The Coen Brothers have become a force to be reckoned with in American filmmaking over the course of, now, a generation. When the final credits roll on their career, Joel and Ethan will be ranked among the all-time greats of Scorcese, Spielberg,
Welles, and Griffith. In true postmodern fashion, when the brothers discuss the depth of their films, they innocently declare, as in the case with Blood Simple
, “‘It’s only a movie’” (qtd. in Robson 39) and sarcastically point out that with Raising Arizona , “‘It’s like a real cheap and shameless bid at making a commercial movie’” (qtd. in Robson 74).
It is as though they want the audience to derive their own meaning out of each individual work and thus they have been “often censured for failing to commit to moral and ethical positions and chastised for constructing worlds of artificiality” (Coughlin). However, despite their, perhaps feigned, indifference to such topics, along with their notoriously long rap sheet of pranks, many argue that their canon explores the darker portions of human nature. The most popular example of this would be Fargo where, with jester hats in tow, the Coens open the film with the disclaimer that the events depicted in the movie are true. In actuality, they are not, but the fact that the audience would so easily accept the story of a man plotting to kidnap his own wife in a bid for some hefty ransom money, along with all of the other violent twists in the plot, as legitimate, presents their critique of the terrible possibilities of man. But there is a more specific aspect of the human condition that the Coens have been examining. In each of their films, the inciting incident is sparked by at least one character, though often more than one, attempting to obtain something that is not rightfully theirs. This sixth (American) sense of entitlement propels the Coens’ characters down a destructive path, and redemption is often trickier to obtain than what was initially coveted.
Blood Simple (1984) has no lead character, but Ray’s actions in luring Abby away from her husband, Marty, set the events of the film into motion. The affair has been found out by Marty, but Ray returns to work anyway and demands that Marty pay him for his previous two weeks of bartending service. This audacious request makes it challenging for the audience to initially sympathize with Ray, but as the film unfolds,
Marty is clearly the “asshole.” He is not “a nice guy” and it comes to pass that Ray has sincere, deep feelings for Abby, who married Marty for his money and has been guilty of infidelity before. Instead of paying the man, Marty observes that it will be “really fuckin’ funny” when Abby reveals her disloyal ways to Ray and threatens that Ray will be shot should he return to the bar. Because of Marty’s prediction, Ray is heavily conflicted as to whether Abby really loves him or is just trying to get as far away from her husband as possible and that her supposed past indiscretions are more of a testament to the state of their marriage than the tainted fabric of her own moral character.
Actions do, in fact, have consequences, according to the Coens, who write that
Marty has decided to employ the same private detective who investigated the affair to murder Ray and Abby for $10,000. Visser’s character, motivated by greed and selfpreservation, instead kills Marty and takes the money anyway because murdering Ray and Abby would have been “too risky.” The snoop-turned-killer only goes after the new couple when he suspects that they have discovered evidence tying him to the crime.
With Macbeth allusions abound, Ray becomes overwhelmed with guilt for burying Marty alive after finding him shot and merely presumably dead. Couple this with his concern about Abby’s true intentions and his paranoia about being chased down;
Ray has a lot to deal with. While alive, this is his punishment for desiring Abby, who

was betrothed, with his death at the hands of Visser being the ultimate consequence.
Visser perishes because of his greed too. In thinking she was shooting Marty, whom she was “not afraid of” anymore, Abby instead blows Visser away with one shot through a door. Blood Simple is really about the difficulty of committing a murder and living with the weight that accompanies it, something Abby finds herself in confrontation with as the film concludes; however, it also establishes the Coens’ running theme that one should not seek to obtain things that they are not entitled to. If there has to be a sympathetic figure in the film, it must be Ray because he is in love with Abby, but he has to suffer the consequences of excessive desire.
Raising Arizona (1987) explores this point with a lot less subtlety. Hi and Ed, despite their ridiculously juxtaposed personal histories, are genuinely in love and soon contract baby fever. They are in search of the elusive American Dream, easily garnering sympathy from the audience that does not dissolve when the couple engages in the kidnapping of one of the “Arizona Quints” because the parents of the babies “have more than they can handle.” After learning of Ed’s inability to conceive, Hi narrates that he and Ed felt that it was “unfair that some should have so many, while others should have so few.” Then, Hi admits: “With the benefit of hindsight, maybe it wasn’t such a hot idea.” This story is being told to viewers in past tense, with the protagonist already revealing in the early sections of the film that he would come to regret his actions.
