The Coen Brothers Return with Their Loosest, Least Consequential Film Since The Hudsucker Proxy; Mamet's State and Main
Here come the Coen brothers with a genuinely strange movie. The title is inspired by Sturges' 1941 Hollywood satire Sullivan's Travels; Oh Brother, Where Art Thou was the film-within-a-film that Sturges' hero, a famous director, wanted to make in order to prove he was serious. In typical Coen fashion, this movie has nothing to do with Sullivan's Travels or Sturges, except that it's set in the past and features an ensemble cast of dreamers, thugs, rubes and loons.
The plot, loosely based on The Odyssey, has three convicts (George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson) escaping from a Mississippi chain gang during the Depression and winding their way through a landscape of Coen-style irony, slapstick and weird visuals. They're supposedly going in search of buried treasure, but Clooney's hero, a Clark Gable-looking scam artist whose name is (cough) Ulysses, really wants to go home to his girl, who's given up on their long-distance relationship and plans to marry some else. There are sirens, a cyclops (John Goodman, playing a sinister salesman in an eyepatch) and other Homeresque elements, and numerous additional touches that are distinctively (at times tiresomely) Coenesque, such as the out-of-nowhere appearance of Baby Face Nelson (Michael Badalucco), the kind of rotund homicidal imp who has an equivalent in most of the brothers' movies. (During a car-chase-and-shootout with the cops, he fires his Tommy gun in the air and whoops with joy.)
O Brother requires a taste for the Coens. It's probably their loosest, most relaxed, least consequential film since The Hudsucker Proxy. But if you're in an accepting frame of mind, it's often enjoyable and never less than engrossing?especially when the convicts hook up with a nomadic black bluesman who sold his soul to Satan (Chris Turner King), then pass themselves off as members of a bluegrass group. As a pure comic spectacle, the only weak link is the script, which introduces elements of social, racial and historical satire without properly developing them. A Ku Klux Klan rally is meant to send up Birth of a Nation, Triumph of the Will and the assault on the witch's castle in The Wizard of Oz; that's too many references for such a racially charged scene to handle, and it invites familiar complaints that the Coens are more interested in paying homage and making jokes than offering serious thoughts on American life?a criticism you might think put to rest by Fargo and The Big Lebowski, two very funny films on the serious themes of domesticity, violence and betrayal.
But nearly everything else in the picture is nicely judged. The music, overseen by T Bone Burnett, is period-accurate, beautifully performed and extremely strange?especially when Clooney steps up to the mic and belts out his character's dubbed, yodel-ay-ee-hoo vocals. Dennis Gassner's production design and Roger Deakins' cinematography are equally fine; the deep-focus, sepia-toned images suggest Norman Rockwell paintings restaged and then photographed by Margaret Bourke-White; they're as hazy yet vibrant as remembered images from dreams.
It's a great moment for acclaimed young playwright Joe White (Philip Seymour Hoffman). He's finally getting to meet method hunk Bob Barrenger (Alec Baldwin), who's starring in a major motion picture based on the author's first screenplay. When he enters Barrenger's hotel room, the alpha male superstar is lounging on a hotel bed, yammering with his director (William H. Macy).
"I grew up on your movies," White blurts, extending his hand. The star smiles and asks, "D'ya mind if I don't go through the usual bullshit about how much I loved your script?"
So goes the movie business in State and Main, the David Mamet inside-showbiz satire with a script witty enough to merit the usual bullshit and then some. Though it's set in the quaint small town of Waterford, VT, where Macy's film crew has descended to maximize production values at the expense of the local yokels, the movie's tone is far from Capraesque. It's more like a slightly off-color Preston Sturges movie.
I suppose you could say White is the central character, since he's the one who goes through a "journey," as they say. He even gets to have a romance with a sharp-witted local bookstore owner (Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet's wife and a key member of his stock company). But relax: the town is pleasant but far from magical, the intricate plot is spread generously among a crackerjack ensemble cast, and Mamet's too cynical to let the film go icky-sweet. The script is a subtle marvel of construction?subtle enough that it's bound to be underpraised?and nearly every scene offers at least one line that's both true and funny.
The movie-within-a-movie is called The Old Mill, and that's a problem. Macy's crew started shooting the picture in a similar town in New Hampshire, but they were forced to leave for reasons Mamet prankishly avoids disclosing. They came to Waterford because a travel brochure promised an historic old mill. Unfortunately, the old mill burned down in 1960. "Can we do it without the old mill?" asks the director. The writer, being a writer, says yes.
There are other complications. The mayor (Charles Durning) was so awestruck by Hollywood glamour that he offered the production carte blanche, provided the director bring Barrenger over to his house for dinner with the wife; but minutes after the dinner is written on the production office appointment board, some dolt erases it. The star is another disaster waiting to happen: he likes 14-year-old girls. "Everybody needs a hobby," he explains. A pretty young smoothie (Julia Stiles) who makes deliveries for the local coffee shop learns about Barrenger's hobby in a muckraking magazine article; soon she's visiting his room. Meanwhile, the film's leading lady (Sarah Jessica Parker), who's being paid three million dollars to appear because she's legendary for taking her shirt off, suddenly announces that she's found religion. It's a spiritual crisis only a truckload of cash can solve. ("I don't know what the problem is," grouses an out-of-the-loop crewmember. "She takes her shirt off to do a voiceover.") The film's resourceful, utterly amoral producer (David Paymer) says he can raise the money, provided the director agrees to a bit of product placement. Problem is, the company is a dot-com, and The Old Mill is set in the 19th century.
You needn't admire Mamet's previous films to enjoy State and Main. Personally, I don't. The films he's written for other directors range from outstanding (The Edge) to corny-enjoyable (The Untouchables) to cynically amusing (Wag the Dog), but they're all more fun than the movies Mamet directed himself. Though he wrote a useful, honest book called On Directing Film, his own directorial learning curve has been slight; even his darkest dramas (Homicide) and lightest comedies (Things Change) are visually inferior to their scenarios and dialogue?too measured, too cautious, too by-the-book. And he's so determined to protect the cadence of his lines that his actors come off like downed Air Force pilots reading enemy propaganda on CNN.
Despite my misgivings, State and Main won me over. It's Mamet's best-directed movie by far. Every scene has just the right shape and ends a beat before you expect. Little visual jokes are strewn like breadcrumbs, enriching the simple but sturdy comic characters and advancing the story and themes. Throughout, all the actors sound like themselves, not Mamet 9000 Acting Androids; considering how differently Macy, Durning, Baldwin, Parker and Stiles deliver dialogue, that's a treat for the ears. Even Pidgeon shines; on stage or screen, I always found her rather stiff, yet in this film, she's warm, cheerful and sexy?a Hepburn-ish, earthy intellectual who loves repeating the town's sports cheer, "Go, you huskies." The great writer is finally becoming a skillful filmmaker. State and Main is a small, smart pleasure.