The Coen brothers’ sophomore effort, Raising Arizona, was a far lighter follow-up to their dark noir
tale Blood Simple. It’s a comedy in
the style of Looney Tunes, with zany expressions, lots of screaming, and
physical comedy. But then there are dark and sinister elements which make it a
cartoon comedy for adults and maybe older kids. This is the first Coen brothers
film I ever had any exposure to when it used to play on cable when I was a kid.
I had no appreciation for the finer things at the time so I only took it at
face value as an absurd comedy. Little did I know that eventually the
filmmaking duo (Joel and Ethan co-write and direct, although in their earlier
films Joel was the credited director and Ethan the producer) would become my
absolute favorite filmmakers. And looking at Raising Arizona now, I can clearly see their usual themes and
styles emerging. In fact they were still developing their own style at the
time, but there are shots that they continually come back to and every one of
their films contains at least one scene with “that Coen brothers feeling.”
The film opens, like so many of their others, with a voiceover
narration. The voice we hear belongs to H.I. McDunnough (Nicolas Cage’s first
adult role) as he spins a yarn that lasts more than ten minutes and fills in
all the necessary background information leading up to the simple baby
kidnapping plot. The Coens pack so much into this prologue it could almost be a
feature film of its own if drawn out more. By the time it finishes you’ve
forgotten there hasn’t even been a title and credit sequence yet.
McDunnough, or “Hi” as he’s known, is a recidivist
convenience store robber who marries Ed (short for Edwina), the corrections
officer played by Holly Hunter (her first lead role and the one that helped
launch her star) who processes him each time he enters state prison. Their sad
tale involves an inability to conceive natural children and a rejection at the
adoption agency owing to Hi’s criminal background. So they do what anyone in
their situation would do – they kidnap one of the Arizona Quints. These five
babies are more than Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), the owner of a successful
chain of unpainted furniture stores, and his wife can handle, so Hi and Ed
figure they can just take one.
Something I never picked up on until watching it this
time is the way every major character behaves like a child and even cries like
a baby at some point. The Coen brothers are famously cagey about their
motivations and symbolic meaning in their films. The claim for Raising Arizona was that they just
wanted to make a more commercial film after Blood
Simple became a niche market cult favorite. There’s always something more
at work beneath the surface of their films. Perhaps the child-like rendering
was how the Coens viewed characters in broad comedy. Maybe they thought it was
the best way to appeal to a mass audience. It could also be a commentary on the
way most adults approach their lives and the sometimes brazen disregard for
children in modern society.
Hi is a criminal who can’t get his life straight. The
moment family life starts to creep in and push out the last semblance of what
he viewed as his freedom, he reverts to robbery. Ed seems on the outside to be
the most mature and put-together character in the film, but when she can’t
conceive a child of her own, she throws in the towel on life and makes decision
to take a baby from another family. This is an act that could only be dreamed
up by someone without a very sophisticated way of looking at the world, much
like a child.
Hi and Ed are visited by the Snoats brothers, Gail and
Evelle (John Goodman and William Forsythe, both of whom launched careers off
this film), who have just escaped from prison where they once knew Hi on the
inside. Their emergence from a muddy underground tunnel into the pouring rain
as if they’re being reborn. At the end when they return to the tunnel in Hi’s
dream, he tells us they weren’t ready to come out into the world. Gail and
Evelle are basically two overgrown babies themselves with cherubic faces to
match. Similar to both Hi and Ed, they lack any kind of complex understanding
of life.
Then there’s the film’s villain played by Randall “Tex”
Cobb, a demon from hell come to earth straight of Hi’s premonition. Covered in
filth, decked out in leather and chains, carrying weapons of all sorts and
riding a motorcycle, he is also a man stuck in an infantile state. He sports a
tattoo that proclaims, “Mama didn’t love me,” and has a preternatural disdain
for small animals. His name, Leonard Smalls, is an ironic twist on Lennie from Of Mice and Men, whose obsession with
puppies and bunnies gets him into trouble.
Is the movie funny? Yes, in a zany Looney Tunes kind of
way. The big comic centerpiece is an extended chase through a neighborhood
following Hi’s robbing of a quick stop market. The whole thing is completely
absurd involving speeding pickup trucks, police squad cars, shotguns and
pistols, and a pack of dogs trailing behind, all to Carter Burwell’s musical
score consisting of a banjo and yodeler, the perfect accompaniment to this
world of mobile home dwelling in the desert landscape of the American
Southwest.
As distinctly “Coen brothers” as Raising Arizona is, there’s an emotional impact the film has that
is not in keeping with their usual style. Joel and Ethan are unsentimental
filmmakers, but there’s a genuine touch of resonance to the relationship
between Hi and Ed, illuminated in a scene at the end in which Nathan Arizona
encourages them to take another night to consider their decision to end their
marriage. Following this, Hi has another dream (premonition perhaps?), this
time an old couple being visited by grown children and grandchildren. The
zinger of a line that closes the film and the dream sequence allows for the
possibility that really Hi is just a dope with no ability to achieve real
insight, or it could be that his dream is a touching close to the film. Each
individual viewer will bring his own interpretation to this ending and that’s what
is distinctly Coen about the film.
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