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Speaker 2: What kind of a show you guys putting on here today?
Speaker 3: You're not interested in art?
Speaker 2: Now? No, Look, we're going to do this thing.
Speaker 3: We're going to have a conversation.
Speaker 2: Hey, film spotters, we have for you what turned out
Speaker 2: to be maybe our longest conversation on the show ever,
Speaker 2: maybe longer than The Tree of Life.
Speaker 1: I don't know it's possible. We'll have to do the math,
Speaker 1: check the archives, but certainly it's in the top five
Speaker 1: longest reviews.
Speaker 2: Fargo thirtieth anniversary Pantheon Project review spoilers. We both quite
Speaker 2: like the movie. That conversation coming to you Friday, and
Speaker 2: then the next picture show just tomorrow. As you're listening
Speaker 2: to this, possibly on Wednesday, the day these archive shows drop.
Speaker 2: On Thursday, you'll hear the next picture shows pairing of
Speaker 2: Supergirl and the Cones true grits. So we thought, let's
Speaker 2: just keep it going. Let's keep the Cone Brothers love going,
Speaker 2: and let's drop our conversation from twenty eighteen when we
Speaker 2: gave the sacred cow treatment to Miller's Crossing. Let's put
Speaker 2: that back in people's feeds. And you have to be
Speaker 2: excited about that, Josh, considering where you have Miller's Crossing
Speaker 2: ranked in your con Brother's list.
Speaker 1: Number one, I'm sure it comes up. It's been there
Speaker 1: for a while. It remains spoiler, still remains after Firego.
Speaker 1: The Firego did get a little bump, as we'll come
Speaker 1: up in our conversation. But yeah, so good to dig
Speaker 1: back into one of the formative movies for me in
Speaker 1: terms of starting to wrap my mind around how good
Speaker 1: a movie could be and how it is actually functionally good.
Speaker 1: So Miller's Crossing, Yeah, seminole title.
Speaker 2: Here is that conversation about nineteen nineties Miller's Crossing.
Speaker 3: Bernie ain't satisfied with the honest dollar he can make
Speaker 3: with the victory. He ain't satisfied with the business I'd
Speaker 3: do on his book. He is selling tips on how
Speaker 3: I begged, and I mean's part of the payoff. They
Speaker 3: should be riding more. My nip is riding on someone else's.
Speaker 3: So back we go to these questions friendship, character.
Speaker 2: Ethics.
Speaker 1: It was the clinking ice that got me at him.
Speaker 1: The year was nineteen ninety and I was a budding
Speaker 1: high school cinephile, just beginning to take movies.
Speaker 2: Serious, and an aspiring whiskey drinker.
Speaker 1: Not yet, I'd get there eventually. W and I were
Speaker 1: on a big date downtown to see a movie that
Speaker 1: was just too artzy to be playing in the suburbs,
Speaker 1: the Coen Brothers Prohibition era gangster drama Miller's Crossing, in
Speaker 1: which Gabriel Burns stars as Tom Reagan, right hand man
Speaker 1: to older crime boss Leo played by Albert Finney. The
Speaker 1: movie opens with the two of them in Leo's office,
Speaker 1: listening to the complaints of a lower ranked racketeer played
Speaker 1: by John Pallito. Specifically, the movie opens with a close
Speaker 1: up of Tom dropping ice into a glass, then tipping
Speaker 1: some of that whiskey. Something about the way the ice
Speaker 1: is shot, the way the camera slowly moves away from
Speaker 1: the glass, the way the sound design reminds us of
Speaker 1: that glass throughout the rest of the scene. I mean
Speaker 1: Tom says everything he needs to by the way he
Speaker 1: clinks those cubes, squirls them, or keeps them silent. I
Speaker 1: snapped to attention and realized what it was like to
Speaker 1: watch a movie in which the filmmakers were in masterful
Speaker 1: control of every element, so that image, movement, sound came
Speaker 1: together exactly the way they intended and for a particular effect.
Speaker 1: In short, Miller's Crossing was the first time I can
Speaker 1: remember realizing, oh, yeah, this is a real movie. We
Speaker 1: decided to revisit Miller's Crossing, which met an early demise
Speaker 1: in our film spotting Madness Tournament of nineteen nineties Films
Speaker 1: for a Sacred Cow review Adam and guess what. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: this is still a real movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone really just stopped listening right now and rewatch
Speaker 2: Miller's Crossing.
Speaker 1: That's a good idea. I want to talk about so much,
Speaker 1: the performances, the Carter Burwell score, the hats. I do
Speaker 1: have a grand unified hat theory.
Speaker 2: Can't wait.
Speaker 1: But first I want to hear if there was a
Speaker 1: scene on this revisit that enthralled you like the movies
Speaker 1: opening enthralled me, or are you going to give me
Speaker 1: the high hat? And claim that on this revisit, Miller's
Speaker 1: Crossing struck you as a lesser Cohen Brothers movie. It
Speaker 1: sounds like you're not.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not going to be doing that. In fact,
Speaker 2: it has moved up my Coen Brothers ranking list. I
Speaker 2: love it three spots and could go higher over on letterbox.