Ultimately, this is realized when they give Nathan Jr. back to the Arizonas after much conflict and even near-death experiences. But Hi and Ed return the boy out of guilt, not out of necessity. They had rescued Nathan a few times over already, Gale and Evelle were certainly jail-bound, having been covered with damning blue paint after a bank robbery, and the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse was killed by Hi. Furthermore, it is conspicuously pointed out in the film that the police are not resourceful enough to find the kid either.
Redemption finds Hi and Ed in this film when Nathan Arizona Sr. does not press charges against them, seeing through their made up story that the Biker was actually the kidnapper. Nathan Sr. is intuitive enough to recognize that the young couple are not evil people, just desperate to lead a better life. Thus, many view this film as a “criticism of
Western capitalist society,” but the Coens insist that they “aren’t interested in tackling such themes” (Robson 67). If
Raising Arizona were an outright bashing of the system, then viewers would expect the wealthy Nathan Sr. to be indifferent to the plight of the working class, represented by Hi and Ed. Instead, he delivers an effective speech to them about loving and enjoying the company of each other, which allows Hi to sleep a little easier. On the heels of Blood Simple , this film does continue to point out the ramifications of that American sense of entitlement, but the Coens purposely chose to do a very different film from their first (something they would continue to repeat for a lengthy span of their career), giving viewers an outright comedy here, which consequently shapes a contrast between the outcomes of the two films. Ray is killed for sleeping with a married woman, but Hi and Ed get away scot-free after kidnapping a baby. This is not just because Raising Arizona is a comedy though, it is also because they recognized the error of their ways, whereas Ray remains convinced that he deserves
Abby for the duration of his brutally shortened life.
Miller’s Crossing
(1990), though, again, very dissimilar to the Coen Brothers’ previous two efforts, does feature a protagonist, Tom, who is intimately involved with a

woman, Verna, who too is spoken for. In this case, the love interest is not married, but is the girlfriend of Tom’s boss, Leo, the local “Godfather.” Miller’s Crossing
in fact displays another character with excessive desire, that of Johnny Caspar, an Italian boss seeking to overpower the Irish Leo, after years of a mediocre, secondary status in town.
Caspar’s ambitions are unwarranted though for a few reasons: Leo is highly respected around the city with nobody calling for his head, the area is stable under him, and Caspar is simply incapable of being as effective of a boss as Leo is. This is shown when once he assumes power, ironically with Tom by his side, Caspar quickly becomes angry and short-tempered. And by the end, Tom, with relative ease, convinces Caspar that The
Dane, who has been a confidant of Caspar’s for, seemingly, decades, is looking to double-cross the new don. Caspar kills his longtime mate, which makes way for Tom to then successfully trick Caspar into fatally falling victim to a hiding, gun-toting Bernie
Bernbaum.
Like Ray in Blood Simple , Caspar is killed because he never recognizes his fatal flaw. Until the end, Caspar felt that he was the rightful criminal czar of the Coens’ unnamed American city, but order is restored when Leo reassumes power. As for Tom, he gets to live, but certainly pays a huge price for canoodling with Verna. Tom was always able to deftly navigate the perilous terrain of the crime-run city; he always knew all the “angles” and the “smart plays.” But the end of Miller’s Crossing
is not a terribly happy one for him because he is completely alone for the first time. Yes, Leo asks him to return to his right hand man position, but Tom refuses for rather unclear reasons. Perhaps it is because he had stronger feelings for Verna than he could ever say and seeing her as a newlywed to Leo would have been gut wrenching. Tom could have also chosen this path because Leo did make one-too-many “boneheaded plays.” In contrast to Raising
Arizona , the lack of a narrative voice here suggests the filmmakers’ desires to have
Tom’s motives be ambiguous (Robson 95). Regardless, Tom is left to start from scratch as a consequence of his intimacy with Verna, though somehow it would be hard for viewers to think he would have many problems reestablishing himself.
Barton Fink
’s (1991) title character, on the other hand, is established, but after a change in scenery to the Hotel Earle outside of Hollywood, his fall from grace is inevitable. The object of his desire is not as tangible as others from the Coens’ previous efforts and is, arguably, something that Barton, in an ideal world, should be entitled to.
