Raising Arizona

It can be argued that it is quite easy to make a very personal situation universal. After all, many people experience many similar situations, and the stages of life are often repeated between generations. Following that logic, can one make a completely absurd situation seem universal? Well, Raising Arizona is evidence that is possible as well.

From old Movies at Random favorites the Coen Brothers, in a relatively early example of their being totally awesome at movies, we get a simple story about a couple wanting a baby. The couple in question consists of pre-crazy Nicholas Cage as H.I., a convenience store stickup...well artist really isn't the right word, since he gets caught all the time. He falls in love with Ed, played by Holly Hunter, the police officer who is always booking him. He decides to go straight so they can get married and raise a family. The family doesn't come, but discount magnate Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson) has five babies! Five! Since they figure they'll never have one of their own, H.I. and Ed decide that the best thing to do would be to steal one. Then a bunch of increasingly bizarre chases happen - including a pure genius one involving the police, dogs, and a supermarket - and we have a situation that has never actually faced anyone, but is completely universal.

Raising Arizona is all about anxiety, especially the anxiety inherent in becoming a parent for a first time. There are questions about whether or not you can get a kid, whether you can raise them when you do get one, and whether a gigantic guy with a beard and grenades will try to steal him away. Okay, that last one is more symbolic than an actual fear by many parents, but that's kind of the point. It lets you laugh at the increasingly ridiculous worries these people face, since you know that an embryonic version rests in all of us.

One day I'll talk about pre- and post-crazy Nicholas Cage, but I think we need a good post-crazy entry before we get to that point. While he's so goofy you wonder how he became a leading man, he's turns in a great performance here. H.I. needs to be a strange looking guy with a goofy voice, and if there's an actor alive who fits that description, it's Steve Buscemi. However, Nicholas Cage also fits that description and he can play a loser with the best of them.

Now, I've never been a parent, though I know people who are, but I am no stranger to anxiety. Worries can start small and escalate into a scary bounty hunter of a concern if they're allowed to persist, and it's nice to see a movie that confronts the ridiculous things resting in the subconscious head on. It's nice to see that all the worries a parent might ever experience are confronted head on in a variety of different ways. It's as though the film is saying, it's okay, it's normal to worry, if just by including anything one could be anxious about somewhere in the film. That's the beauty, no matter how ridiculous it might be, you're going to see something you've worried about represented in the film.

Burn After Reading

Burn After Reading starts as John Malkovich (the actor who looks most like a penis), playing Osborne Cox (see?) has a very bad week. He's demoted from his job, his marriage to his wife Katie is going poorly (though she's played by Tilda Swinton, who often plays ice bitches, so that's to be expected), especially since she (and every other female character) is having sex with Harry (played by George Clooney, so that's to be expected, really). Then, as a result, enthusiastic dimwit Chad and his best friend, the very insecure Linda (played by Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand respectively) find his secret shit in the gym where they work, because of the divorce research his wife is doing. All told, a very bad week.

It's a movie where the characters all think that the events are much more important than they really are. The secret shit isn't really all that important, but because none of the characters are all that smart or know what important shit is, they run with it. Bad things happen because nobody quite understands the situation at all. It is a movie about intelligence without the intelligence, and for that it's brilliant. It's nice to see a spy movie that doesn't pretend to be very important and isn't especially serious, with some scenes working to underscore just how minor everything is.

I love the Coen Brothers, hell, I even loved Intolerable Cruelty, it's not going to be surprising that I liked this movie. They can do this deadpan silliness that works well for a movie like this, and that they could make a movie about profoundly stupid people doing profoundly stupid things seem smart and clever is something of an achievement on its own. Even better, now that they've got a lot of street cred, they can attract a cast of fantastic actors to make their movies that much better.

What a cast! Brad Pitt, as the goofy idiot Chad is probably the highlight. How many very famous Hollywood actors could be so absorbed into a part that makes them look like such idiots? As Chad dances around to whatever music is playing on his iPod, one can actually forget that he's a famous actor that's on the cover of all the magazines, and when you're as famous as Brad Pitt that's freaking talent.

It can be said that everyone in the film has managed to make their characters believably dumb. By doing that, it helps make the film seem a bit more believable as a whole. The entire plot hinges on everyone involved being as stupid as possible. It just wouldn't work if George Clooney, for instance, couldn't play a sex-crazed moron as well as he does. It wouldn't work if Frances McDormand didn't convincingly portray someone who thinks that plastic surgery is the solution to all her problems. Every one of the actors makes their characters both believable, and that goes a long way.

It is, in essence, a movie that doesn't take itself or anyone involved all that seriously. It's about making fun of stupid people, and everyone enjoys making fun of stupid people. Yeah, people die, things go poorly, but really, nothing important happens and if you think of it everyone brings their ultimate fate upon themselves, so it's okay to laugh and poke fun at them. You could say it's a movie about not over-thinking, but that's not quite accurate. Maybe it's about thinking only as much as you're able. If you're as dumb as the characters in the movie, that's not very much.