The House Next Door

Thank you Matt.

I was 12 when I saw "Raising Arizona" in the theater, & it has never really occurred to me (then or since) that the Coens were snarky pranksters. I always saw their movies as deadly serious & deeply heartfelt, the endless string of high & low brow humor merely dramatizing a broader view of life's contradictions than most filmmakers were capable of.

Certainly after "Fargo" they made a series of films than were less classically dramatic than their pre-Fargo work. & with "Int.Cruelty" & "Ladykillers" they seemed to be operating more as working filmmakers than as passionate auteurs.

But their absurdly big hearted & empathetic nature is evident in everything they do, & since "Fargo," they're made at least 3 movies than rank among the absolute best work they've ever done.

As a Salon reader already posted, the Coens are American treasures. Those who call them snarky pranksters are revealing more about themselves than they are saying about theses s

"They're naturalistic in the 13th-century sense articulated by the natural philosophers who sought rational understanding of life not merely for its own sake, but to understand the spiritual world that they believed existed beyond the veil of this one"

This is exactly what marks the Dardennes as unique and brilliant film-makers.

Lorna's Silence doesn't reach the heights of their other works because it is overly concerned with the mechanics of its drama and overt metaphysics.

What lay beneath the surface is now on top, struggling for air.

The film sets up a tightening moral quandary only to loosen it off-screen making the film spiral into uninteresting and unconvincing territory.

A brilliantly written piece, Matt.