Speaker 1: I have that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if anyone cares in our show notes at filmspotting
Speaker 2: dot net, and maybe we'll get into that list a
Speaker 2: little bit more here in a moment. First though, I
Speaker 2: do want to point out Josh that that setup was wonderful,
Speaker 2: really nice job with the intro, but really you missed
Speaker 2: a great opportunity there. All you had to say was Adam,
Speaker 2: what's the rumpus they like? And as our regular film
Speaker 2: spotting listeners know, the people who subscribe to the pot
Speaker 2: podcasts and have been following along with our Vincent Manelli marathon,
Speaker 2: this is that bit of serendipity, that bit of coincidence spotting.
Speaker 2: We sometimes get crossover between films that have no other
Speaker 2: similarity to each other whatsoever. There's a rumpus reference in
Speaker 2: The Bat and the Beautiful. I missed that, now there is,
Speaker 2: It's right there. I'll have to look up what the
Speaker 2: exact line is. But having just seen Miller's Crossing, it
Speaker 2: definitely stuck with me. You were a more sophisticated film connoisseur,
Speaker 2: Well you are now you were then?
Speaker 1: Well kind of good? What ten months on it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it must have been the ten.
Speaker 2: Months, but it took me longer to fully appreciate Miller's Crossing.
Speaker 2: In fact, it took me this viewing of Miller's Crossing
Speaker 2: to really love this film as much as you love it.
Speaker 2: And I do want to go back a little bit
Speaker 2: before I answer your direct question there. I've said before,
Speaker 2: I think on the show recently that this was my
Speaker 2: first Cone Brothers film, and that's not actually true, because
Speaker 2: I saw Raising Arizona fifty times as a kid in
Speaker 2: the eighties and loved the movie, but I had no
Speaker 2: awareness of it as a quote Coen Brothers film even
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one or maybe ninety two. Josh, by
Speaker 2: the time I saw this, I think you were a
Speaker 2: little bit ahead of me in becoming a cinephile. It
Speaker 2: was around the time of my senior year, the summer
Speaker 2: before and watching this movie on VHS. I definitely did
Speaker 2: not see Miller's Crossing in the theater in Iowa. Who
Speaker 2: knows if it even came to a theater in Iowa
Speaker 2: at that time, honestly, But I was just starting to
Speaker 2: get into film, and this movie, yes, was being presented
Speaker 2: to me as a film of note by directors of note.
Speaker 2: But I had no precedent for it whatsoever. I had
Speaker 2: no sense of their style, their preoccupations, all the things
Speaker 2: that we have come to most of us love and
Speaker 2: appreciate about the Coen Brothers. Had no sense of it then,
Speaker 2: of course, And I do remember being struck by some
Speaker 2: of the same sequences I was this time. I'll go
Speaker 2: to the two big stylistic set pieces, of course, Danny Boy,
Speaker 2: the failed hit on Leo. Just a beautiful dialogue, free dance,
Speaker 2: a tracking shot from the open window. You don't see
Speaker 2: the perpetrator come in. Just the sound the curtains blowing.
Speaker 2: You know someone's in the room. See the bodyguard killed,
Speaker 2: you just hear it. Then you see his body in
Speaker 2: the killer's legs walking away to the door. He opens it.
Speaker 2: Another killer with guns comes in, and then the smoke
Speaker 2: we see, but they don't as they go up the stairs,
Speaker 2: cross cutting with Finny in bed, just enjoying the music,
Speaker 2: smoking a cigar, his puff of smoke down to the
Speaker 2: smoke he smells coming through the floorboards, and the killer's
Speaker 2: walking and we only see their legs up the stairs.
Speaker 2: Perhaps an homage to the Godfather. I can't help but
Speaker 2: think about that first assassination attempt on Vito Corleone and
Speaker 2: the Godfather, where we just see their legs as they
Speaker 2: run past that fruit stand and shoot veto Finny escaping
Speaker 2: out the window, shooting the one killer through the window
Speaker 2: with a thousand bullets, just the spray. Perhaps there an
Speaker 2: homage to the spasm of death at the end of
Speaker 2: Bonnie and Clyde, a reference I would not have been
Speaker 2: able to make back when I saw this the first time,
Speaker 2: and then the gunfight with the car down the street.
Speaker 2: There are cinematic pyrotechnics and actual pyrotechnics in this sequence.
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't a budding teenage cinephile be blown away? And
Speaker 2: this middle age cinephile was just as impressed. Of course,
Speaker 2: the other one you have to point to with this movie,
Speaker 2: Look Into Your Heart, just as good the second time
Speaker 2: as it was the first time. Bernie Burnbaund played by
Speaker 2: the great John taturo a Coen Brothers regular being taken
Speaker 2: out to the title Miller's Crossing where he's going to
Speaker 2: be killed by Gabriel Burns Tom Reagan, and the tension
Speaker 2: of that, the precision of the movement, cutting between Tom
Speaker 2: his quiet terror as he moves still slowly with Bernie's
Speaker 2: desperate terror, both men anticipating that that scene is only
Speaker 2: going to end one way, with both of them being dead,
Speaker 2: and we as viewers, see no way out for either guy.
