Anton Dolin. Cinema-1: in the beginning there was blood

Towards the release of a new author's version of the Coen brothers' debut film "Blood Simple" on Russian screens

Any coordinate axis has a zero point. The starting point of independent cinema of the last fifteen years was hidden from the eyes of the Russian audience for a long time. Now the scales will fall from his eyes. The first film by the founders of American “parallel” cinema, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, is being released in a new author’s version on cinema screens.

The changes made to the picture 15 years later are of an unprincipled nature. The clumsy montage of the brothers' own production, then novice radicals, now classics, has been slightly changed. The soundtrack has changed a little. The sound, of course, is rewritten in “Dolby”. I guess that's all. No, one more thing, the most important thing: before the credits begin, a certain elderly character appears on the screen for a few minutes, good-naturedly narrating from his rocking chair about the history of the “outstanding film.” Here’s the thing: not only a necessary indication of the distance between young experimenters and sophisticated Cannes laureates, but also a vector indicator. “Blood Simple” is a historical milestone, a starting point, where it all began.

And what actually started?

For example, the careers of some of America's most versatile and exciting cinematic talents of the last two decades. No, in fact, there are those who prefer David Lynch or Jim Jarmusch, but both “cult” directors were unable to achieve the ideal balance in their films between the uncompromising nature of a true artist and respecting the interests of the viewer. And the Coens understood once and for all: the viewer should find it funny, scary and interesting. And despite all this, it’s not difficult to fool him. Having realized this truth, the brothers got down to business.

"Blood Simple" lives up to its title. The story is, in general, trivial. Adultery, a jealous husband, a cynical private detective, a series of misunderstandings; at some point it inevitably spills - just blood. Death just happens without the rollicking brilliance of action films, the nightmarish splashes of horror films, the tragic breakdown of Hollywood and European dramas. A bit in the spirit of the French "new wave", if any analogies are appropriate. History itself is not important. As, by the way, are quite banal characters, not distinguished by any bright individuality. An absolute discovery was the angle of view, the way to see the world this way. The space must be conditional: Texas (“where life gives no guarantees”), like Russia (“where you cry and everyone will feel sorry for you”), remains an empty sound, a form without any semblance of content. Only parody cowboy boots and a wide-brimmed hat belonging to the film's clumsiest characters function as an indication of the location of the action.

Stylistics are also important. Its main property is stinginess. There is little dialogue, each word in them is honed to the limit in order to seem natural, but not to be superfluous (here is a refutation of the popular opinion about the Coens as masters of words at the expense of image; where style requires it, in “The Big Lebowski”, to for example, - their heroes chatter recklessly, in other cases - they are silent). The picture is also simple (and the more important is its balance, composition, relationships of discreet colors, light and darkness), in which most of the film’s scenes take place. This is where those “false rhymes”, elements of a classic sitcom (only black), which will later become the hallmark of the genre, appear most clearly. The heroes - simple, fundamentally good guys - find themselves in the setting of a “cruel romance,” a crime drama that must have a bloody ending. And nothing comes of these poor fellows: neither kill, nor die, nor properly bury... And laughter and sin; and laughter comes first.

The characters are trivial, but the actors are not accidental: John Getz, who played the bartender Ray, worked little in films - but it was he who starred in one of the main roles in David Cronenberg’s cult horror film “The Fly”, as well as its sequel; The Coens' experiment in combining art-house ideas with genre cinema (thriller) was cemented in the mass consciousness two years later precisely in the scarecrow of a Canadian intellectual. Dan Hedaya - Ray's hapless rival, owner of Marty's bar - played after "Blood Simple" in a number of iconic films, including "The Usual Suspects" by Brian Singer (and again, exquisite content in the form of a mafia action film), "To Die For" by Gus Van Sant ; His latest works include the postmodern fairy tale “Life Is Worse Than Ordinary” by Danny Boyle, the author of “Trainspotting,” as well as “Alien 4,” which turned even the famous alien series into a field for quotation games. Hedaya also starred in The Addams Family, both a children's horror story and a witty parody of the American way of thinking. Familiar style, isn't it? Not to mention, The Croods director Barry Sonnenfeld was the cinematographer on Blood Simple, and on his latest film, Wild Wild West, he used, among others, M. Emmett Walsh, Detective Weezer from Cohen's debut. And after “Blood,” he appeared in the brothers’ second film, “Raising Arizona,” and then in another parody “horror,” “Critters.” It is worth mentioning the main success of the Coens - the main character, the innocent and detached Frances McDormand (Abby), who later not only became Joel’s wife, but also turned the idea of a woman in American cinema upside down, receiving a well-deserved Oscar for her role as a frostbitten pregnant policewoman in " Fargo" by the same Coens. So, in passing, the brothers founded an independent film empire.

