Re-coen-sidering: Miller's Crossing

This is the first in a 2018 bi-monthly series reconsidering the films of Joel and Ethan Coen, mostly (but not always) films I didn't care for the first time. Thar be SPOILERS ahead.

When you watch movies, you usually want to watch movies you think you will like. So it's kind of dispiriting to begin a year-long bi-monthly series watching movies you already know you don't like that much, and don't necessarily expect to view more favorably after a second viewing.

Therefore, it's nice to at least start a series like this with a movie you know you loved ... and discover you love even more after the second viewing.

That was my experience with Miller's Crossing (1990), the first film chronologically in my series Re-coen-sidering, in which I'm watching six Coen films I've seen only once, every other month in 2018.

It wasn't my intention to revisit one I'd really liked, but the title Re-coen-sidering alone does not suggest you're trying to improve your opinion of a movie you didn't like. You could also be putting a movie you loved to the test, to see if it was worthy of that love. (And anyway, I could only find five Coen films I'm cool on that others like, if you exclude The Big Lebowski, which I've already seen twice and still can't really get behind.)

But just catching up with Coen movies I'd loved but hadn't seen in 20 years -- which also include Blood Simple and Hudsucker Proxy -- seemed like a useful component of this series, though I'll only start this way. Blood and Hudsucker -- Bloodsucker, if you will -- will have to wait for another time.

I was in the movie's groove right from the pre-credits scene in which Jon Polito confronts Albert Finney about John Turturro, but a possible problem did occur to me early on. Namely, one of my realizations as a cinephile in the past five to ten years is that film noir is not one of my favorite genres. I suppose Miller's Crossing is a neo-noir and its first genre might be considered a gangster film, but if Gabriel Byrne's character is not a stand-in for your noir private dick who gets beat up all the time, and Marcia Gay Harden is not a stand-in for your noir femme fatale, I don't know what better corollaries you could find out there.

It was a genre I once thought I loved, but films like The Big Sleep and Inherent Vice have forced me to confront that many of this genre's tropes and convoluted storylines just don't work for me.

But it's truly all in the writing. A noir film's plot does not have to be convoluted just because it's complicated. And the best Coen scripts, of which this is certainly one, don't only have the great patter and other linguistic flourishes that go down smoothly rather than seeming showy. They also pay everything off, tie everything together, and leave you fully satisfied.

As I was watching I couldn't believe what kind of well-oiled machine this is. Every part truly matters. There's no character introduced who doesn't play some integral role in the story. There's no throwaway scene. The script keeps on building upon itself, layering upon itself, but miraculously, paradoxically, it makes everything seem more simple rather than more complicated as it goes. I have no idea how they did that, but it's true.

I suppose if your mind were to wander for five minutes at some point, you would still be lost. This is not the type of movie that is going to dumb things down for you. But it's not trying to trick you either. There are no red herrings or other strategies that unnecessarily muddy the waters. If you pay attention, you will be with this movie the whole way, and will feel increasingly satisfied with every minute that passes and every plot development.

I will acknowledge certain small confusions that did resolve themselves for me as time went on. Because we see Steve Buscemi's character in only one scene -- only one scene alive, anyway -- I was not sure for a while that he was actually Mink. In fact, I thought they were saying "the Mick," which would have been a way to refer to Finney's Irish character, Leo O'Bannon. But the context in which he was discussed eventually helped me sort it out, plus this fact: We wouldn't have even been introduced to Buscemi's character if he were not in some way important to the plot. So I fit him in as the loose end in my character synopsis, and all was well.

That's the thing about this script. It gives you exactly what you need for the movie to play out properly, and not a bit more. As another example, the gangster to whom Tom Reagan is in debt -- his Jabba the Hutt, as it were -- is seen as little as Jabba the Hutt was seen in the original Star Wars (before George Lucas went back and "fixed" it). The famous Lazarre is not seen once, simply because he does not need to be seen, and it's kind of interesting to have a character who is talked about but never seen. (I feel like there are other prominent examples of this in the Coen filmography, but none is immediately coming to mind).

It was also kind of amazing to me that this movie is almost exclusively about the shifting dynamics between characters, and that is more than enough to sustain it. There are a few big set pieces, of course. The attack on Leo's house, set to "Danny Boy," and both trips to the titular location are very memorable. But most of the rest of the time, it's just people in rooms talking about their relationships to each other, their suspicions of double crosses, their accusations, their attempts to convince each other of loyalty. Ordinarily I think of this as the type of narrative convolutions that bother me about film noir. Here, they crackle and leave me fully engrossed.