However, in Joel and Ethan’s Los Angeles, artistic integrity and financial success do not mesh. Barton is the new, hot name on the list of Broadway playwrights, the emerging artistic voice of the middle class, when Hollywood comes calling, looking to make a few more bucks. Though initially conflicted, Barton gives in to his agent’s pleas, who says that “a brief tenure in Hollywood could support [him] through the writing of any number of plays,” and goes west for some bigger pay days with the hope that the “common man will still be [there] when [he] gets back.” So Barton wants to sell out without really having to experience the knot in his stomach, signifying a loss of self-respect. In
Hollywood, Barton is manipulated into writing a fluffy “wrestling picture,” something so beneath him that he struggles mightily to even begin, much less complete, it. His script fails terribly to impress and Barton is locked into a multi-year deal where everything he writes is studio property.
What the Coens are saying about L.A. here is important, but tricky to behold because “while mainstream Hollywood has never really understood the Coens this has

hardly impeded their career” (Robson 126). On the surface, it appears that having the financial success/personal integrity combination be so elusive is a Coen knock on L.A.
However, they have said that Barton’s experience does not reflect their own, which leads many to feel then that the movie expresses how Hollywood “steamrollers the creativity of the individual,” supposing one has sympathy for Barton and his “misplaced aims”
(Robson 126). Perhaps it is the potential lack of sympathy from the audience that led the filmmakers to choose an unfortunate end to the story of Barton Fink. He continuously believes that he deserves high praise, even for (finally) writing a wrestling picture. At the film’s conclusion, Barton sheepishly explains to Lipnick, the Capital Pictures executive,
“I tried to show you something beautiful…something about all of us…” Barton’s ego tells him that he is and can relate to “every man,” yet, hypocritically, he feels he should be applauded and rewarded for his talents. Having not recognized this about himself, he is left to toil in a virtual Californian, Eaglesesque limbo.
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) sees the Coens continue to explore the fantastical, though on a larger scale here than in Barton Fink , while finding their way back to the comedy circuit for the first time since Raising Arizona . This film features a group of men who are hoping to gain something that is not theirs to claim: a majority of Hudsucker stock after their president, Waring Hudsucker, leaps to his death through a window of a board room located on a floor numbered somewhere in the mid-forties. Though “the company bylaws are quite clear” that as of January 1 st
the minority owners could rightfully buy Hudsucker stock, that is not satisfactory enough for them, so they plan to depreciate the stock by hiring the boyishly naïve Norville Barnes as their new President, after his brief stint in the mail room. The board’s unfair, corrupt hopes lie in the strong possibility that Norville, as President over the course of one month, will do such an awful job that the then newly available stock will be more affordable to them. Sidney J.
Mussberger’s character emerges as a symbol of the board’s greed as he provides the perceived “guidance” to Norville once the young man takes over.
Chaos ensues as Norville develops his invention, the Hula-Hoop, “you know…for kids,” and, as the fates would have it, the new toy is a rage, propelling the Hudsucker stock only skyward. Stock that, as it would turn out at the end of the film, was Norville’s property all along. Reappearing as a guardian angel, Waring Hudsucker presents
Norville with the secret will declaring the majority stock be bequeathed to whomever the board saw fit to serve as a successor to Waring, whether it be the presumed heir
Mussberger, or another.
Though criticized as a jarring ending where “the audience has suddenly been plunged into fantasy territory, but it [is] too late for many of them to adjust” (Robson
152), it is the Coens’ happiest conclusion to a film up to this point because of the unquestioned sympathy the absurdly innocent Norville Barnes demands from the audience, due to his passion for an invention conjured up only to bring pleasure to the lives of children. Until this film, any of Joel and Ethan’s candidates for a true protagonist were, at best, antiheroes. Therefore, the filmmakers had a much easier choice to make with The Hudsucker Proxy than ever before when it came to whether or not the perpetrators of the film’s greed-laced inciting incident should be redeemed or not. The result is Mussberger attempts to commit suicide, but ends up in a sanitarium, while the rest of the board has to continue to serve under Norville, never gaining a majority share in the company.

Fargo (1996), oft considered the Coen Brothers’ best film, has a plot that furiously develops because of human greed. Jerry Lundegaard hires two men to kidnap his own wife, something that even Carl Showalter, one of the kidnappers-for-hire, finds hard to believe. What can easily go unnoticed is that the exact amount of money Jerry needs for his various unknown financial indiscretions is never made clear in the film, which adds to the depth of corruption that exists within this character when viewers find out that he is only giving the abductors $40,000 out of an entire $1,000,000 in requested ransom money from his father-in-law, after telling them he was asking for only $80,000.
