The resulting body of work constitutes the best collection of American story-telling since Mark Twain. Their most recent work, an anthology of six folktales about the American West advances the theme.
The Coens are noted for their mordant sense of humor, the ironic twists reminiscent of O'Henry. They share with Tarantino the operatic suddenness of humor turning to violence.
They have a genuine respect for the genres of classic Hollywood: including paeans to film noir ("Miller's Crossing," "Blood Simple"), screwball comedy ("The Hudsucker Proxy"), the Preston Sturges comedy style ("O Brother, Where Art Thou"), crime comedy ("Fargo).
They dealt with the western before, in "No Country." As I pointed out in my review of that film, the character portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones is a classic western hero, the weathered and grim sheriff, who would be expected to overcome the villains in the end. But faced with the modern hitman who shows himself to be far more chillingly violent than the old gunslinger model, he shrugs, admitting his defeat.
In "O Brother" the Coens produced a soundtrack full of traditional southern folk songs, particularly of The Great Depression. Here, they continue that tradition. Carter Burwell's selection of western songs, include "Cool, Clear Water," sung by a guitar playing, white hatted Tim Blake Nelson, a Gene Autry of an alternate western movie universe, in which he is a brutal killer who is then killed by a gunslinger who admires his singing.
In the final story, Brendan Gleeson sings a version of "The Unfortunate Rake" an Irish song whose melody is almost the same as the western dirge, "Streets of Laredo." The singing is done in a stagecoach that seems to be traveling to a town in the nether world.
And that is the appropriate destination for these tales, in which death is sometimes deserved, sometimes unjust, but almost always sudden and violent. It is something we sing about, tell tall tales about, something we fear, laugh about (as long as it happens to others). Death supplies a never ending source of entertainment for us.
