Directed by: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen.
Written by: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen & Sam Raimi.
Starring: Tim Robbins (Norville Barnes), Jennifer Jason Leigh (Amy Archer), Paul Newman (Sidney J. Mussburger), Charles Durning (Waring Hudsucker), John Mahoney (Chief), Jim True-Frost (Buzz), Bill Cobbs (Moses), Bruce Campbell (Smitty), Harry Bugin (Aloysius), John Seitz (Benny), Joe Grifasi (Lou), Jon Polito (Mr. Bumstead), John Goodman (Newsreel Announcer).
The old
style over substance bomb has been lobbed at the Coen brothers a lot over the
course of their career. Often, I think the charges are unfair – because
although all the Coen movies are stylized in various ways, to me they most
often provide substance to match that style. But with The Hudsucker Proxy, the
charge is pretty much impossible to refute – there is nothing to the movie
other than its style. It’s writing, directing, production design, costumes, cinematography,
music and even the performances are all pitched a level that there is no room
left for anything but style. But what a tremendous style it is! Undeniably, The
Hudsucker Proxy feels like the Coens simply playing around – goofing on those
late 1930s, early 1940s Frank Capra comedies about a country bumpkin who comes
to the big city and is taken for a rube by the wise city folk, only to reveal
there is more truth to the bumpkin’s homespun wisdom. The Coens take such
delight in recreating the art deco world of the time, and seem to have so much
fun writing the stylized dialogue, and getting spot on performances from their
cast, aping the actors of the past, that it seems like they never bothered to
make the characters feel real underneath all that style. They don’t even much
seem to care that the world they have recreated is suited for the 1930s and
1940s, although their story is set in the late 1950s – as is necessary because
of the invention at the heart of the movie. These are problems in the movie to
be sure – it’s what keeps The Hudsucker Proxy a minor Coen film. Yet they seem
to be having so much fun making the film that I cannot help but have a blast
watching it. I’ve seen the film four or five times now, and it never ceases to
win me over.
The
film’s opening scene has Hudsucker (Charles Durning) listening carefully to his
board of directors who tell him that his corporation has never been more
profitable – and then getting up from his chair, running down the long board
room table and jumping out the window of the 44th Floor (45th,
if you include the mezzanine) to his death below. It just so happens that this
is the same day that our hero, Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) – the pride of
Muncie, Indiana – started his job in the mailroom at Hudsucker. He is told all
the things he can do that will get them to dock his pay – which is pretty much
everything. He is then handed a so-called Blue Letter – something that has to
be handed directly to the person it is addressed to. In this case, that is
Sidney J. Mussburger (Paul Newman), Hudsucker’s second in command. With
Hudsucker gone, he’s now the obvious choice to take over. But he doesn’t just
want to run Hudsucker – he wants to own it. Hudsucker owned 87.5% of the stock
in the company, and since he has no family, it’s to go on sale to general
public in a month. Mussburger wants the stock for himself – but cannot afford
to buy it. So he decides what he’ll do is to promote some idiot to run the
company for a month, have the stock plummet, so he and the board can buy it
cheap, and then he can take over. When Norville shows up, Blue Letter in hand,
and proceeds to ruin just about everything in Mussburger’s office, he thinks he
has found his idiot. The news of Hudsucker’s suicide, and the promotion of an
unknown from the mailroom is all over the front pages – but intrepid reporter,
and Pulitzer Prize winner, Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) smells something
funky going on. So she decides to go undercover and get close to Norville to
find out the real story. Things don’t quite go as planned, because while
Norville is naïve, he also has an idea – a brilliant idea – that he’ll show to
anyone who will listen. On a piece of paper he has drawn a circle – and when he
shows it everyone, and sees the confused look on their face, he simply says
“You know, for kids!”
As
evidenced by their previous 4 movies, the Coen brothers love offices – and with
each new film the offices got more and more elaborate and stylized from Marty’s
squalor in Blood Simple, to the blue collar office of Nathan Arizona in Raising
Arizona, to the dark, foreboding space of Leo’s office in Miller’s Crossing to
the pristine office of Lipnick the studio boss in Barton Fink. As great as
those offices are, they cannot compare to the brilliance of Mussburger’s office
in The Hudsucker Proxy – it’s a huge office – the better for Robbins to do some
slapstick way off in the background in his first scene there – and its window
looks out through the giant clock at the top of the Hudsucker building. Mussburger’s
office is the highlight of a movie that has some of the best production design
of any movie the 1990s – the Coen’s take great pains to have everything look
precise, and their sets are ones you could simply get lost in. Add to that the
great costume work, and some of the most playful and inventive cinematography
that Roger Deakins has ever done, and every frame of The Hudsucker Proxy has
something wonderful to behold. The film is, if nothing else, an endless visual
treat.
The
performances work wonderfully as well – if not as realistic characters, than of
brilliant plays on old school movie acting. Tim Robbins plays the lovable
doofus Norville Barnes to perfection – he’s clearly aping Gary Cooper’s down
home charm in films like Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and he’s probably the only
actor I can think of who could have pulled it off this wonderfully. Consider
this is the same year he delivered perhaps his career best performance in the
beloved Shawshank Redemption, and you can see just how much range he had. Paul
Newman steps into the type of role Claude Rains played in Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington – chomping on a huge cigar, able to cut people down to size with a
simple glare, he is an intimidating presence throughout the movie – and is
clearly having a blast. Best of all is Jennifer Jason Leigh, who has studied
and mastered her Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday mannerisms. True, none are
really believable characters, but as performances they are still excellent –
and provide just what the Coens wanted from them.
The
Hudsucker Proxy never reaches the levels of the Coens best movies – I don’t
think it’s even really trying to. It strikes me as a movie the brothers made
just to have a good time – to revel in their love of old movies, the art deco
production design, the stylized performances – and see if they could pull it
off. They did. The film was seen as a disappointment back in 1994 – and it’s
easy to see why. After reaching new heights with their last film – Barton Fink
– it took the brothers three years to follow it up, and the result is a movie
like this that seems like a step backwards for them – a film in which they are
retreating to the comfort of the genre riffs of their earlier work, instead of
something deeper like Fink was. I won’t deny that any of that is true. But
while the pleasures offered by The Hudsucker Proxy are minor compared too much
of the Coen’s output – it is still very much pleasurable.
No comments:
Post a Comment