The Ladykillers

Joel and Ethan Coen. 2004

The best yardstick for the size and elasticity of a person's brain used to be the size of the repository of Monty Python "stuff" that it had readily to hand. But over the last couple of years, the situation has changed. Slowly the words of the Coen Brothers have started to share that enviable position. A while ago, I realized that I probably knew every single line from the script of the "Big Lebowski." More amazing than that, at one time or another, I had quoted every single line, and had other lines quoted right back. I, and the people around me had noticed that the words had become funnier, and more than that, in being remembered and thought about, they had become profound.

I am a fan, and I make no bones about it.

I had mixed feelings about "The Ladykillers". I had not enjoyed "Intolerable Cruelty" much (except for Geoffrey Rush having an award stuck in his arse) (nothing against Mr Rush, quite the reverse) and the reviews of this latest Coen film had been less enthusiastic than anyone would have wished. Deep down, I was scared that "Intolerable Cruelty" had started a slide, a slide that some people would say started at "The Man Who Wasn't There" and some would say had started even further back than that.

Me, I think that there is no point in having art if the art doesn't grow and keep stretching its boundaries. Me, I thought "The Man Who Wasn't There" was one of the most wonderful, stately, Kubrick like films that I had ever seen, and that the people who didn't like it had something wrong with their brains. "Intolerable Cruelty" though... the script for that had problems, and it lacked the Coen style, and it looked like the brothers were doing something that they felt to be unnatural, in the hope of making money.

"Intolerable Cruelty" didn't put me into a good mood, Coen wise. Hell, with that film AND George "ook ook eek" Dubya Bush, the whole world was starting to look pretty seriously bad. I guess you can say that I take my Coen Brothers seriously.

"The Ladykillers" is a nominal remake of a James Mackenrick film of the same name, a starring vehicle for the great Alec Guinness, and a film commonly regarded as the jewel in the crown of the Ealing Comedies. I watched the original on disc a couple of months ago, and though I quite enjoyed it, I was unable to work out why it was regarded as a classic. I felt that it was a film that undoubtedly had good bits, and certainly had a world class dotty old lady, and Alec Guinness, but a classic? No. Well, only perhaps if you grew up with it, or if the ideas in it caught you at a formative stage. Then again, one can always blame the parents, I know more than a few people who profess to like mediocre films simply because they were berated into the opinion in their childhoods and never bothered changing their minds later as they grew older. ("Sound of Mucus" anyone?)

This new Coen Brothers version has much the same story line as the original film, but with certain major changes. The locale is now the deep-south of the USA, the criminal plot itself has changed, and the characters are now a gang of American cliche scoundrels. The bedrock of the humour has remained unchanged, and still hinges on the friction caused by "honest" criminality meeting the rigid, dotty, moralism of a redoubtable old lady. In the original film the lynchpin of the story hinges on the part played by Katie Johnson, who played Mrs Louisa Wilberforce as the ultimate symbol of blathering, dithering, Englishness. In the remake, this symbol of the slow decline of Victorian values has been replaced with an equally redoubtable and just as powerful venerable old lady. Irma P. Hall plays Marva Munson as a lady heavy with every unshakeable belief that blackness can provide in the deep-south. Aside from this being one of the funniest comedy turns on film in the last few decades, Marva is just as much a symbol of a decline of values in a changing society as is Mrs Wilberforce. This fact alone gives the comedy an extra acid bite. I hope that Irma P. Hall is now walking bow legged into Academy Award territory.

I found myself laughing loud and long within minutes of "The Ladykillers" starting and on one glorious occasion discovered that I had propelled myself out for my chair, and on to the floor. All it took was a cat, and a bit of cast off actor.

Other moments worth mentioning. Tom Hanks declaiming Edgar Allen Poe while leaning on a mantelpiece. Funny enough, but then, for one wonderful moment, Hanks *becomes* Ethan Coen, smiles evilly, and keeps right on charming those old ladies right out of their hats. I could not get past the feeling that at some point Ethan had shown Hanks what he wanted, and Hanks, torturously, had attempted to deliver the directions as exactly as possible. Now maybe this is not the most mass-market joke in the history of motion pictures, but I just about laughed enough to bust a gut. I almost gave myself that Irritable Bowel Syndrome, or something, Holmes. Ya damn Skippy.

"The Ladykillers" is chock full of frightful, quotable and requotable lines, with special mention going to the concept, "He broughts his bitch to de Waffle Hut" which on its fifth or sixth repetition just about had me in need of oxygen. This alone inspires me to believe that the film will become as culty as "The Big Lebowski" just as soon as people start getting all the jokes. That one took a while to get going too.

One last point. Towards the end of the film, while the character played by Marlon Wayans is busily engaged in attempting to give meaning to the film's title, at a moment of some tension, the character suffers an emotional flashback, and changes his mind. The scene is funny, then utterly and completely horrible, then funny again. As far as I am concerned that scene alone made the film worth every penny of the ticket price. It was a good scene, but a scene that no other filmmaker in the US, and probably the world, would dare to place at that point, in that film. The simple hubris of that act makes the act itself acceptable. Masterful. The film wasn't over, but I wanted to stand up and applaud like some bow tied twat at an opera, after a particularly loud bit of cat sex.

This brings me to the script. It seems to me that never before has Ethan Coen simply rolled like a hog in his love of the English language in the way that he does here. "No Madam, rightly speaking, WE are surprised, You are taken aback." Obviously aided and abetted in this by Tom Hanks, his brother and largish lumps of Edgar Allen Poe the words roll with a simple power that frequently had me wriggling with simple unabashed joy. This is the first time that the Coens have played with black argot, and their triumph is that they turned me into one of the walking wounded. I had pains in my sides for hours.

I give "The Ladykillers" a high nine on ten, as a Coen brothers film. On a normal scale, this rates as something like 22/10. Simply magnificent.

(C)opyright Alex Rieneck, 2004.