Speaker 2: It's intense. It's wonderful, Tom.
Speaker 4: And you can't do this. You don't bump guys. You're
Speaker 4: not like those animals back there? Is that right, Tom?
Speaker 4: The can't makers do this is the wrong situation. The
Speaker 4: can Mackers different people than we are. Wull im muscled dom.
Speaker 4: I never killed anybody. I used a little information, that's all.
Speaker 4: It's my name, just to get out. But somebody here's me.
Speaker 2: I play it. I don't just have to die. But
Speaker 2: hat do you think I do? I will say, even
Speaker 2: though I wasn't as sophisticated as you. Then that opening
Speaker 2: scene was another one that really caught my attention and
Speaker 2: frankly stunned me. And I think it's just partly the
Speaker 2: rhythm of the dialogue, the words, the phrasing that we
Speaker 2: have come to associate with the Coen Brothers. Even just
Speaker 2: ending on that line Leo has Finny says, take your
Speaker 2: flunky and dangle and just listening to a character not
Speaker 2: just ask for something, but frame it by expressing his worldview,
Speaker 2: which is what John Polito does. We've seen that in
Speaker 2: a lot of Coin Brothers. So good. I just died
Speaker 2: in September twenty sixteen, and he's He's the unsung hero,
Speaker 2: He's the MVP of this movie. And that's it. Josh.
Speaker 2: Is what really stunned me, I think, as a newcomer
Speaker 2: to the Coen Brothers, and really to sin him as
Speaker 2: a whole, was the performance John Polito's performance, that character,
Speaker 2: that sweaty, expressive gesturing. Johnny Casper is exactly the type
Speaker 2: of mannered, idiosyncratic character that we've seen now so many
Speaker 2: times in other Coen Brothers movies, including sometimes by John
Speaker 2: Polito himself. I know for sure he appears in Barton Fink.
Speaker 2: That felt so new and fresh to me at the time,
Speaker 2: and the way the con Brothers keep the camera focused
Speaker 2: on him for almost two minutes before anyone else in
Speaker 2: the scene speaks. And here's another potential homage to The Godfather.
Speaker 2: It's like the opening scene of that film where we
Speaker 2: have the character sitting across from Veto. It's a close
Speaker 2: up on him and he says, I believe in America.
Speaker 2: He expresses his worldview even as he's asking for a
Speaker 2: favor from someone who is capable of granting it. And
Speaker 2: in The Godfather, it starts on that close up and
Speaker 2: pulls back to a wider shot. Here it's the opposite.
Speaker 2: It actually starts wider on Polito and moves in. It
Speaker 2: gets closer as the scene goes on. But how animated
Speaker 2: he is contrasted with the stillness and the quiet of
Speaker 2: everyone else in that scene. Other than clinking the glass,
Speaker 2: Tom pretty much doesn't move except for the moment when
Speaker 2: he walks back from the room to the yeah, from
Speaker 2: the back over to Leo's side, and we'll get to
Speaker 2: that a bit later as well. By the end of
Speaker 2: this five minute plus scene, Polito is bent over yelling
Speaker 2: at Leo, and he's so worked up that it seems
Speaker 2: like he's about to have a heart attack for real,
Speaker 2: right there in front of us on screen. Again, it
Speaker 2: just felt so new and exciting. It's exciting now, and
Speaker 2: this time I did notice even other aspects of the
Speaker 2: scene that excited me even more. But I've talked enough,
Speaker 2: and I want to know what experience you had with
Speaker 2: that opening scene and with the film as a whole
Speaker 2: the second time around.
Speaker 3: Some gemmy fresh off the boat and you can kick me,
Speaker 3: but I'm too big for that. Now. I'm sick. I'm
Speaker 3: taking a scrap from you, Leo. I'm sick. I'm not
Speaker 3: turning this goddamn office the kitchen I was ass and
Speaker 3: I'm sick of.
Speaker 1: The opening scene is the one that I always think of,
Speaker 1: just because that memory is so indelible of experiencing it.
Speaker 1: Watching it again, though, it did strike me what Burne
Speaker 1: is doing yes with the ice, and how the Cohens
Speaker 1: are of course framing him, and you talked about it.
Speaker 1: I think the reason we see Polito originally in a
Speaker 1: wider shot is so that we also notice that shadow
Speaker 1: in the back and we connect it with the bar
Speaker 1: that we see and we think, oh, that's the guy
Speaker 1: who is making the drink. We are always, no matter
Speaker 1: how gripping Polito is and what he's saying, we are
Speaker 1: always aware of Tom Reagan and that scene, and that
Speaker 1: is the point, because he will turn out to be
Speaker 1: the main character and it's all about him, and I
Speaker 1: watch it again just last night, and what he's essentially
Speaker 1: doing is affirming what Johnny Casper is saying so without
Speaker 1: by using that ice. It's like a punctuation mark to
Speaker 1: his complaints. So he's letting Leo know that this guy's
Speaker 1: got a point, he's got a beef. You should listen
Speaker 1: to him. And then we get Leo's response, We get
Speaker 1: the close up shot of Tom's look of surprise because
Speaker 1: he thought everyone was on the same page. And that's
Speaker 1: the first domino that falls in an incredibly intricately plotted
Speaker 1: film noir narrative that just on its own is a
Speaker 1: pleasure to try to follow and put together, but also,
Speaker 1: you know, is rooted in this moral conundrum that's really
Speaker 1: at the heart of this film. It's not even a
Speaker 1: moral conundrum.