However, first of all, they gave birth to themselves. And thus, once and for all, they established the place of the independent director in America and, more broadly, in the modern film industry. The necessary concession lies in the field of genre (since Lynch, Jarmusch, Hartley and Van Sant have been making not just films, but “thrillers”, “melodramas”, “horror films”, “westerns”...) to which the artist can relate with one or another degree of seriousness determined by himself. This is where the notorious independence is manifested. The opposition “serious/frivolous” is the main nerve of the Coens’ entire filmography. After the deliberate “seriousness” of “Blood Simple” (immediately perceived by the public as a particularly cynical mockery), exploration of the topic of death, the brothers rushed to the other extreme - the extreme idiocy of a comedic fantasy on the topic of birth and life (“Raising Arizona”, 1987). Then, to the surprise of the completely discouraged viewers, the game was played in earnest again - a mafia saga that collected all the cliches of Brian De Palma and Francis Ford Coppola, "Miller's Pass" (1990), a year after which - the Cannes triumph, "Barton Fink". This is the main film of the Coens: it began as a serious drama from the life of a provincial playwright, as the plot progresses it turns into a Kafkaesque absurd whirlpool of events, the grotesqueness of which highlights the horror of what is happening. The audience's laughter in the finale transforms into plaintive and bewildered sobs. The existential significance of the story of a novice screenwriter forced to work on a film “about fighters” is confirmed by the exit to the metaphysical astral plane, to the border of life and death, in the final frames. So the Coens showed that they laugh and cry at themselves.

The same pattern was observed in the other films of the brothers. Chairman Zitz, or The Hudsucker's Henchman, was a stylized Christmas tale with ghosts, and also trampled into the mud the pseudo-genre of "big business films" ("The Firm", etc.). "Fargo" - a return to the style of "Blood Simple" (the only and deliberate genre repetition of the Coens) - proved the visionary talent of Joel and Ethan; now, after Tarantino and Lynch, such a film could receive seven Oscar nominations, which was not prevented by the Cannes prize for directing. Intoxicatingly funny, The Big Lebowski was at the same time a sad, nostalgic analysis of the new “lost generation” - the sixties. In the latest opus, “Where Are You, My Brother” (the title is without further comment), a play on the theme of the “musical” and the plot of the “Odyssey”, the Coens finally assumed the status of Homers - absolute artists, rulers of genres and styles. The canonization was successful.

And finally - about the most important thing. Even before Blood Simple, other independent directors began their careers, but it was the Coens who opened the oxygen valve for them. Before Blood Simple, Lynch might have experimented with looking-glass ghosts in Eraserhead, Wellesian sentimentalism in The Elephant Man, or fantasy epics in Dune - but only after he could make Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and "Twin Peaks". Jarmusch's Vacation Without End and Stranger Than Paradise could have appeared before Blood Simple, Mystery Train and Dead Man only after.

With their debut, the Coens built a whole world in which the heroes of American independent cinema settled. Everything is predicted, down to the smallest detail: a fan as an image of hell and imminent death (see Twin Peaks), cowboy gadgets as a sign of a character’s defenselessness (see Wild at Heart and Dead Man), an intercom as a sign of the eternal distance between one man and others (see "Pulp Fiction" and "Lost Highway"), the inability to hide a corpse and hide death ("To Die For" and the British, but American in spirit "Shallow Grave") - the list can be endless.

The brothers not only created the universe, but also populated it with the first inhabitants. The heroes of Blood Simple, as mentioned above, are not particularly smart or cool. These are just people, no better or worse than others, forced to participate in a strange performance. The distance between the author's intonation and the dictates of the genre becomes clear here: in the touching and hopeless desire of the characters to behave naturally in unnatural circumstances. The plot intrigues and makes us laugh, the characters make us empathize with even its most ridiculous twists. By the way, in particular, the otherwise cold and measured films of another student of the Coens, Quentin Tarantino, owe their charm to this same quality. Having killed several guys, Vincent Vega (Travolta) is sincerely indignant that some scoundrel scratched his brand new car with a nail. And the killers themselves turn into delinquent schoolchildren in the face of a higher order in the image of Mr. Wolf. Because in the veins of each of them flows the same blood that filmmakers shed without regret in dozens of liters.

Bread popped out of the toaster, or a bad turn in the car - an accidental shot, another ridiculous death. The brothers are more merciful than Tarantino: stumbling over an abandoned revolver, bartender Ray “shoots” without hitting anyone. However, the death of all participants in the tragedy (comedy?) is predetermined. Blood is that zero point in every story, that original element that cannot be decomposed into smaller particles, from which cinema is made. Blood is a symbol of the unnaturalness of any film and the vulnerability of any person: the hero of this film, its director or viewer. Blood is the first and last, the main element. Blood Simple, reinvented by the Coen brothers.