Like The Hudsucker Proxy , this film has a clear protagonist and foil to Jerry in the form of Marge Gunderson – a woman, married, and pregnant, she is a clever police officer. However, she too, like all other human beings, is flawed. There are hints in the film that she has become mildly disheartened with her marriage. Her husband is a struggling artist and though clearly she has a tremendous amount of affection for him, the slow, descriptive scene where they go out to a buffet dinner of incredibly unhealthy food, in terms of both amount and choice of delicacy, depicts a couple who have completely settled down; they lack excitement and, perhaps eventually, sexual attraction for one another. When her old school chum Mike Yanagita calls her in the middle of the night, viewers, and certainly the intuitive Marge, are aware that he is likely interested in some intimate contact with her, yet Marge agrees to go on the date anyway. Subtle, but noteworthy, is the way she primps her hair quickly when she arrives at the restaurant to see Mike. Marge wants to look good. She certainly is far from having sex with him, and even farther from leaving her husband, but it is undeniable that at the very least she desires some new attention from a male who is not her husband. So Mike, like Ray and
Tom in previous films, is after a woman who is spoken for, and there is a small part of
Marge that does not mind much. Mike turns out to be a completely broken, pitiable character and no spark of attraction is fired up in Marge at all.
The scene between Marge and Mike has been viewed as “incongruous,” but Joel
Coen explains the motivation behind it: “‘We wanted to give another point of view of
[Marge] without it being related to the police enquiry […] Our intention was to show the story and a relationship to life rather than to fiction, setting us free to create a scene that had no relationship to the plot’” (Robson 165). With that said, after Marge solves the crime and uncovers the details and motivation behind the handful of murders in the film, she is appalled that it was all for “a little bit of money.” The close of the movie features
Marge cheering her husband up after having his artwork named to gloss the mere 3-cent stamp as opposed to the commonly used 29-cent one. Her affection for him shows up again here and she remarks that they are “doing pretty good,” presenting the theme that people must appreciate what they have and not strive for what is not theirs. Marge’s experience with the desperation of the criminals’ need for money and their downfalls allows her to see this. She lives on happily with her husband, with an addition coming in two short months, because she realizes that her desire for affection from others was unwarranted. Self-actualization never happens for the doomed Jerry and the kidnappers.
Offsetting their dark and heavy Fargo , again the Coens shook things up in producing their funniest feature of all as a follow up: The Big Lebowski . In this consecutive film a (sort of) fake kidnapping occurs here when the “rich” Jeffrey
Lebowski provokes conflict by smuggling money from his own charity organization with the excuse of paying off his wife’s kidnappers, with The Dude serving as the drop off

man. It is revealed later that Jeffrey Lebowski really just took the money for himself.
The Dude’s involvement in the conspiracy begins humorously enough when “carpet pissers” ruin his rug, thinking it was the other Jeffrey Lebowski’s, leading him to “lift” one from The Big Lebowski’s home. Thinking he needed a “loser” and/or a “deadbeat” to be a middleman, Jeffrey hires The Dude.
The Dude is not as completely innocent in this film as many might like to believe.
The Dude does steal the rug from his “big” counterpart, justifying it by saying, a few times in the film, that “it really ties the room together.” He shies away from the argument that his rug was indirectly ruined due to the other Lebowski’s dubious affairs, thus legitimizing his claim to a new one, because it is not convincing, not to Jeffrey or
Maude. Plus The Dude does not seem to mind taking part in the infamous “drop off” for a few dollars, even though his gut tells him the whole situation is highly questionable
(“She probably kidnapped herself!”). Ultimately, “things seem to work out pretty good for The Dude,” but he does lose one of his best friends in Donny.
It is difficult to view Donny as a victim of The Dude’s ambition because of the film’s tone, but after disregarding the humorous aspect of it, one can see that this is precisely what Donny becomes. Donny suffers his fatal heart attack when the Nihilists, threatening violence by sword, show up looking for money from The Dude, which would not have happened if The Dude refused to partake in all of the plot’s madness. Going a bit against Coen status quo, little, if anything at all, seems to happen to The Big
Lebowski, even though it was actually his excessive desire that got the plot kick started.
This too could be viewed as a point about class in America, with the rich being able to get away with highly illegal activity. Again, a comedic tone invokes a happy ending to the film, which viewers get, but ironically here the protagonist suffers most due to his desires, as light-hearted as they may be, when really the antagonist should have suffered infinitely more. Then again, it is not as though The Big Lebowski had such a stellar life going for him in the first place.
Breaking their diversity stride, the Coens released O Brother, Where Art Thou?