Speaker 2: That's for me.
Speaker 1: Miller's crossing is asking should we bother with moral conundrums?
Speaker 1: That's kind of the foundational question, and then it lets
Speaker 1: us watch its characters squirm and wrestle with that themselves.
Speaker 1: I think that's why Johnny Casper is going to have
Speaker 1: a heart attack because of he doesn't get the quote
Speaker 1: unquote morality he expects, and of course Tom Reagan wrestles
Speaker 1: with that as well. So let me just hit a
Speaker 1: couple of the other moments though that did jump out
Speaker 1: at me as much as that opening you mentioned the
Speaker 1: dialogue free elements. How about that silent movie moment of
Speaker 1: revealing Rug Daniels dead in the alley? Okay, no one
Speaker 1: says a thing. Instead we get a shot of the dog,
Speaker 1: shot of the boy we don't know what they're looking at,
Speaker 1: and then comes the money shot of Rugg Daniels with
Speaker 1: his wig askew, and we realize, oh, this is the
Speaker 1: guy they were just talking and all of that information
Speaker 1: is plotted, but also something that could be pulled from
Speaker 1: almost to Charlie Chaplin short, like a really grim right
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin short.
Speaker 2: There's a great joke in there too, right that it
Speaker 2: comes up multiple times throughout the film that Tom Reagan,
Speaker 2: the brains who's always piecing everything together based on evidence,
Speaker 2: is sure that he knows certain things about this whole
Speaker 2: scenario because of what happened to Rug Daniels, and he's
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what happened to the two pey
Speaker 2: is if that has significance. We're the only ones who know.
Speaker 2: We're the only ones who know that a kid just
Speaker 2: took it, and it has no grander cosmic point beyond it.
Speaker 2: But it's stymying Tom throughout the entire film.
Speaker 1: And there's some of that dark humor that they're is
Speaker 1: so well known for. I mentioned in The Bad and
Speaker 1: the Beautiful review earlier this week as part of our
Speaker 1: Manelli marathon, you talked about a dissolve you noticed in
Speaker 1: that film. How about this is that great dissolve of
Speaker 1: all time, one of the greats, at least from Tom
Speaker 1: alone in the woods at Miller's crossing, standing still in
Speaker 1: his overcoat. His hands are down, the gun is pointing down,
Speaker 1: and we just dissolved to the two henchmen who brought
Speaker 1: him there, leaning against the car back on the road,
Speaker 1: exact same spot, and man, that whole setting. It only
Speaker 1: appears twice in the film, although we kind of get
Speaker 1: it when Tom recounts in credits and during the credits,
Speaker 1: so maybe two significant scenes. But that music, the Carter
Speaker 1: Burwell score, and those pines and looking up from the
Speaker 1: ground to the sky as we slowly track through them.
Speaker 1: That's one of the transcendental moments in cinema for me,
Speaker 1: And by that I mean it's incredibly moving in a
Speaker 1: way I can't quite pinpoint. There's something ennobling about it,
Speaker 1: even though it's marking a march of death essentially, and
Speaker 1: having those two things held together in the same moment
Speaker 1: with nothing but music and camera movement is It's miraculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. There's something poetic obviously about the way
Speaker 2: it's constructed, but something poetic just in that gesture of
Speaker 2: looking up towards the sky trying to somehow make sense
Speaker 2: of this, which is really the point of this whole film.
