A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I only discovered the Coens and their films in 1996, with Fargo – a film that I loved the first time I saw it, and that I’ve only come to enjoy more and more every time I rewatch it. Which kinda messed up my first viewing of The Big Lebowski; I don’t know what exactly I expected, but I definitely didn’t expect this shaggy dog story of a Raymond Chandler parody. I have revisited the film repeatedly, though, and I’ve come to enjoy it a hell of a lot. Still, even though I bounced off of The Big Lebowski the first time around, I still tried to get my hands on some of the Coen brothers’ other films (possibly still on VHS at the time). One of the films I watched was Miller’s Crossing.

In some ways, Miller’s Crossing is almost the platonic ideal of a Coen film, though you need to squint at their filmography a bit to make it work. A number of their movies take a genre with strong, clearly defined genre tropes; they take those tropes and look at them through a funhouse mirror. Blood Simple is a distorted reflection of pulpy noir, though at this point in their career I wouldn’t yet say they’re clearly doing a parody of a genre. Look at The Man Who Wasn’t There and what you get is very much parody – not in the Airplane or Scary Movie sense but in a more literary way: the Coens make us look at a genre anew by taking its most recognisable aspects and twisting them, often mashing them up with other genres or styles. The Man Who Wasn’t There is profoundly noir, but it introduces elements that are alien to film noir – such as, well, ’50s style aliens. The Big Lebowski takes pulpy detective stories (and, again, noir) and refracts them through the White Russian-addled lens of the stoner comedy. The Hudsucker Proxy is the Coens’ take on the screwball comedy of the ’30s and ’40s. Other films don’t fit this pattern quite as neatly, but you can still see elements of this: the musical pastiches in O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Hail, Caesar!, the western tropes in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, or the artist biopic in Inside Llewyn Davis.

Miller’s Crossing is a gangster film (again with a healthy dollop of noir) that’s immediately recognisable in its look and feel: we’re in the world of mobsters and dames, of fedora hats and Tommy guns. Its language is similarly familiar, and the brothers quite clearly have a field day with the dialogue. They take the clichés of pulp and noir and boil it down until it’s a thick genre syrup, rich and sweet. Miller’s Crossing has a lot going for it even apart from the writing: it’s beautiful to look at (it was shot handsomely by Barry Sonnenfeld, though I can’t help but wonder what a beaut it’d be if the Coens’ collaboration with the great cinematographer Roger Deakins hadn’t only started with their next film, Barton Fink), its Carter Burwell soundtrack is beautiful, melancholy and ominous in equal measure, and the cast, as always in the Coens’ film, is pretty much perfect.

But the dialogue! Exchanges such as this one, in which Tom, the protagonist played by Gabriel Byrne, mocks a rival gangster’s heavy:

Eddie Dane: How’d you get the fat lip?
Tom: Old war wound. Acts up around morons.

Or this exchange between Bernie (John Turturro) and, again, Tom, about Bernie’s sister Verna (Marcia Gay Harden), who’s sleeping both with Tom and with his boss Leo (Albert Finney):

Tom: So what’s the deal, you get to live and Verna has to be Leo’s girl?
Bernie: I have nothing to do with that, she’ll sleep with anyone Tom, you know that! She even tried to teach me a thing or two about bed artistry once. Some crackpot idea about saving me from my friends. She’s a sick twist all right.
Tom: She speaks highly of you.
Bernie: Yeah, well, you stick by your family.

What’s especially impressive about the dialogue is how exquisitely it serves two functions at the same time: it is always recognisably genre writing (albeit with a Coen twist), but it never becomes one-note, tarring everyone with the same genre brush. Every character is recognisable by how they talk.

Verdict: Many of the Coen brothers’ films share two qualities especially: they illustrate the brothers’ love of genre cinema with its tropes and clichés, and they are sharply written, though often with a tendency towards parodic idiosyncrasy. And it doesn’t get much sharper and more genre than Miller’s Crossing, which takes the period gangster drama, adds a generous helping of noir and distils the resulting concoction down to its essence. Such filmmaking could come across as airless and stifling (which, I have to admit, it can sometimes feel like in some of the brothers’ later films), but not in Miller’s Crossing: the script, and the way it’s handled by a cast that knows how to play these characters with just the right amount of playfulness, shows the Coens at their genre-riffing best.

Miller’s Crossing isn’t my favourite film by the Coen brothers, and it’s not one I return to as often as, say, Fargo. But it is a film that should be a joy to fans of the genres the Coens have chosen here, as well as to those who wouldn’t mind seeing something a bit strange: a jazzy, fun, lightly postmodern riff on those genres, rather than the original, pure strain.

For more thoughts on the Coen brothers and their films, make sure to check out our recent podcast episode on the collaboration between the Coens, Frances McDormand and composer Carter Burwell.