(2001) next, a comedy, but still radically different from The Big Lebowski , with it being set in the Depression-era South and a loosely-based adaptation of another work. To their credit, the drama
The Man Who Wasn’t There
was intended to be the Coen Brothers’ next showing, but George Clooney was free to play Everett McGill, so the Odyssey -based script got developed first (Robson 230). Everett convinces Delmar and Pete to help him bust out of their chain gang in order to pursue buried loot ($1.2 million dollars that does not quite equate to $500k apiece) that Everett claims to have stolen from an armored car.
The Coens deviate from another one of their norms here because the true object of desire is not revealed until later in the film. As it turns out, Everett was looking for an excuse to get out of jail so he could return to his wife, Penny, before she marries another man, a
“bona fide suitor” in Vernon T. Waltrip. Either way, the conflict in this film is again provoked by a sense of entitlement to something that is not the character’s property, at least not any longer.
Once more, a comedy has to employ a happy ending, so Everett gets Penny back.
She chooses him not completely because he has proven his worth to her or because he promises to be a better husband to her and a better father to their near countless daughters, with his “adventurin’ days comin’ to an end,” but because there is an undeniable attraction to him. When Everett pleads his case to her at the 5-And-Dime

store, he pulls Penny away from Waltrip to a corner where a close up of her face shows not fear, hatred, or anger, but a clear longing for him. Still, she has divorced him and all but promised a marriage to Waltrip, which leads to Everett’s one-sided (the Waltrip side) fist fight with him. Therefore, Everett’s only real suffering for his desire of, technically, someone else’s woman, comes in the form of “the journey,” (highlighted by battles with a large, one-eyed Holy Bible salesman, the Ku Klux Klan, the police, and time spent with a notorious bank robber) which, as Homer expressed, is significantly more important than the reaching of a destination.
The Man Who Wasn’t There
(2001) is yet another Coen Brothers film that features infidelity; this time with the protagonist’s wife, Doris, sleeping with her boss,
Big Dave. But Ed Crane too is unhappy as a barber, beginning the film’s narration with the uninspired, “Yeah I worked in a barbershop, but I never considered myself a barber” and coupling that with calling the establishment, run by his brother-in-law, a “dump.”
Like Tom in
Miller’s Crossing , Ed’s motives are unclear, despite the presence of his narrative voice, with none of that from Tom. In pursuing the unknown quantity of the dry cleaning business, Ed is simply taking a risk on the hope for a better life, like Hi and
Ed of Raising Arizona ; however, this is not simply because his wife has cheated on him, for at the beginning of the film, he explains that Doris was essentially allowed to have sex with whomever she wanted due to America being “a free country.” Ed blackmails
Big Dave into turning money over to him, though at the time Dave thinks the cash is being demanded by Creighton Tolliver, the falsely-coiffed dry cleaning entrepreneur.
Dave was not entitled to Doris, but Ed’s desire for the $10,000 is not agreeable either. Ed exudes absolutely no emotion, admitting that he and his wife had not had sex in a long time. So, if told from Doris’ point of view, perhaps her actions would have seemed more justified. Furthermore, when Doris is arrested for the murder of Dave, Ed does not turn himself in to the police, leaving her to sit in prison where she commits suicide, despite being pregnant. Ed eventually pays for all of this with his own life, looking upon the haircuts of the onlookers of his execution. The camera reveals Ed’s skills as a barber at the beginning of the film, while he pooh-poohs the classic cuts as something that is easy to master. “There’s not much to it once you’ve learned the basic moves,” Ed monotonously proclaims, but viewers see a plethora of perfectly crafted heads of hair on display. While awaiting execution and observing the haircuts, he ponders the afterlife saying, “Maybe the things I don’t understand will be clearer there, like when a fog blows away.” What Ed Crane fails to understand is that he is only meant to be a barber, an occupation he excels in. Once his desire to become something more comes to life, conflict emerges and he suffers the consequences of his excessive ambition. This all is proven true even without mentioning his insistence that Birdy, who he decides to manage, is overwhelmingly talented at playing piano, even though a renown teacher of the instrument testifies to the contrary, again pointing out Ed’s limited capabilities.
Intolerable Cruelty (2003) is the Coens’ single biggest stride toward a mainstream production and an outright romantic comedy. Miles, a savvy, emotionally detached divorce attorney falls for a woman, Marilyn, who is in the process of divorcing one of
Miles’ clients. Of course, Miles “can be disbarred” for this, setting up the primary conflict of the film, which, yet again, follows suit with all of the Brothers’ previous films.
