BSA 206 W11 : Film-making with Relatives

We looked at sibling auteurs this week:

The Wachowski Brothers

The first brothers we looked at was the Wachowskis, who are of course most well known for the sci-fi action classic The Matrix (1999), which I and probably everyone in the world loves. They have made some other movies as well, none as successful as Matrix, not even The Matrix sequels, but all of them have a very clear voice and are unique enough to stand apart from their contemporaries.

We watched the trailer for the first, much lesser-known film: Bound.




From what I've seen I really like the work of these two and find that they are always fun and unique, even if they don't always work they have the guarantee of being fun and special.

A much more reliable duo is:

The Coen Brothers

Joel and Ethan Coen have become two very highly esteemed directors, forming themselves cult followings and gaining critical acclaim. They famously started on B-Movie horror movies, working with Sam Raimi early in their career, someone who would help them set up their career and make the odd cameo in their films.

Some of Raimi's influence is seen in their first film Blood Simple (1984), where a fast-tracked POV camera is sometimes used.



We watched the trailer for their first film in class, there are a lot of parallels in this film to their academy award-winning No Country For Old Men (2008) as they point out in this interview:



One question asked in class was what is it like to work with family members on a movie, the Coen brothers describe their working relationship as seamless and very natural. Starting from the scripting phase, and continuing the collaboration into filming where both know what the film needs to be. In this interview, they talk about how they form a unified vision of the film and from there just work towards its execution. The interviewer here is very intrigued by their partnership and pries into how they work.

 Joel Coen quotes Hitcock, who said that a film is finished in pre-production and the rest of the process is just hoping that nothing goes wrong. The brothers develop a clear idea of what their movie should be before they start shooting, so much so that either of them could be asked a question on set without any words being exchanged between the two and the movie will still end up where its supposed to.

This is interesting because personally I have never had this relationship with my brother, and even at the genesis of ideas we seem to disagree very much on what the final product should be, something that usually prevents us from moving forward with the idea at all. We can both appreciate a good idea and enjoy the creative development of it, but clash when we have to work towards it in collaboration.

Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan have worked together a lot, but also seem to have two different voices, unlike the Coens. This is evident in the movie Memento and Memento Mori, a feature-length film and short story that the Nolan brothers produced separately after playing with the idea together.  The idea was originally Jonathan's and the two siblings discussed the idea and how interesting of a concept it is but took two different roads when it came to actually develop it.

I have had more of a collaborative working relationship like the brothers with other students from the school, and usually, this comes from writing with them as well. I think it's important to be together at the origin and initial development of an idea in order to share a vision because the bones of the story are constructed together.



At the beginning of this video about No Country for Old Men, they describe how they develop their works together, saying that when they have competing points of view they don't have a row about it, instead just seeing which choice leads to something good and which peters out.

Another self-reflection comes from how it is to work on my own versus with someone else, especially with the development of an idea. We wanted to enter the Spark Tall Shorts competition so had to come up with some ideas and the brainstorming and development process was very interesting to see with two of the idea, one which I did by myself and another one I did with Kiarne. It feels so different to both come up with and advance a story with someone else compared to alone, yet somehow you come to a good conclusion. I think working with Kiarne was good in that we both understood the project and had the same faith in it, it was a stark difference to describing my individually developed idea to him, and I think the one that we did together will probably be easier to work on with him as well because it is something shared between our minds and not just in one of our heads. But we'll have to see when it comes to filming.

In class, we watched The Big Lebowski (1998)

This video does a good job breaking down what the film is and where it fell in the brothers' career.



Strangely enough, I don't always enjoy the Coen Brothers' work that much, I respect them and can generally tell why their films are good but don't necessarily enjoy them as much as I feel I should (especially considering how much other people love their stuff). Their most recent film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a good example of this, I didn't finish the film and found the shorts I did watch to not be all that amazing, at least not to the degree of quality it was made out to be by critics. Maybe it's their insistence on not creating anything that has meaning, it feels almost a bit too nihilistic in some instances. I really enjoy movies like Fargo and Big Lebowski, but even then I preferred the Fargo TV Show - something they weren't even directly involved in. My favourite film of theirs is probably Burn After Reading, which I feel captures exactly what their style is in the best way possible, whereas I feel their best film is probably No Country For Old Men, which is always a joy to watch.

I think I just need to watch more of their stuff, and I really want to now after looking into them more. I think they are a very big study, much more than what I can cover here, now. Especially in combination with The Wachowski's, another pair who need way more of a detailed analysis.