Filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen live in an interesting little world. It's a world where everyone, even the one-line
characters, has a distinctive face and an unmistakably Coen method of deadpan delivery. It's a world where dialogue that is unimpressive when spoken once becomes hysterically funny when repeated a few times. It's a world where you shouldn't be surprised to hear people at the bottom of the socio-political ladder speaking in erudite language and using the most imaginative sentence constructions. The Coens, who co-write and co-direct their films (though only Joel is officially credited in the latter capacity), are also extremely divisive. In my opinion, "The Hudsucker Proxy" is every bit as funny as "Raising Arizona," yet there are many who don't like it at all. I consider "Fargo" overrated and largely unamusing, but legions of people disagree -- and many of those people don't like "Raising Arizona" at all. Whatever your opinions on their previous films, it can be said with some degree of objectivity that their latest, "O Brother, Where Art Thou?," hearkens back to "Raising Arizona" in tone and style. Both films feature outlaws from the South with grand schemes; both have John Goodman and Holly Hunter; and both are marked by controlled, deliberate zaniness, a feeling of pandemonium as constructed by two careful, highly intelligent filmmakers.
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