What's
Love Got To Do
With It?
by James Snapko

I didn't think I'd see the day the Coen brothers would take a back seat to star power. If you've seen the advertisements for Intolerable Cruelty, the Coens' tenth film and the most commercially geared effort to date, there is little or no mention that Joel and Ethan Coen are behind this film. George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones take the lead in all of the promotions, and it is fitting, because Intolerable Cruelty is very much a star vehicle for both actors. But that doesn't mean this film can be considered "Diet Coen" by any means. Even though it is billed as a romantic comedy, and there are plenty of moments that fit that description, this film has a meanness and cynicism to it that undermine that label.

Clooney plays Miles Massey, a hotshot divorce attorney who wrote the book on prenuptial agreements (actually, as he says, they spend an entire semester studying The Massey Prenup at Harvard). Along comes Marilyn Rexroth (Zeta-Jones), a gold digger eager to marry and divorce the richest men in California for their money. Miles thwarts Marilyn the first time by exposing her intentions in court. The second time around, Miles has fallen for her and she uses his amorous feelings for her against him. Her charade is successful to a degree, and this sends Miles into his emotional nadir. At one point, while speaking at the NOMAN (National Organization of Matrimonial Attorneys, Nationwide) convention, Miles believes he's seen the light; no longer will he condone treachery and backstabbing in the name of pecuniary reasons. He delivers a speech about the redeeming power of love, but of course, he's completely hoodwinked and she double-crosses him, which spurs him to make plans to get even.

The picture ultimately, with a wink and a nudge, gives us the antithesis of the Coen film - a Hollywood ending. However, the coda is a scene that reminds us that the Coens think the avarice and thirst for the lurid, sloppy endings of relationships isn't limited to the lead characters. So, in a film that feels as light as unbuttered popcorn, is there a reflexive critique somewhere about American culture? Although I appreciate their attempt to criticize materialism and the culture of excess, I'm not sure that this attempt is completely successful.

The Coens' work can be roughly categorized into two filmic forms: Film Noir and Capra-esque populist comedies. This film falls in the latter category (along with Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, and O Brother, Where Art Thou?) If anything, Intolerable Cruelty resembles The Hudsucker Proxy the most, in that there's a feeling of distance between the Coens and the material. Needless to say, this is not one of their best films, but even a sub-par Coen brothers film is better than most Hollywood films.

Joel and Ethan Coen

I've always felt that the Coens have been after something, and perhaps the best way to describe their entire body of work is as critiques of American culture that exemplify the cultural divisions society inherited from the post-war years in the 1940s (Barton Fink), through the rise of liberal consensus, the shift to the suburbs, and American globalization and industry in the 1950s (Hudsucker Proxy, The Man Who Wasn't There), to the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s (The Big Lebowski).

I think their work shows the contrast in the ideological stances of these times, and they attempt to expose the problems with the hypocrisy and conformity implicit in dominant American values by using characters and themes that uncover the suffocating and authoritarian nature of corporate order, capitalism, and traditional family, gender, and sex roles (e.g. Fargo). They seem to criticize these values from an oblique angle, and many times evoke folk culture sensibilities as the critiquing mechanism to hint at alternative politics (O Brother).

The Coens have always felt comfortable making films that take place in the past, and even though Intolerable Cruelty takes place in the present (somewhat of an anomaly for these guys), this film's style feels a lot like a screwball comedy from Frank Capra (such as Arsenic and Old Lace) or a sex comedy from Howard Hawks (such as His Girl Friday). Clooney's over-the-top performance, Zeta-Jones's radiance, and the way the Coens handle their relationship also evokes revisionist comedies from the 1940s.

There is a lot to like about this movie. It's beautiful to look at. The colors are rich and saturated, and the signature camera moves are fluid and elegant as usual. The Coens are masterful technicians and have surrounded themselves with some very talented people (such as cinematographer Roger Deakins). But ultimately this film feels a bit like a transition to something else. It feels like they made this film with ulterior motives in mind. I just didn't sense they loved the material as they did in some of their other recent pictures. They certainly don't seem to care much for the characters, and that may be part of their disinterest in the themes guiding the film, but perhaps it's more at the system under which they worked.

The Coens can't really be called independent filmmakers (except for Blood Simple all of their films were financed through studios), but they also haven't had an outside producer (Brian Grazer, the man behind the atrocious A Beautiful Mind) and they've never collaborated on a screenplay before that they ended up directing (this film was co-written by Robert Ramsey & Matthew Stone - both are studio writers). Intolerable Cruelty made 12.5 million dollars in its first weekend. That's a big number, especially for the Coens (just as a comparison, O Brother, their most successful film at the box office, made 45 million, and their last film, The Man Who Wasn't There, made 7 million in its entire run). If I could speculate, my guess is that the Coens are up to something, kind of like Marilyn Rexroth, or Miles Massey, or even Jerry Lundegaard from Fargo. Perhaps they are making plans for another film, maybe at another film noir, which is what they do best, and Intolerable Cruelty is going to finance it. It's a sure thing in a Coen movie: where there's money, there's a devious plan afoot.

©2003 James Snapko
CineScene