Coen Brothers: No Country for Old Men & Fargo

Coen Brothers: No Country for Old Men & Fargo.

These two films produced by Coen Brothers share similar overall themes. First of all, the obvious connection is that each film involves a sheriff who has a couple of screws loose, for the lack of a better phrase. In some way, shape, or form, the sheriff is just a little “off.” For instance, Marge is a female and pregnant sheriff handling a gun trying to track down kidnapping murderers. It is these types of obscurities that make the Coen Brothers’ work both effective and popular. Additionally, I wanted to focus on the fact that the themes of fate and conscience overlap in the two films. I conducted some research to see if this theme was apparent in any of the other work of the Coen Brothers, and I found that some of their earlier work (i.e. Raising Arizona) was centered around the motif of what they call “fate and circumstance.” No Country for Old Men opens with an audio of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, whose narration is as emotional as it is vocally accurate, precisely reflecting the novel written by Cormac McCarthy. This opening was critically acclaimed in the world of cinematography. Although there were no images on the screen, the audience was fully captivated through the diction and tone of voice that Tommy Lee Jones uses. Fargo similarly uses such dialogue in order to captivate the audience, particularly when Marge talks on the phone. The audience is made unaware of what the other speaker on the other line is saying, so we rely entirely on the speech to see what she is saying. Overall, we see that the Coen Brothers used similar motifs and cinematic styles in their two different, but successful films.