Starring: John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya, M. Emmet Walsh
This twisty neo-noir thriller sparked off the careers of both the Coens and Frances McDormand with a tale of lies and deceit spiralling around an affair committed by married Abby (McDormand) and bartender Ray (Getz). Upon discovering this development, Abby’s husband and Ray’s employer Julian (Hedaya) sets an assassin on them but the result he desires is not the result he receives.
UNLIKE MANY DEBUTS Blood Simple is strikingly assured and robust in its construction with a fairly astounding skill for capturing tension. Many of the great debuts have possessed this selfsame quality as if the directors had planned the development of their unique style ahead of time, predicting the works to come with an odd directness. Reservoir Dogs, for example, seemed the embryonic stages of Pulp Fiction with its snappy irreverent dialogue, disregard for linear storytelling and Japanese appreciation for violence as aesthetic and subsequently remains almost stunningly competitive within Tarantino’s filmography despite mounting pressure under some recent masterpieces. Yet, unlike many of the great debuts, and Reservoir Dogs in particular, Blood Simple is simply not good enough to stand alone.
Although Blood Simple is an undeniably skilful film and it plays tension with a confidence usually acquired through years of filmmaking, it feels overwrought and boringly plain, a cinematic exercise rather than a feature film. Despite simplicity of story often yielding the richest experiences (as the bloated, weaker works among the Coens’ filmography testify) in terms of character and theme, Blood Simple is quite pointedly the exception to the rule. A seeming lack of effort in the way of character and theme did not necessarily distract from its most powerful scenes, which rely on the singular force of their tension, but failed to evoke anything in me once the credits began to roll. Indeed, this is a revealingly unique emotion within the Coens’ work which so often leaves you in a hazy mixture of existential confusion and raw fear. The overall thinness of the experience left me wondering at the rave reviews which clogged both the internet and the DVD casing.
To Coen Brothers fans, the storytelling mechanics of Blood Simple are old hat by this point, both in terms of its story and whatever frail strands of theme that it manages to retain. For example, the film revolves around the initial decision of a character within the opening moments - in this case, Abby’s decision to sleep with Ray - which the rest of cast (and the strange karmic forces of the Coens’ world) act in accordance with, creating a real-time butterfly effect as the story descends into depravity and mania about the axis of the original action. Otherwise the stories revolve around inaction and the seemingly unwarranted destruction of a character yet, in both instances of storytelling, the key theme remains the assertion of chaos by the environment upon a character whether deservedly or not. You may spot this anarchic format in Burn After Reading, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink wherein the characters become caught up in vast conspiracies outside of their control, revealing always the fraudulence of human attempts to give form to and take control of the forces which rule them. Bleakness seems to be the Coens’ Nietzsche-inspired niche.
All is so in Blood Simple but the trademark emptiness of the Coens’ later works is only in the training stages here and is illustrated without any clarity or conviction. It is a poor approximation of the Coens’ talents which can barely hold a candle to the majority of their subsequent endeavours despite it being a highly useful blueprint for the capturing of movement in cinema. Even amongst their detractors the Coens’ genius in the editing room is lauded and Blood Simple, for all its flaws, is testament to that skill. Its central scene in which Ray buries Julian plays with a silent grace that is singularly gruesome even against No County For Old Men. The Coens’ capture movement in Blood Simple in a mesmerising and highly communicative way with the majority of its memorable moments playing out in silence or ushered gently forward by the subtle kick of Carter Burwell’s understated score. In its singular victory, Blood Simple is able to execute some of the Coens’ most visceral visual moments with a rigid clarity of storytelling despite being unimpressive in many other key areas.
Put plainly, Blood Simple is No Country For Old Men if it were bad. Despite the technical brilliance of the film and the familiarity of its structure, it completely lacks the fierce thematic drive of the Coens’ greatest works or, at least, they are unable yet to communicate it. A surprisingly underwhelming film from two of America’s most interesting filmmakers.