Speaker 2: And I do want to go back, just briefly to
Speaker 2: the opening scene, though, Josh, because what really stood out
Speaker 2: for me this time, beyond all the great points you made,
Speaker 2: is the movement, exactly how Tom is moving from the
Speaker 2: beginning of the scene to the very end of the scene,
Speaker 2: even after John Pallito has exited. And I'll confess sometimes
Speaker 2: I'm a bad movie watcher. This was the first time
Speaker 2: I'd seen this movie since that time in ninety one
Speaker 2: or ninety two, and even after finishing it and loving
Speaker 2: the opening scene, if you had asked me again, how
Speaker 2: does Miller's Crossing open, I would have said, the first
Speaker 2: shot is John Pallito's face. I didn't remember the glass clinking,
Speaker 2: I didn't remember the drink. I just put so much
Speaker 2: weight it was so vivid in my mind Polito's face
Speaker 2: that I was sure that's how it started. I was
Speaker 2: also sure that's how it started because I thought it
Speaker 2: was this homage to The Godfather. They were riffing on
Speaker 2: that idea of opening with that favor being asked for,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to see just how closely they were
Speaker 2: paying tribute to it, if in fact they were. I
Speaker 2: also just wanted to watch the movie again because it
Speaker 2: was so much to him fun the second time here
Speaker 2: the first time on this revisit that I started the
Speaker 2: film again, and I was immediately struck by the brilliance
Speaker 2: of how they use the space. And it's through the
Speaker 2: entire film. There are seven examples I could point to
Speaker 2: of characters being at a distance or at a very
Speaker 2: close proximity to other characters in the scene that other
Speaker 2: filmmakers just don't frame people in that way, and it
Speaker 2: doesn't add to the psychology, and it doesn't add to
Speaker 2: the humor the way the Coen Brothers do it. But
Speaker 2: it starts right in that opening scene because it opens
Speaker 2: on that drink, as you've noted, the ice, the whiskey,
Speaker 2: the sound first appropriate, as you said, because there are
Speaker 2: so many instances of that throughout this film, and it's
Speaker 2: appropriate for its influences. This movie's influence is on screen
Speaker 2: and in fiction. Thinking about Dashal Hammond, how much of
Speaker 2: his influence you see and their work. The drink and
Speaker 2: we know this from any hard boiled film we've seen
Speaker 2: or read the material. That's just going to be a
Speaker 2: recurring motif. They're going to walk into any scene and
Speaker 2: pour a drink. So okay, you don't really think too
Speaker 2: much of it. But then when it does cut to
Speaker 2: Casper for the first time, you don't really know in
Speaker 2: the background who's holding that drink. It looks like it
Speaker 2: should be whoever that is. He's not in focus, but
Speaker 2: he's holding something and he seems to be by the bar. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're going to come to learn that it's Tom. He's
Speaker 2: on Polito's side of the table. He's not on Leo's side.
Speaker 2: You do see one guy, a sort of henchman, you assume, right,
Speaker 2: behind Polito a bodyguard of some kind. But what side
Speaker 2: is this guy, the mysterious guy in the back on,
Speaker 2: It's not clear yet. A minute into the scene, still
Speaker 2: completely out of focus the whole time, Tom, this mystery man,
Speaker 2: starts walking towards the camera along the side of the frame.
Speaker 2: Casper actually notices him, and the corner Brothers show in
Speaker 2: close up him noting him going by. It's significant, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he gives him a glance once that shadow crosses him.
Speaker 2: Once Leo speaks, breaking up Polito's dialogue, that's when we're
Speaker 2: finally introduced to Tom, and he's clearly entrenched on that
Speaker 2: side of the table, on that side of this potential dispute.
Speaker 2: As the movie then cuts back and forth a little bit,
Speaker 2: it's a two shot for three or four shots in
Speaker 2: a row. It's always pairing Leo and Tom together in
Speaker 2: this frame. And when we do see that Tom disagrees
Speaker 2: with him. He thinks his boss is making the wrong play.
Speaker 2: He tells him, and where does he do it? As
Speaker 2: soon as Polito finally exits along with the Dane, Tom
Speaker 2: goes and sits not even just right across from him
Speaker 2: at his desk. He goes and sits halfway across the
Speaker 2: room on a couch. He's halfway between where the scene
Speaker 2: began over on that side of the room, where he
Speaker 2: was for most of the scene, right behind Leo. Visually,
Speaker 2: he's backing him that entire time. Now he's not. Now
Speaker 2: he's right in the middle of it all, just as
Speaker 2: he's going to be for the rest of the movie.
Speaker 2: He's going to be stuck playing both sides. You're never
Speaker 2: sure completely where his loyalty lies, You're never sure what
Speaker 2: his angle is, You're never sure what his motivation is.
Speaker 2: And they emphasize that really subtly, just with where he's
Speaker 2: positioned in the frame right in that opening scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and how he's trying to balance that deference to
Speaker 1: Leo with what he believes to be right and his
Speaker 1: own principles and Casper's legitimate argument. Okay, let's keep talking
Speaker 1: about space a little bit more, because it's also going
Speaker 1: to give me a chance to bring up Marcia gay
Speaker 1: harden as Verna, who is maybe the Domino before the
Speaker 1: Domino I mentioned that sets this emotion dating Leo essentially
Speaker 1: to protect her brother John Taturo, who you mentioned, who's
Speaker 1: ripping people off, ripping Johnny Casper off, yet she's with
Speaker 1: Leo so that Leo will offer protection even though Bernie's
Speaker 1: in the wrong. She is amazing in this movie.
Speaker 2: She's really good play unlikely fem fatale too exactly. I
Speaker 2: don't think that way.
Speaker 1: You would not ever expect that. But man does she
Speaker 1: chomp into this role and make it much more than
Speaker 1: a caricature of a type that could easily just be funny.