Marilyn too is out for something that she truly is not entitled to. Initially, it is money

from her husband, Rex, but, later, she is after Miles’ wealth. Her pursuit of half of her husband’s fortune is unjustified because she never loved Rex and, as it is revealed in court, she had marked him as a “silly man,” one whom she could easily take advantage of. Then, after hiring an actor to play a new husband, she tricks Miles into marrying her by having Miles believe she had finally obtained wealth from her second (phony) husband. With Miles thinking Marilyn had nothing to gain financially by being with him, along with genuinely being smitten of her, he enthusiastically agrees. For quite some time Marilyn’s plan was to marry and divorce Miles quickly and obtain money from him, but, ultimately, this course of action weighs on her conscience and she becomes more aware that she will always be alone if she continues to carry on her life in this manner.
So, love conquers all, even pre-nup’s, and both Marilyn and Miles share a happy ending in marriage due to their common realization of this fact.
The Ladykillers (2004) is another comedy and one of the most, if not the single most, straightforward films that the Brothers Coen have produced. It also sees them venture into new territory, having, until this point, never released an updated version of a previously made film. Goldthwaite H. Dorr, a Southern Dandy and Professor, rents a room from an old, God-fearing woman named Mrs. Marva Munson. Dorr claims to need access to her basement for rehearsal space for his renaissance band, though they are all actually a group of criminals looking to build a tunnel in an effort to knock off a local casino for millions of dollars. Dorr, portrayed by Tom Hanks, who redefines the phrase
“carries a film” here, and his motley crew, featuring a thug, an athlete, an Irritable Bowel
Syndrome patient who happens to be an explosives expert, and a convenience store owner, succeed in stealing the casino’s money, but have an incredibly difficult, and humorous, time getting the money out of the Munson home. She discovers what they have done, but does not turn them in right away, hoping that their conscience will steer them to return the money and repent in the local church. They have no such plans.
Instead, they plot to kill her, which only leads to one-by-one, Agatha Christie-like deaths for each of the casino bandits. They all end up on a garbage barge, with Dorr being the last, bound for a landfill burial because they never relinquish themselves from the hold that greed has over them.
Llewelyn Moss lifts a rather large sum of money from what appears to be more of the remnants of a war zone than a drug deal setting in No Country for Old Men (2007). A
Vietnam vet, Llewelyn, and his wife, Carla Jean, live in a trailer park and the movie opens with the implication that he even needs to hunt for his own food at times. He is another stoic Coen male character, like Tom, Ed, and others before him. In this film, his goal is rather simple: get as far away from the madman, who is hunting him down for the money, as possible. His motives for taking the cash in the first place are discussion worthy. The obvious reason would be that he, like many protagonists of Coen Brother movies, is looking for a better life than what he already has. Llewelyn has not achieved the American Dream, but a deeper analysis of this character reveals that he is even more ambitious than others because of his years of armed forces service. Similar to John
Rambo in Ted Kotcheff’s 1982 film
First Blood , Llewelyn is upset about his postwar treatment. He feels slighted by not being able to have a comfortable lifestyle, despite having put himself in harms way in Vietnam so others could take advantage of such freedom. Upon opening the bag full of hundred dollar bills that was lying next to a dead
Mexican thug who made the last dash of his life away from the gunfire, Llewelyn’s

visceral reaction communicates various emotions. He predicted money would be in there because this was “the last man standing,” whom he was specifically looking for, and after fingering through the stacks a bit, he sort of grunts a nervous noise of satisfaction. As he looks over at the dead man, he mutters, “Yeah,” not quite thinking twice about taking the money, but more recognizing that it will be tremendously risky to do so. He just cannot leave it behind.
Llewelyn is a sympathetic figure in this film because of his war veteran status, but also because he does have a conscience, though this is precisely what gets him in trouble.
When first he discovers the drug deal scene, there is one live man remaining, who, as emphatically as a dying man can, requests repeatedly, “Agua.” Llewelyn tells him he
“ain’t got no agua,” and leaves the man to die. After stashing the loot and not telling his wife about it, hours later, Llewelyn’s guilt about not helping the feeble gunshot victim keeps him from sleeping. Again, he battles himself, knowing that a return to the scene would be, as he tells his wife, “dumber than hell,” but he is “goin’ anyways.” With a gallon of water in hand, Llewelyn arrives to see that the man he had refused to help had died during the course of the day. Unfortunately, the drug dealers return, shooting
Llewelyn while trying to flee. He escapes, miraculously shooting a midflight dog that lunges at him, but without his truck. Discovered by the buyers of the deal, they hire
Anton Chigurh to recoup the money from Llewelyn. Thought by many to be death incarnate, Chigurh relentlessly stalks Llewelyn, nearly killing him several times.
