Dismantling Narrative Conventions and the American Dream in "A Cool Million" and "The Big Lebowski"

Nathanael West and Joel and Ethan Coen have never been known for playing it straight. A Cool Million, subtitled The Dismantling of Lemuel Pitkin, and The Big Lebowski can be read as satires, if not parodies, of the American Dream of success. Their denial of coherence and lack of narrative discipline, deemed post-modern, their refusal to be constrained by the imperatives of conventional narrative and formal purity can be related to the way these works challenge the assumption that achievement is desirable and possible through hard work. Another connection between the novel and the movie is in the main characters’ embodiment of the Jewish folk character of the ‘schlemiel’—the clumsy, inept, charismatic character that stumbles from one situation to the next, pushed around by circumstances that are not of his own making. In following characters that are not in charge of their own destiny through convoluted plots that are ultimately absurd and somewhat incoherent, Nathanael West and the Coen brothers challenge not only narrative and stylistic conventions, but the conventional ideas of progress and improvement through work.

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

Subtle and surreptitiously soulful, Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest has a light, tender touch and a surfeit of sincere, deep feeling, two things the Coen brothers generally lack. A lot of the emotion comes from the music itself, supervised by T. Bone Burnett, a man who really knows his way around a ballad. The film is as melancholy as the somber, smoky, sweet songs filled with steely, blue notes, providing a startlingly straight-faced departure for the directing/writing/producing/editing duo behind Fargo, No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, and Raising Arizona. Marvelous and mordantly funny, Inside Llewyn Davis is deeply personal, boldly original, and highly emotional.

The sounds of the early sixties folk music revival float in the air like a strange, intoxicating perfume, reflecting the lonesomeness and romance of the traveling life, particularly the meandering, fraught journey of a guitar-strumming balladeer trying to reconcile his life and his art. Oscar Isaac, who portrays the title character with sincere conviction and a haunting humanism, can definitely sing, in a fine, clear tenor voice that palpitates with the poignant pain of loss, longing, and loneliness. All of the songs speak to this pain and to the rootlessness and regret of his existence: “Fare Thee Well,” “Five Hundred Miles (Away From Home),” and especially “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,” which opens the film: “wouldn’t mind the hangin’ except for layin’ in the grave so long, poor boy... I been all around this world.” The words and chords don’t just enrich the movie, they complete it, tapping into reservoirs of otherwise inaccessible feelings.

The Hangover Part III (2013)

Anyone who’s seen the trailers and promos for the last—fingers crossed—installment of The Hangover franchise knows that, among other instances of senseless animal cruelty, Todd Phillips’ Part III features giraffe decapitation by highway underpass. I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to. It’s not very funny, and completely tangential to the plot, but then a lot of things are. The problem is it takes place in the first five minutes, and the movie tries really really hard to top it for the remaining hour and a half. It fails.

There are some movies that should stand alone; sequels, prequels, remakes, and spin-offs can only harm their reputation. The first Hangover is one of these movies.  Perhaps the funniest and most entertaining film of 2009, it was an uproariously hilarious lowbrow achievement of raunch, profanity, and political incorrectness, and a modernized, twisted return to a simpler, gentler age (circa 1980) when bros and boobs ruled the comedic screen. Part II made the mistake of trying to outdo it, but, although inferior to its predecessor and patently unoriginal, replicating every situation of the first with mechanical obligation, it was still a good time. Part III tries to top both movies. Combined. Losing the expected, exciting backtracking structure—and any sort of boozing and hangovers, debauchery and fun, for that matter—this Hangover does away with the comedy almost entirely, replacing laughs with the half-parodied, predictable conventions of a bad, exposition-heavy B-movie caper played chronologically and completely soberly.

The Artist (2011)

Michael Hazanavicius’ The Artist is a lavish love letter to old Hollywood cinema, but it is so much more. It speaks volumes without ever saying a word. Shot in luscious black and white and (mostly) silent, it harkens back to a time when film was a purely visual medium, proves that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a second of film is worth that times every one of its twenty-four frames, and assures us that louder isn’t always better. At their simplest and quietest, movies are sometimes the most magical.

Steeped in a bold, unapologetic and unashamed nostalgia, the film chronicles the movie industry’s often painful transition to sound in the late 1920s, and what happened to so many silent film stars when audiences demanded they be heard as well as seen.

The Artist, which spans a five year period, opens in 1927, when the sign in the hills still said HOLLYWOODLAND, and dashing movie star George Valentin was on top of the world. The public adored him and his arsenal of arched eyebrows and dazzling smiles almost as much as he adored himself.