of their movies the writing/directing duo weave one thing throughout their stories, one thing that unites all the characters with all the plot devices, one thing that exaggerates and manipulates the story just enough to make a basic story so utterly profound and diabolically sinister. That element: language. It’s the way the characters talk, the way they syntax their sentences, that twitchy diction, those Southern drawls, those glib jabs and frustrated burps of dialogue. The Coens don’t just direct great talkers, they write great talkers. Their scripts are full of colorful characters, nearly every one of which has an interesting manner in which he or she communicates.

Look at any of their works, even the early ones. Look at Raising Arizona, that madcap comedy that somehow manages to wring laughs out of child abduction of all subjects. Listen to the way Holly Hunter squeals at her no-good husband, the way she blasts through her thoughts in stammering run-ons and then howls those elongated syllables. All Nic Cage can do is grumble and fumble back, pecking out his lines like they were unwanted chores assigned to him. Cage and Hunter are talented performers, but these lines were not written nor directed by them. They may have breathed life into them, but they were spawned by the Coens, magicians of the English language, virtuosic players of the spoken word.

Raising Arizona is the absolute tip of the iceberg. Listen to Tim Robbins in The Hudsucker Proxy, confident and jeering in those crisp suits and that inflated ego. Listen to every character in O Brother, Where Art Thou? — those Southern twangers, gulping hillbillies, magnetic simpletons and Holly Hunter, who returns to utter what may be the most convincing non-sensical line in Coen history (“He’s bona fide.”) Listen to one of their more mediocre films, The Ladykillers, where a Tom Hanks pulls a Col. Sander-like baritone bravado with a highfalutin gentleman of the bayou. Listen to No Country for Old Men, in which Tommy Lee Jones uses a back-country form of English so effectively it transcends acting altogether; he speaks his words like he’s lived them. We could go on for several more movies (two more at great length below), but the point is that Joel and Ethan Coen use their characters’ language — tempo, timbre, tone, saliva, pauses, coughs and … everything — to heighten the detail and impact of their stories. Credit also goes the actors who breathe life into the dialogue; indeed, casting is as important to a Coen film as the manner of speech of the characters. But really the origins of the greatness exist long before the films are ever cast. The two examples that best show the style the Coens utilize were released about two years apart and each redefined they way people viewed these two talented writers and directors — The Big Lebowski, released in 1998, and Fargo, released in 1996.

First, let us consider Fargo, a movie of surprising detail and scope considering its setting is a white-empty canvas and it takes place in remote, lifeless locations. Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) is a police chief and she’s very pregnant. She speaks in an accent I’ve since learned is called Minnesota Nice; it’s almost too comical to be real, but I’ve since found out it is a very real dialect. Roger Ebert, who was forgivably critical of the language in Raising Arizona in his 1987 review, wrote it best in one of his Great Movies essays: “Marge Gunderson is one of a handful of characters whose names remain in our memories, like Travis Bickle, Tony Manero, HAL 9000, Fred C. Dobbs. They are completely, defiantly themselves in movies that depend on precisely who they are. Marge is the chief in Brainerd, Minn., still has bouts of morning sickness, eats all the junk food she can get her hands on, speaks in a ‘you betcha’ Minnesota accent where ‘yeah,’ pronounced ya, is volleyed like a refrain.” Roger goes on, praising the acting, directing and especially the method of the dialogue.

Marge has this way about her: very soft-spoken and friendly, prone to strange bouts of regional slang (“There in a jif.”) and her language colors her with so much more detail. The way she communicates with people is so effective that Jerry Lundegaard, the man who orchestrates the bulk of the plot, finds it uncomfortable and invading, especially since he’s guilty of a lot more than he’s admitting to. Marge appears late in the movie, and before we get to hear her wonderful “I think I’m gonna barf” line we are able to communicate openly with many other characters, including Carl (Steve Buscemi), a man so obsessed with communicating with his near-mute partner that it becomes test of wills. At one point he tries to respond about a car in an intelligent way, gets frustrated, trips over his words and simply says, “Ah fuck it, let’s take a look at the Sierra” — in a sense, his limits to communication have been breached and he throws his hands up in defeat. This is one of many interesting examinations of the movie’s language. Consider later when Carl’s shot in the mouth, a clear assault on his verbal communication skills. And all the while his partner is silent, and those associated with him, like Shep Proudfoot, can only respond in monosyllables. Every character in this movie is given a device in their language. Jerry, who was hurt by his father-in-law’s words (“Gene and Scotty will never have to worry,” he says implying his money is no good for Jerry), communicates in lies, in “bold-face lies” making his language an integral part of his manipulations. Later, when he’s setting up another lie, the Coens allow him to practice his language before making that fateful and deceptive phone call to his father-in-law. Jerry and several other characters are given other forms of communication, too: they beat on iced windows, bang on snowy TV sets and slam the contents of a desk — clearly their mouths can’t express what boils over inside them.