Speaker 1: And I think it all comes together in a scene
Speaker 1: that does also use space. Well, it's at the club
Speaker 1: where Tom they've had a spat. She and Tom for
Speaker 1: those who haven't seen it, are also involved with each other,
Speaker 1: and they've had a spat, and so he comes charging
Speaker 1: into the women's restaurant area, and what does he say
Speaker 1: to her? Something about see He claims his job is
Speaker 1: to intimidate helpless women, or I've been intimidating helpless women,
Speaker 1: and she says, find one and intimidator. Okay, great line,
Speaker 1: beautiful delivery. Things get violent. She hits him, he throws
Speaker 1: a glass at her, breaks a mirror. She just looks
Speaker 1: at him, and they hold her, give her that moment.
Speaker 3: I suppose you think you raised.
Speaker 1: And then the spacing comes where she saunters out and
Speaker 1: the camera leave him, leave him sticks withever except for
Speaker 1: that shot back to him. But at this point, because
Speaker 1: we've been following with her, it's a reverse tracking shot
Speaker 1: and he's getting smaller and small diminished in the frame
Speaker 1: being diminished. That is just a beautiful combination of performance
Speaker 1: and as you said, spacing. That is also one of
Speaker 1: the highlights of the film.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, I will say about Marcia gay Harden
Speaker 2: that she plays enough notes here that I think we
Speaker 2: as viewers initially think we know everything we need to
Speaker 2: know about her based on the description of her that
Speaker 2: we get based on everything Tom says about her, And
Speaker 2: that really is Tom's key to this whole movie. We'll
Speaker 2: talk more about. It's how he's able to discern the
Speaker 2: true nature of people. But he may be right about
Speaker 2: Marcia gay Harden's verna, but she plays it complexly enough
Speaker 2: that we're not quite sure he's right. We think there
Speaker 2: might be more to her.
Speaker 1: I think there's way more for giving her credit for Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good point too. We mostly hear her describe Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we almost get more scenes as many scenes, let's say,
Speaker 1: of her being characterized by others than she gets herself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yet I think Marcia gay Harden holds her own
Speaker 1: and manages to turn a lot of these men around
Speaker 1: within the plot and for her own needs despite not
Speaker 1: getting all that time.
Speaker 2: So Miller's Crossing was number one on your Coen Brothers
Speaker 2: film's ranking. I'm guessing it stayed there after this read.
Speaker 1: I mean, and this is you know, this is a
Speaker 1: in a sense of pointless conversation because these are well,
Speaker 1: it's pointless because it's pointless, but also because with the
Speaker 1: Coen Brothers, we're talking very small degrees here. I'm only
Speaker 1: going to say I did watch True Grit within the
Speaker 1: last week, which is another one I need my number
Speaker 1: four Coen Brothers film, So there's another one that would
Speaker 1: have been in the running. Hail Caesar is fairly fresh
Speaker 1: in my mind. It was my top film of that year.
Speaker 1: I have it at number three, and then I have
Speaker 1: No Country at number two, which is the one I
Speaker 1: probably should revisit to really clamp down this list. But yeah,
Speaker 1: after this revisit, I'm definitely keeping it there at number one.
Speaker 2: So it is all about degrees, and this is totally
Speaker 2: arbitrary anyway, But our Coin Brother's top ten really doesn't
Speaker 2: look very similar at all, other than us both having
Speaker 2: No Country pretty high. You have it at number two.
Speaker 2: I have it at number one. I have that top tier,
Speaker 2: which for me is No Country, Fargo, then inside Lewin Davis,
Speaker 2: and then barely a drop off at all. Right, that's
Speaker 2: how it goes with that to tier two, Raising Arizona.
Speaker 2: I put it that high. I exalt Raising Arizona because
Speaker 2: I think it just might be, if not the funniest
Speaker 2: film of all time. It's in my top five comedies
Speaker 2: ever made, so it deserves to be there.
Speaker 1: At number four.
Speaker 2: Then I had Barton Fink Lebowski, a serious man, blood simple.
Speaker 2: Then Miller's Crossing. That's how far down I had it,
Speaker 2: And I'll get to the reasons why in a moment.
Speaker 2: But I had it then just ahead of True Grit
Speaker 2: at number ten. Now, because of how much I love
Speaker 2: Miller's Crossing watching it again, I've bumped it up to
Speaker 2: number six, and I could make a case for having
Speaker 2: it ahead of Raising Arizona and Barton Fink. It's just
Speaker 2: so hard because they're all so great. But Josh, for me,
Speaker 2: it was number nine because of how far removed I
Speaker 2: was from seeing it originally it wasn't fresh in my
Speaker 2: mind at all, but also because if I'm being totally honest,
Speaker 2: I remember walking away from it really really confused as
Speaker 2: woud as I was by the filmmaking. I know, I
Speaker 2: was lost watching the film. And what I realized watching
Speaker 2: it again is that what changed here in the what
Speaker 2: twenty seven years? Is that true? Since I've seen this movie?
Speaker 1: Let's just move on?
