#3 - JOEL & ETHAN COEN

Combining thoughtful eccentricity, wry humor, arch irony, and often brutal violence, the films of the Coen brothers have become synonymous with a style of filmmaking that pays tribute to classic American movie genres--especially film noir--while sustaining a firmly postmodern feel. Beginning with Blood Simple, their brutal, stylish 1984 debut, the brothers have amassed a body of work that has established them as two of the most compelling figures in American and world cinemas.

Fargo (1996), the Coen brothers' masterpiece, was a black, violent crime comedy with a surprisingly warm heart. It recalled Blood Simple in its themes of greed, corruption, and murder, but provided a more redemptive sentiment than was afforded to the characters of the previous film. What makes this film the best of the Coen brothers canon is that it succeeds in creating an entire universe of semi-absurdist characters, replete with their own unconsciously slapstick language. Fargo was not just a town in North Dakota--it was a simpler world hidden amidst our very own about which there was much to learn in the way of human nature and its particular eccentricities. The brothers shared a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for their work, and another Oscar, for Best Actress, went to Frances McDormand, to whom Joel had been married since 1984.

Following Fargo, the Coens went on to make The Big Lebowski in 1998. A blend of bungled crime and warped comedy, Lebowski was a laid-back, irreverent revision of the hardboiled L.A. detective genre. Probably the most original comedy of the 1990s, Lebowski was a testament to the Coen brothers' versatility in film and storytelling.

The year 2000 brought the Coens into the depression-era with O Brother, Where art Thou? An admittedly loose adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey, O Brother starred George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson as escaped convicts on a surreal journey through 1930s Mississippi. Blending crackpot comedy, melodrama, folky country music, and film noir, O Brother was proof that the Coen brothers truly had no limits.

Wasting no time in production of their next feature, the following year found Joel the recipient of his third Best Director award at Cannes for the darkly comic, monochromatic post-noir The Man Who Wasn't There. Starring Billy Bob Thornton as a humble, small-town barber who gets mixed up in a tangled web of blackmail and deceit, the moody atmosphere of The Man Who Wasn't There eschewed the wacky antics of O Brother in favor of a darker, more moody tone that recalled such earlier Coen efforts as Blood Simple and Barton Fink.

Two years later, Joel and Ethan re-teamed with Clooney for Intolerable Cruelty, a film that represented their version of a '30s screwball comedy. The film was noteworthy in that it was the first movie made by the brothers that did not originate with them; they rewrote a script that was already in existence. Joel and Ethan were also listed as executive producers on the 2003 Terry Zwigoff film Bad Santa, a story that came from one of their original ideas.

What's next for the prolific Coen brothers? 2005 should see the release of Paris, je t'aime, a film exploring the plurality of cinema in the neighborhoods of Paris.