Enter the world of the Brothers Coen, a place “steeped in a slightly embellished reality.”
If you tried to describe the work of directors Joel and Ethan Coen collectively, what would you say? Realistic, but also kind of whimsical? Dark, but weirdly funny? High-minded, but also completely morally adrift? It’s nearly impossible to explain a Coen film without using multitudes of qualifiers to give your adjectives more context, but that’s because it’s rather difficult to nail down the cinematic qualities found in films like Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, No Country for Old Men, Inside Llewyn Davis, and the list goes on.
However, in this video essay, the team over at ScreenPrism has highlighted many trademarks of the dynamic duo to offer a pretty robust list of things you’re likely to see in a Coen Brothers movie.
https://nofilmschool.com/2018/08/17-rules-coen-brothers-cinematic-universe