on the side
of the devils
by Douglas Messerli
Ethan and Joel Coen (screenplay,
based on the screenplay by William Rose, and directors) The Ladykillers / 2004
The Coens’ 2004 film The Ladykillers might be perceived to be
a testimony to faith. After all, the central figure—and more importantly, the
only survivor of the central
characters—Marva Munson (Irma P. Hall), is a devoted Christian, who regularly
attends church services, sends a monthly $5.00 check to Bob Jones University,
and by the end of the movie gives away more than a million dollars to that
beloved charity. Her religiosity, moreover, is the cause of the Coens’
presentation of the film’s numerous gospel and spiritual music, which helps to
make this film so entertaining.
All right, she also is a busybody, visiting the police to complain about
a neighbor boy who has become involved in “hip-hop,” despite the fact that she evidentially
regularly relies upon him to retrieve her tree-dwelling cat, Pickles. But even
then, she might be described as a gentle, caring community leader with a strong
sense of moral rightness, even if her neighbors view her as slightly insane.
The film even makes a kind tepid attempt to present us with actual
sermon; and surely the black comedic death of all the “criminals”—the erudite,
dandyish Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr (Tom Hanks); Gawain MacSam (Marlon Wayans),
a hot-tempered, badmouthed janitor; Garth Pancake (J. K. Simmons), an expert at
demolitions who himself is often ready to explode as he suffers from Irritable
Bowel Syndrome; “The General” (Tzi Ma) a chain-smoking Vietnamese tunneler who
runs a local Hi-Ho Donut store; and Lump Hudson (Ryan Hurst), an empty-minded
hulk of a football player—hints at a kind of moralistic fable in the Coens’
telling, that was not truly present in the original British version of this
film.
But even though faith seemingly is
celebrated and awarded in The Ladykillers,
we have to recognize it as a cynical testament to belief. If the old lady
survives numerous attacks and is even unknowingly awarded the stolen money by
the police themselves—all suggesting that she is being miraculously protected
by some higher power or, at least, the spirit of her dead husband—we recognize
that writer-directors have not suddenly seen the holy light, but are simply
engaged with the irony and naughtiness of it all; and besides it gives them the
perfect excuse to anthologize, as they also did in O Brother Where Art Thou?, the standard and contemporary classics
of American Southern music, which, it is apparent, they do very much love.
The real heroes of this film, although
they all justifiably die, are the satiric outsiders: the dumb (Lump), the lame
(Pancake not only is suffering from IBS but loses his finger), the
violent (both “The General” and
Gawain had short fuses, the former regularly swallowing up his own lit
cigarettes to hide them from Mrs. Munson) and the intellectually hubristic
(Dorr). These criminal misfits, failed men who yet seek for something larger
than themselves—in this case, a robbery of a crooked enterprise, a gambling
boat, itself protected as Dorr later points out, by an even larger crook, an
insurance company—are just the kind of subjects upon who the Coen brothers
focus on nearly all of their films.
Yes, they are laughable fools, perhaps not really worth our serious
attention, but the Coens clearly adore them and their sinning ways far more
than the righteous “winners.” In a sense all of them are fools and dunces. Dorr
is a figure out of the past, regularly quoting Edgar Allan Poe and other
Romantic figures in a manner so out of sync with reality that we have to
recognize him as “queer,” although I won’t embalm him by describing him as gay;
besides he’s already embalmed himself. And money, not sex is his aphrodisiac.
Lump is so brain-dead that he
often speaks up as the most honest and straight-forward of them all, and
ultimately he is even willing to give up the money go to church, as Munson
demands (his admission that he cannot actually play the sackbut, is a gem).
Even Gawain and Pancake are also lovers, Gawain of women with beautiful asses
(his pursuit of which temporarily loses him his job) while Pancake has his
beloved Mountain Girl. “The General” is bravely fierce, easily foiling, early
in the film, a would-be robbery. These human failures are at the heart of
nearly every Coen film. While those who are actually brave, have true faith,
and share high moral values may win out in the end, in film after film, it is
the losers whom the Coens’ celebrate. And, strangely enough, in that
preoccupation they do, in fact, resemble the devout believer, Flannery
O’Connor.
If good guys must win, these filmmakers seem to argue, it’s the bad guys
who have the most fun—or, at least, are more fun to watch. Besides, without
them, the saintly would have no one to convert.
Los Angeles, March 1, 2016.
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (March 2016).
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