Speaker 2: How is that possible? Most of our listeners aren't even
Speaker 2: at all have to think that's how long it's been
Speaker 2: since I've seen Miller's Crossing. What's changed isn't just that
Speaker 2: I got older, that's for sure, that I got smarter,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe just a little, or that I've read more
Speaker 2: detective fiction or watch more detective movies, though that is
Speaker 2: true as well. I realized that the kne brothers have
Speaker 2: actually been responsible for teaching me how to watch movies,
Speaker 2: not only watch movies in general, but watch their movies.
Speaker 2: They've taught me a certain worldview that I can now
Speaker 2: understand the existential dilemmas that can found their characters consistently
Speaker 2: from movie to movie. Also just so happened to be
Speaker 2: those dilemmas that can found most of us in everyday life,
Speaker 2: and we could discuss the reasons why, if there are
Speaker 2: reasons why Tom ultimately does what he does, why he
Speaker 2: is playing all of these angles and all these people
Speaker 2: against each other and where he ends up. Is it
Speaker 2: because it was always driven by loyalty to Leo? Or
Speaker 2: is the reason reason itself in some way, Josh, and
Speaker 2: I wonder if this is getting at even what you
Speaker 2: were kind of hinting at in terms of the larger questions.
Speaker 2: This movie is posing the very thing that so many
Speaker 2: Cone characters to me seek and try to live by.
Speaker 2: Whether it's Ed Crane and the Man who Wasn't there,
Speaker 2: which I know you love more than me. I appreciate it,
Speaker 2: you really love it to Larry Gopnik and a serious
Speaker 2: man sheriff ed Tom Bell and No Country for Old
Speaker 2: Men and even Anton Shagur in No Country for Old
Speaker 2: Men is trying to establish order, or reestablish a perceived
Speaker 2: order that was lost that exists now in this chaotic world.
Speaker 2: And I can't say that that exploration began with Miller's Crossing,
Speaker 2: because there are elements of it undeniably in Raising Arizona
Speaker 2: and in Blood Simple, but I do think it's explored
Speaker 2: most emphatically and brilliantly to that point here in Miller's Crossing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the confusion element, you know, this movie does
Speaker 1: make sense if you follow all the threads. But as
Speaker 1: we've learned from the original film Noirs, that doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: you know, Like it's the plot isn't the point. It's
Speaker 1: more the ideas that the movie is interested in and
Speaker 1: the mood that it sets. So it's to its credit
Speaker 1: that Miller's Crossing, which is very hard to follow, how
Speaker 1: this all comes together. It does come together. It does
Speaker 1: it absolutely, So they've done their work.
Speaker 2: Now I see that.
Speaker 1: But right, but on a first watch, when you're already
Speaker 1: a wash in all of the visual information and technique,
Speaker 1: it can be very difficult to put those pieces together.
Speaker 1: So completely understandable, but it does hold up. Now as
Speaker 1: to these larger questions you're talking about, this brings us
Speaker 1: to my hat theory and what I think. And I'm
Speaker 1: just talking about Tom here.
Speaker 2: So it's your next book, by the way, are you
Speaker 2: sure you want to get into it here?
Speaker 1: No, it's not going to go on that long. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: Tom's Hat. It represents the ethics, the principles, the standard
Speaker 1: that he's going to hold on to, no matter what
Speaker 1: the cost. Now I don't mean that he's an ethical character.
Speaker 2: No, there's no state he is right.
Speaker 1: Exactly, but he has in his mind he has a
Speaker 1: standard that he holds to, and that's represented by his hat.
Speaker 1: It's the last grasp, is that physical manifestation. So if
Speaker 1: he loses his grip on it, this goes to what
Speaker 1: you were saying. It's anarchy. That's the word that John
Speaker 1: Polito uses. Okay, so here's some evidence of Tom's ethics. Again,
Speaker 1: ethics in quotes. He won't take Leo's offer to square
Speaker 1: his gambling debts. Okay, that would be the wrong thing
Speaker 1: to do, and he wants to pay settle itself. He
Speaker 1: tells Leo protecting Bernie is a bad play, partly because
Speaker 1: Bernie doesn't deserve the protection. Casper hasn't broken the rules.
Speaker 1: Bernie has reason. Yes, there's a reason there. The bartender
Speaker 1: at one point says to Tom, I admire a man
Speaker 1: of principle. Okay, now again, whatever that might mean. I
Speaker 1: love the line, the quick one, but it plays into
Speaker 1: this where Tom he comes awake. I think this is
Speaker 1: after he's been beat up by I forget who. He's
Speaker 1: been beat up by it at this point, but he just says, immediately,
Speaker 1: where's my hat? That's the first thing that comes to mind,
Speaker 1: because again he just has to have a grasp on that.
Speaker 1: Notice the scene after he confesses to Leo about him
Speaker 1: and Verna and Leo gives him, in his words, the
Speaker 1: kiss off. What does he do at the very end
Speaker 1: throws him his hat? He's earned it by telling the
Speaker 1: truth and the dream. Okay, this of course balances that
Speaker 1: hard line of giving us too much information, but I
Speaker 1: think has enough poeticism to work. He talks about this
Speaker 1: dream where his hat blew off, goes rolling down this trail,
Speaker 1: and Verna says, well, what did it change? Indu she's
Speaker 1: heard this dream before. He says, nothing, just stayed a
Speaker 1: hat and he didn't chase it. He says, nothing more
Speaker 1: foolish than a man chasing his hat. So here's this idea,
Speaker 1: the silliness of Maraca.
