If you Google ‘best Coen Brothers movie’ you will receive about a thousand different articles ranking their films, and each one will have a different order. While there are a few Coen films that are generally agreed on as masterpieces (a few of which will also appear on this list, the 1001 article ranking the Coens), there’s no definitive best. For some it’s heavy hitters like No Country for Old Men or The Big Lebowski, for others it’s more ‘underrated’ works like Raising Arizona or A Serious Man.
There is no right answer to what’s ‘best’ because there is no wrong answer. Joel and Ethan Coen have made seventeen films in their career and they are pretty much all interesting, funny, smart, well-made and well-liked.
With that in mind, here are our humble offerings for the best Coen brothers film, as Blood Simple receives a limited re-release in cinemas…
Hail, Caesar! (2016)
When people say the phrase ‘lesser Coen brothers’ film, what they usually mean is a Coen brothers comedy. Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Out Thou and the recent Hail, Caesar! all fall victim to the ‘lesser’ categorization, which means they’re all brilliantly hilarious. How could a movie that includes a Channing Tatum dance number, Tilda Swinton playing twins and George Clooney being kidnapped by an underground Communist cell ever be considered lesser?
And that’s not even mentioning the rightfully most famous scene: a posh, affected Ralph Fiennes trying to get a cowboy Alden Ehrenreich to pronounce one line. That callback to that joke late in the film is one of my favourite Coen comedy beats of all time — I actually had to pause the film to laugh.
Fargo (1996)
Sadly these days, if you want to know something’s pop culture influence, just count how many spinoffs, remakes and adaptations it has. Fargo has been spun off into FX’s anthology series Fargo (which is great, don’t get me wrong) as solid proof that this is the Coen Brothers film most firmly entrenched in pop culture. That, and all the wood chipper jokes.
The black comedy set in the snowy, bleak states of North Dakota and Minnesota starts with a small town money scam and kidnapping attempt escalate into multiple murders with hired killers, corrupt businessmen and ordinary people caught in the middle. It’s darkly hilarious, with more laughs than just the accents, and one of the greatest all-time cop protagonists in Marge Gunderman (Frances McDormand).
No Country for Old Men (2007)
This is probably the “best” movie the Coens have ever made, if you can really quantify best. No Country For Old Men took home four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem), and is often considered one of the best films of the decade, as well as of the Coen’s career. It’s part western, part noir, part thriller, and completely lives up to the hype. Llewelyn (Josh Brolin) discovers a $2 million left behind at drug deal gone awry in his small Texas town, and takes off the with money, only to be hunted down by hired killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), while the local Sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) can’t keep up with all the violence.
It’s Bardem’s performance as Chigurh that received most of the praise, and is the lasting image of the family, and it’s for good reason. While each character is well defined, Chigurh is so singularly unique: he has a distinct speaking pattern, a strange haircut and a unique method of killing. Despite all that, he’s played completely straight and is downright terrifying.
Raising Arizona (1987)
Nicolas Cage is best known to modern audiences as a complete joke, but throughout his long and varied career he has been able to turn out incredible performances. Raising Arizona is one of his best. H.I. McDonough (Cage) is a dumb ex-con, married to a clever police officer (Holly Hunter). They plan to steal a baby (since they can’t have their own) born in a group of quintuplets, and that’s just part of their troubles. The fast-paced, electric film is the Coen’s wackiest and funniest, and features car chases, prison breaks and a biker from hell — literally.
The uniqueness of Raising Arizona highlights how much the Coens can do within the same constraints: McDonough is an ‘everyman’ struggling to keep his head above water, same as the men in Inside Llewyn Davis, No Country For Old Men, A Serious Man, Fargo, etc. But each of these characters could not be more different from each other, nor could the films. The Coens might stick to the same themes, but no two movies are like.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
The Coen Brothers are some of the most successful indie directors of all time, so what would they know about failure? Apparently a lot, if Inside Llewyn Davis is anything to go by. Llewyn (the always fantastic Oscar Isaac) is a folk singer in 1960s New York who can’t, and won’t, catch a break. His singing partner committed suicide, his married lover wants an abortion, he isn’t making any money, he gets beat up in an alley, and he lost (and may have killed) a friend’s cat.
The film is told in a circular fashion, with Llewyn getting beat up in an alleyway at the beginning and end. It’s a different story-telling technique than they’ve used before and it works not only cinematically, but thematically – Llewyn is getting beat up for the whole run time, in one way or another, and he’s constantly making bad decisions and missing his chance to ‘change’ things. In a more conventional movie, Llewyn would learn his lesson. Thank goodness the Coens have never been ones for convention.
What is your favourite Coen Brothers movie? Let us know!