on the side of the devils
by Douglas Messerli
Ethan
and Joel Coen (screenplay, based on the screenplay by William Rose, and
directors) The Ladykillers / 2004
The film even makes a kind tepid attempt
to present us with actual sermon; and surely the black comedic death of all the
“criminals”—the erudite, dandyish Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr (Tom Hanks); Gawain
MacSam (Marlon Wayans), a hot-tempered, badmouthed janitor; Garth Pancake (J.
K. Simmons), an expert at demolitions who himself is often ready to explode as
he suffers from Irritable Bowel Syndrome; “The General” (Tzi Ma) a chain-smoking
Vietnamese tunneler who runs a local Hi-Ho Donut store; and Lump Hudson (Ryan
Hurst), an empty-minded hulk of a football player—hints at a kind of moralistic
fable in the Coens’ telling, that was not truly present in the original British
version of this film.
But even though faith seemingly is celebrated and awarded in The Ladykillers, we have to recognize it as a cynical testament to belief. If the old lady survives numerous attacks and is even unknowingly awarded the stolen money by the police themselves—all suggesting that she is being miraculously protected by some higher power or, at least, the spirit of her dead husband—we recognize that writer-directors have not suddenly seen the holy light, but are simply engaged with the irony and naughtiness of it all; and besides it gives them the perfect excuse to anthologize, as they also did in O Brother Where Art Thou?, the standard and contemporary classics of American Southern music, which, it is apparent, they do very much love.
The real heroes of this film, although they all justifiably die, are the satiric outsiders: the dumb (Lump), the lame (Pancake not only is suffering from IBS but loses his finger), the violent (both “The General” and Gawain had short fuses, the former regularly swallowing up his own lit cigarettes to hide them from Mrs. Munson) and the intellectually hubristic (Dorr). These criminal misfits, failed men who yet seek for something larger than themselves—in this case, a robbery of a crooked enterprise, a gambling boat, itself protected as Dorr later points out, by an even larger crook, an insurance company—are just the kind of subjects upon who the Coen brothers focus on nearly all of their films.
If good guys must win, these filmmakers
seem to argue, it’s the bad guys who have the most fun—or, at least, are more
fun to watch. Besides, without them, the saintly would have no one to convert.
Los Angeles, March
1, 2016.
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