By the end of the film, Llewelyn is gunned down, though, ironically, not by
Chigurh. For as menacing as Chigurh was, Llewelyn just had too many people after him.
The dealers track him down at a hotel and shoot him to death. What really does him in though is his pride and his ambition. Carla Jean tells Sheriff Ed Tom Bell that Llewelyn will “never quit” and “can take on all comers,” after the sheriff points out that Llewelyn is in much trouble. Earlier, she tells her husband that she has “got a bad feelin’” when
Llewelyn puts her on a bus out of town, but he responds by insisting that he has a “good one,” which should “even out.” Llewelyn probably ignores her because she has little grasp of the reality of the situation. Later, Carson Wells, yet another bounty hunter, points out that Llewelyn just “doesn’t understand” Chigurh’s resolve after Llewelyn says that he just will not be found by Chigurh again. Wells continues with, “You’re not cut out for this. You’re just a guy who happened to find those vehicles,” but Llewelyn presses on, right to his death, disregarding the knowledgeable Wells, his concerned wife, and his violent run-ins with Chigurh as signs to give up.
Every character in the offbeat farce Burn After Reading (2008) is looking for something they are not entitled to. Chiefly, it is Chad Feldheimer and Linda Litzke, who find a mysterious compact disc on the floor of their gym located in Washington D.C.
Chad is convinced that the contents of the disc are some heavy government secrets and
Linda thinks that it is her ticket to finally getting some money for her much desired plastic surgery. It is their motivation that gets the plot moving, but the Coens have even more characters in this film engaging in infidelity. Harry Pfarrer, who is married, has been sleeping with the wife of Osbourne Cox, Katie, for quite some time. Osbourne suffers from delusions of grandeur, thinking his firing from the CIA is unjustified, despite his conspicuous drinking problem, and he feels he can be a publishable author with the production of a memoir. And Ted, the gym manager, is romantically attracted to Linda, but she has no remote interest in him.

The only remnants of a happy ending to this twisted comedy is the fact that Linda
Litzke gets her procedures done on the dime of the U.S. government. Chad is
(somewhat) accidentally killed by Harry because of his relentless pursuit of blackmail money from Osbourne. Chad’s stupidity gets him in over his head, something Osbourne has no problem pointing out to him when they do meet. Linda comes away from the scenario better off then because of her innocent naivety in following Chad’s moves and her harmless goal of acquiring reconstructive surgery. Harry is a sexual derelict and ends up in Venezuela exile. Osbourne is in a vegetative state after being shot while attacking, and consequently killing, Ted, who was trying to help out the woman he loves. And
Katie loses both her husband and lover forever, leaving her devoid of a man she can look down upon. All of them suffer because of their inability to recognize their unwarranted desires and pitiful character flaws.
A Serious Man (2009) brings the Coen Brothers home for the first time. Parts of
Fargo were set in Minneapolis, but Joel and Ethan were raised in a suburb of the city
(Taylor) and such is the setting of the trials and tribulations of Larry Gopnik. The inciting incident of A Serious Man yet again resides within an act of infidelity as Larry’s wife, Judith, saddles up with an old acquaintance of the family’s, Sy Ableman. Having apparently lived up to his name, Sy compels Judith to ask Larry for a divorce. Larry is shocked and begins to search for the meaning of life and a way to obtain happiness, asking three rabbis (though one was a junior rabbi) for advice in the process. Larry represents another character who has felt he has done everything right in the pursuit of the American Dream, yet somehow he has fallen short of it. He is married, has a son and a daughter, a home in the suburbs, and a respectable job as a professor of physics. He has
“tried to be a serious man,” but happiness eludes him and things only continue to get worse for him as the film goes on. The Coen Brothers once said that, “‘The fun of the story for us was inventing new ways to torture Larry’” (qtd. in Taylor) and do they ever.
The Coens once again challenge their viewers to find commentary on society.
