Skip to main content

Blood Simple

Some thoughts on an august 1980s debut....from the Coen brothers...

An angry man goes off the deep end when he discovers that his wife (Abby) is sleeping with an employee. The man, Marty, hires a hit man, the diabolical Visser (who seems to share DNA with the chilling bad guy in "No Country for Old Men"). Visser's assignment is to bump off the wife and the boyfriend (Ray)--but Visser knows there is a better plan. If Visser kills Marty with the wife's gun, then the police will assume the wife did the crime. Visser can doctor a photo to persuade Marty he went ahead with his task, and then collect his money, "off" Marty, and disappear.

The problem is that Abby's gun goes missing, and this leads to a startling murder-via-premature-burial, a tense cat-and-mouse chase, and a final victory for Abby. Not one, not two, but three people wind up dead.

The bizarre series of coincidences and misinterpretations seems almost comical; more than anything, the plot reminds me of the deliberately chaotic black-and-white farce "Easy Living." The Coens also give us two memorable characters. There's the inexplicably sadistic Visser--who casually inflicts pain whenever possible, even by going into unnecessary detail about an adultery case with the actual anguished-and-cuckolded victim. Visser's response to all human sorrow is to laugh, and he does this even when he himself is dying. It's rare to see a character so cut off from understandable human feelings, and the Coen brothers smartly resist the urge to give us a backstory; they simply present us with this monster, and they allow us to grow to understand his depravity slowly, as he performs more-and-more-despicable acts.

The other great character is Frances McDormand's Abby, who does what she must to survive. She escapes her marriage, wiggles out of an abduction attempt, and finally executes her potential executor (in the movie's closing moments). Past actions are great predictors of future behavior--and, from the start, Abby just fights and fights and fights. We leave her exactly as we discovered her: doing what she needs to do to keep breathing.

Many movies follow a conventional "Hero's Journey" structure, and many movies try to give us charming characters. With "Blood Simple," the Coen brothers took "the playbook" and threw it away. It's unclear if they realized how radical their choices were. Don't expect warmth or conventional "Marvel"-esque satisfaction--but watch, anyway, for a fine display of intelligence and weirdness, and for an almost endless series of twists.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to Host a Baby

-You have assumed responsibility for a mewling, puking ball of life, a yellow-lab pup. He will spit his half-digested kibble all over your shoes, all over your hard-cover edition of Jennifer Haigh's novel  Faith . He will eat your tables, your chairs, your "I {Heart] Montessori" magnet, placed too low on the fridge. When you try to watch Bette Davis in  Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte , on your TV, your dog will bark through the murder-prologue, for no apparent reason. He will whimper through Lena Dunham's  Girls , such that you have to rewind several times to catch every nuance of Andrew Rannells's ad-libbing--and, still, you'll have a nagging suspicion you've missed something. Your dog will poop on the kitchen floor, in the hallway, between the tiny bars of his crate. He'll announce his wakefulness at 5 AM, 2 AM, or while you and another human are mid-coitus. All this, and you get outside, and it's: "Don't let him pee on my tulips!" When...

Joshie

  When I was growing up, a class birthday involved Hostess cupcakes. Often, the cupcakes would come in a shoebox, so you could taste a leathery residue (during the party). Times change. You can't bring a treat into a public school, in 2024, because heaven knows what kind of allergies might lurk, in unseen corners, in the classroom. But Joshua's teacher will allow: a dance party, a pajama day, or a guest reader. I chose to bring a story for Joshua's birthday (observed), but I didn't think through the role that anxiety might play in this interaction. We talk, in this house, quite a bit about anxiety; one game-changer, for J, has been a daily list of activities, so that he knows exactly what to expect. He gets a look of profound satisfaction when he sees the agenda; it doesn't really matter what the specific events happen to be. It's just about knowing, "I can anticipate X, Y, and Z." Joshua struggled with his celebration. He wore his nervousness on his f...

Josh at Five

 Joshie's project is "flexibility"; the goal is to see that a plan is just an idea, not a gospel, not a guarantee. This is difficult. Yesterday, we went to a restaurant--billed as "open," with unlocked doors--and the owner informed us of an "error in advertising." But Joshie couldn't accept the word "closed." He threw himself on the floor, then climbed on the furniture. I felt for the owner, until he nervously made a reference to "the glass windows." He imagined that my child might toss himself through a sealed window, like Mary Katherine Gallagher, or like Bruce Willis, in "Die Hard." Then--thank the Lord!--I was able to laugh. The thing that really has therapeutic value for Joshie is: a firetruck. If we are out in public, and he spots a parked truck, he wants to climb on each surface. He breathlessly alludes to the wheels, the door, the windows. If an actual fire station ("fire ocean," in Joshie's parla...