The Coens use these devices in almost literary ways, and they are backed up by the images on the screen. Notice the bleak high-angle parking lot shot as Jerry walks to his car to bang on his window. It isn’t just a wonderful shot designed to amuse our eyes; it shows us how isolated and alone Jerry has become. Notice the tracks in the snow run opposite those Jerry’s car; it’s as if he were traveling against the film’s flow, grating past his moral limits and interrupting the lives of those around him. Language is important to Fargo not just because it transports us to Fargo and Brainerd, the home of Paul Bunyan, but because it transports us into the cop’s quaint lifestyle, the car salesman’s bitter plight, the kidnapper’s lonely assignment, and the murderer’s nihilistic rage. There has been some dissenting opinion on this with regards to Fargo. For instance, consider the writing of reporter James Lileks, who is actually from Fargo and found the accent of the characters as annoying and superficial as the film’s violence. He writes: “People in Minneesohta do talk that way, ya know. Yes, it’s funny to hear people plot, you know, that murder-type deal there in an accent better suited for swapping hot-dish recipes. I don’t think the accent is inherently funny, but that’s because it’s familiar … The real problem was the audience. I saw Fargo in Minneapolis, a supper-hour showing at the Mall of America. Behind us was a couple in their sixties who apparently had chosen this movie based on the title. Perhaps they expected a western. When characters started cussing, I could hear legs being crossed and uncrossed. When the policeman was brainer’d, there was a slight sigh of disappointment. Half an hour into the film, I heard the woman whisper: ‘Well, this is different.’ … In Fargo-speak, that means this is a raw horror blown straight from Satan’s colon, and any decent person would disapprove. I was embarrassed for them. And for me as well. It was a replay of those trying moments when you rent a videotape to watch with your parents, and suddenly the characters are naked and having sex.”

But to counter his response, he doesn’t have the luxury of being not from Fargo like most of the viewers of the movie, most of whom will find the dialogue to be expressive and a defining factor of the film. Language — not just what is said but how it is said — allows us inside the turbulent world of characters that can’t be unfolded just by looking at them. The Coens have mastered it with every picture.

The other film, The Big Lebowski, follows a similar approach. The movie, an inside-out deviation of the film noir — it asks the question: What if Sam Spade were a loser bowler? — not only created a believable world for its eccentric characters to flourish, but it nourished and enriched a growing cult following that now call The Dude an unlikely saint (St. Duder, maybe). The Coens took what could have been any one of James M. Cain’s pulpy detective stories and flipped it on its head and then blew bong hits in its face. And it did this using language. Deadbeats have been in film noir before: Detour, for instance, had a famous deadbeat, as did The Killers. But never has a deadbeat been given so much meaningless dialogue before in a film noir. Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski is a cursing, existential nobody. He has a rug that “really ties the room together,” calls the bowling alley a home away from home, has spliffs that tumble from his pockets when he leaves change for coffee, consumes glass after glass of White Russians, and oh I can’t forget, his Creedence collection in his heap of a car. But more than anything, he has his mouth, a ranting hole of mindless philosophy, deliberate stupidity and simple brilliance.

The Coens have since said The Dude really exists, but I doubt he was this philosophical or crude with his tongue. In Fargo everyone speaks in turns; in Lebowski the dialogue overlaps three and four times creating tapestries of voices and ideas. While Dude rants Walter rants louder and Donny, who wears bowling shirts with every name but his own (proving his ghost-like status in the film), chimes in with question. Donny’s chatter always produces the same response from Walter: “Shut the fuck up, Donny.” It’s language as a weapon, which happens throughout the film with Walter, who intimidates and hurts with his words. Other performances: the nihilists with their cruddy English and thick German clicks, Big Lebowski’s assistant who uses his swollen Harvard language to promote himself and his employer, Maude and her faux British elitism, and finally Maude’s friend (David Thewlis) who uses giggles to stab at Dude’s eardrums. The dialogue is even self-referential: “Do you speak English,” Big Lebowski says to The Dude; later we’re explained words, that sex is coitus and coitus is sex; not long after we’re told men fear the word “vagina”; and when the stranger (Sam Elliott) makes one of his quick appearances he asks if the dude has to swear so much. Speaking of the stranger, he translates stuff into his own vernacular — “I ain’t never been to France, and I ain’t never seen the queen in her damned undies either …” The Coens are manipulating language for our benefit, otherwise what they would have given us would have been a basic, even boring, mystery.

The way the Coens write dialogue is important and by looking at how things are said, in what manner, in what speed and in what tone, we can analyze and come to our own conclusions about what they’re trying to tell us. Whether it be Marge Gunderson or The Dude, language can diagnose their agenda, rip through the plot to reveal the methods and tactics of their players, and the language cuts through the genre to reveal truly intelligent and important filmmaking, the kind we talk about — and quote — for years to come.