Just when things are beginning to look up for Larry after the death of Sy Ableman, his wife’s decision to not go through with the divorce, and his son’s (barely) successful enunciation of the Torah at his Bar Mitzvah, the ending of the film points out that things can always get worse. A tornado is about to ravage the Lipnik’s town and it is implied that Larry’s son is in line to be one of the first fatal victims of it when the screen cuts to black. Coupling that with a line from Larry’s physically and mentally challenged brother, Arthur, about how Larry is better off than he is, while God “has given [Arthur] bupkis,” one can also see traces of the theme that people must appreciate what they have and not focus on what they do not. And the repeated Jefferson Airplane lyrics hint at the power of love and its ability to help people get through difficult times. Whether it is one or all of these, what separates this film from the other Coen Brothers’ pictures is that it is difficult to say whether or not the protagonist has found redemption. Larry desires happiness and finds it in moments as opposed to a consistent state of being, but the end of the film leaves viewers guessing as to whether Larry learns this lesson or not. This then could be another Coen theme that Americans are looking for a life of contentment, when it only comes in small doses (This rings true in Raising Arizona along with Burn After
Reading .). Regardless, the man who clearly was after something he was not supposed to possess, Sy Ableman, dies in a car accident that is his own fault.

Finally there is True Grit (2010), another remake but the film fits right into the
Coen canon in terms of this running theme about characters with excessive ambition on a search for something they are not entitled to. Arguably, Mattie Ross is entitled to what she desires, which actually draws a similarity between her and Barton Fink, though it is likely the only one. Here, Mattie is seeking vengeance against her father’s killer; however, what should have kept Mattie home is her age and gender – fourteen-year-old farm girls will simply face exceptional hurdles while on a horseback mission to kill a grown man and noted murderer and criminal. Though she may not want to admit it,
Mattie is at least slightly aware of this, hedging her bet a bit by seeking a man with “true grit” to help her on her quest. The Coens go out of their way to show the little girl’s enormous capabilities. The early scene where she negotiates the reselling of two ponies in her possession, a payout for a stolen horse that is not in her possession, along with more cash for a pony that is already in the possession of the man she is negotiating with and only settles for five dollars less than her initial request effectively characterizes her as an individual who is wise and strong beyond her years. But horse negotiations are a different challenge when compared to the killing of another human being (See: Blood
Simple ).
She continues to show great resolve in her recruitment of Rooster Cogburn.
Tasking him with finding Tom Chaney, naturally, Cogburn regards her a fool, despite her quick offer of money, for asking him to join her on a journey toward revenge. He points out that it would be incredibly difficult for her to use her pistol of choice, given her slight frame, he distinctly calls her “girl,” and even asks “What are you?” after her persistence.
Then, after Cogburn takes off after his target, Mattie independently chases after him, finally catching up to Cogburn after willing her newly acquired horse across a deep river.
Mattie never backs down from what she wants, nor is she ever intimidated by older men with gun violence in their past, even one who would prove an ally in LaBoeuf.
All of this confidence and determination would help her get through the harsh, wintry conditions of the setting, avoid gunshots, even from people who would ultimately help her, LaBoeuf, and Cogburn out, and face, not one, but five mercenaries who kidnap her. She does inflict her revenge upon the chest of Chaney, but in doing so, her adult male-sized rifle’s kickback causes her to trip and fall into a small, snake-infested tunnel.
She is bitten before Cogburn can get her out. He saves her life by getting the most out of the one horse they have remaining and even carrying her for miles to safety, but Mattie’s poisoned arm is amputated. Her lost arm is a symbol of sacrifice that she has to make for participating in such an undertaking of violence and vengeance. She traded dolls for guns and engaged in very atypical behavior, thus the missing limb keeps her from marrying and having children later in life. Though she would not have made a choice to go back in time and just let Chaney get away with murder, her ambition was excessive, given the time of her life in which she chose to attempt such an act of vengeance.
Joel and Ethan Coen have repeatedly offered stories to their viewers about greed, a sense of entitlement, and excessive ambition and desire. They also have mixed in statements about the elusiveness of the American Dream and happiness for the citizens of the United States. Whether they will admit it or not, the fact that all of their films begin with a greedy desire for something the character (or characters) do not have rightful ownership of, points to commentary on this aspect of human nature. Though the outcomes vary, often due to the genre that the film fits into, it is undeniable that the Coen

Brothers point out how a sense of entitlement can cause chaos for those who have it and for bystanders surrounding them. It has been ingrained in Americans for generations that happiness is inevitable, should one make the right, just moves to obtain it. However, the truth apparently is that the American Dream is not guaranteed and people must consider whether or not their pursuit of it is out of bounds because a struggle will ensue if one desires too much.