I've spent a lot of time on the writing, but I shouldn't fail to mention the look of the film as well. As I was watching I was really appreciating the cinematography of Barry Sonnenfeld, who many people forget had this life before he became the director of Men in Black and increasingly lesser films. I especially admired the movement of his camera, particularly his zooms in and away from characters, and his tracking of action across a room.

I could certainly go on about this film, but you know how great it is and you don't need me to break it down scene by scene.

I do want to spare a few words for Byrne's Tom Reagan, though. He's such a compelling character because of the codes he lives by that so often seem counter to his own interests, yet he does the things he does anyway, because of his heart. He's often accused of having no heart, but nothing could be further from the truth. Everything he does for either Leo or Verna is because he loves them, though he would never tell them that, because then they wouldn't believe the deceptions he believes are necessary in order to save them. And because then there would seem something less pure, to himself, about what he's doing. What movie character you've ever seen tells a powerful man who could easily kill him that he's been sleeping with his girlfriend? A man who loves both of those people and thinks that this will be the best thing for them, even if they can't possibly see it. He's a man who knows all the angles, and it almost gets him killed on numerous occasions. But he plays those angles because he's a gambler, and because he's thinking two steps ahead of everybody else.

The movies are filled with characters who think two steps ahead of everybody else, and a lot of times they are insufferable. They are the con men version of a Mary Sue, though I guess I'm not sure if that metaphor really applies. What I mean is that they are perfect in their grasp and manipulation of a scenario and its interpersonal dynamics, and when the final act comes around, it seems that they were playing puppetmaster the whole time.

The brilliant thing about Reagan is that even with his calculations, he still sometimes gets it wrong. When he leaves Bernie alive, calculating that Bernie's best move will be to disappear so no one makes another attempt on his life, he takes Bernie for the coward that Bernie is not quite. This almost gets Tom killed when he is muscled out to Miller's Crossing by Dane to find Bernie's corpse that should be there, rotting. Tom knows he's cooked and even kneels to vomit by a tree, until voila, the corpse of Mink is revealed. (Making Bernie more shrewd than we thought he was, as well.) Our Mary Sue conman would never have gotten in that position, and never would have shown fear of his own impending demise.

The reason Tom gets it wrong sometimes, and does things counter to his own best interests, is because he does have that heart that people say he does not have. His arc, in a matter of speaking, is coming not to have the heart -- by killing Bernie at the end. Of course, that's not what's really happening there. There he's only reading people for what they really are and refusing to have his heart appealed to. And Bernie is pond scum who has caused nothing but trouble for anybody. By closing that loop, he's not only getting everybody square, he's further honing his craft of reading the angles. But really, he's demonstrating his heart both toward Leo, whom he unaccountably still wants to protect despite his numerous faults and vulnerabilities, and Verna, whom he still loves despite her own moral shortcomings and other compromised qualities. Bernie's death is the best thing for both of them, though only one of them realizes it. He's willing to be quits with her because that's the best thing for her, even if he's not sure it's the best thing for him. And he doesn't have to be quits with Leo, but chooses that, because even though he still loves him, in his way, something has been broken between them that cannot be repaired.

What I like more than anything about Tom is that he is his own man. He pays his own debts in his own ways, and even when he is compelled to carry out an order, he takes ownership of it and does it in a way that will preserve his own dignity and give him an angle on it. His dignity and his control over his own personhood are the most important things to him, which is why he's tormented by that dream of chasing his hat as it blows away in the wind. There's nothing more undignified and foolish than a man chasing his own hat.

The thing I am wondering now about Miller's Crossing is how it compares to Inside Llewyn Davis. For years I'd considered Crossing my third favorite Coen film, behind only Raising Arizona and Fargo. But because I'd seen it only once, and have already seen Davis three times now in barely four years of existence, Davis had kind of bumped Crossing out of that third spot. I'd have to think about it a bit more, but I think Crossing might have a leg up again.

Anyway, amazing movie.

I can't say things are likely to continue on this note, though many if not most people will think I have another good one in store for me next time. In April we jump forward ten years to 2000, when I will grapple with the first film in this series that I struggled with on first viewing, O Brother Where Art Thou?