I realize that this post is, maybe, three weeks late to be as topical as it could be, but let’s look all the way back, for a moment, to the month of September and the Coen brother’s most recent film, Burn After Reading. I saw this on its opening weekend and wasn’t disappointed. Wasn’t blown away, but was generally quite entertained by it. I had been nervous leading up to it because of the movie’s trailers, which seemed to be advertising the film as essentially just an ensemble-casted yarn. But this is, in fact, what interests me about the Coen brothers in the first place: they seem to be able to make films with ensemble casts that are not, in fact, ensemble cast movies.
To clarify, by “ensemble cast movie” I mean any variety of film that is recognized, first and foremost, for its breadth of cast before anything else—be it (to keep my points of reference generally contemporary) the not-underrated-but-not-terrible-either Rat Race or the ensemble cast movie for the ages of The Royal Tenenbaums (or the later, terrible, Wes Anderson movies). So how can I separate many of the Coen brother’s star-studded rosters from the category? In a couple of ways:
1) Characters vs. stars-playing-characters. Are the main characters beings unto themselves, or obvious place-holders for the type of character most likely to be played by actor/actress X? With the Coen brother’s being generally well-known for their characters, here is perhaps a key as to why I don’t see their movies as being ensemble-y; for instance (though The Big Lebowski doesn’t necessarily figure into this conversation) Jeff Bridges (one of the great actors of his generation) is so completely The Dude that one forgets he is a star in many other movies as well—if anything, I have trouble forgetting that Jeff Bridges isn’t The Dude in other movies. Ensemble movies, therefore, are more actor-forward, such as Bill Murray playing Bill-Murray-as-a-hack-shrink in Royal Tenebaums, or any number of famous people just stuck into roles just north of cameos to get them on the cast list.
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