Speaker 2: He gives principle, in this world, you hang on to
Speaker 2: it all the time.
Speaker 1: But what's the point of that in this world, this
Speaker 1: world of death and violence and angle planing and cheating
Speaker 1: and double crossing. So I really do think the movie
Speaker 1: is an open question ultimately over whether ethics are even
Speaker 1: worth it. I think you can make an argument that
Speaker 1: it comes down essentially that we're not going to say
Speaker 1: what ethics those are, but yeah, it's good to have those.
Speaker 1: I think that's something in the Carter Burwell score that's
Speaker 1: capturing that sensibility. But ultimately it's asking us that question,
Speaker 1: why bother with ethics in a world like this? And
Speaker 1: you know, and Bernie then is your sugar, he's your
Speaker 1: agent of chaos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really is here.
Speaker 1: And so that's Tom's hat. I don't know how this
Speaker 1: would play for everybody else's hats, Like you'd have to
Speaker 1: sit down and watch how they interact. But it's such
Speaker 1: a point of yes, emphasis by the Cohens.
Speaker 2: That emphasis is the right word.
Speaker 1: And the other thing with the Coens is they could
Speaker 1: just be screwing with us.
Speaker 2: They absolutely could at all times. And I'm with you,
Speaker 2: I'm with you completely. I'm buying all of it because
Speaker 2: we see Tom and we see the film overall very similarly.
Speaker 2: I think that hat has to be the manifestation of
Speaker 2: that principle, those ethics, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2: I come back to the word that comes up in
Speaker 2: the movie reason. In fact, one point where he's arguing
Speaker 2: with Leo, he says, no, you do things for a reason,
Speaker 2: you have to at least have something motivating that. And
Speaker 2: so then what's fascinating about Tom is we as viewers
Speaker 2: never know what his reason is, So we are just
Speaker 2: as he is, always playing detective, and that's what he is.
Speaker 2: He's not because he's really just the brains. He's not
Speaker 2: the bron behind Leo. But he is a confidant. He's
Speaker 2: not someone who's actually out there solving cases. But just
Speaker 2: like detectives in O their Coin Brothers films and in
Speaker 2: Dashal Hammett stories, he is constantly just piecing together clues.
Speaker 1: And those guys are always kind of in the middle. Right,
Speaker 1: They're not at the bottom of the pond, in the scum.
Speaker 1: They're not out of the water, right the law, They're
Speaker 1: swimming in the middle.
Speaker 2: That's it, right, the dark Knights of Sorts, that's really
Speaker 2: what they are. They are exactly in the middle. So
Speaker 2: then we because we don't know what's driving him, we
Speaker 2: don't know what his endgame is, So we're detectives too
Speaker 2: as viewers, just as he's watching every other character paying
Speaker 2: attention to everything they say and do, how they say it,
Speaker 2: what they have with them, the size and shape the things.
Speaker 2: He's drawing information from literally everything he can discern, and
Speaker 2: we as viewers then are picking that up from him
Speaker 2: as well. We're trying to decide what all those hat
Speaker 2: movements mean, why he keeps talking about the hat and
Speaker 2: everything else he does. What is his plan? Does he
Speaker 2: even know what his plan is? These are questions that
Speaker 2: hang over the whole film in I think a really
Speaker 2: compelling way. That's the suspense for us as viewers. We
Speaker 2: know everybody else's motivation. I think it's introduced and pretty clear.
Speaker 2: We could describe in about thirty seconds what everybody else
Speaker 2: in this film wants. What does Tom want? Well, I
Speaker 2: think it does get back to establishing or re establishing
Speaker 2: some kind of order, but that's a very ambiguous kind
Speaker 2: of ethereal thing and really isn't even completely clear until
Speaker 2: the end of the movie. But I do think that
Speaker 2: the real difference between him and the other characters, besides
Speaker 2: the fact that he's smarter alluded to all the time
Speaker 2: and we see that in action, but it's his understanding
Speaker 2: of human nature. Once he is able to discern who
Speaker 2: each character is, then he's got you. He can almost
Speaker 2: predict how you are going to act. That's the one
Speaker 2: thing amitst all this chaos is he's able to figure
Speaker 2: out what's driving you. And I think about the scene.
Speaker 2: There are many examples of this. But when Bernie comes
Speaker 2: to his house and he says, hello, Tom, what's the rumpus?
Speaker 2: How do you know it was me? And he says,
Speaker 2: you're the only one I know who'd knock and then
Speaker 2: break in. Your other friends wouldn't break in. He says,
Speaker 2: my other friends want to kill me, so they wouldn't
Speaker 2: have knocked. But he knows who Bernie is. Fundamentally, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he knows who he is, so he can figure out
Speaker 2: who that guy is in the room based on putting
Speaker 2: together a few clues. When he tells Leo it's a
Speaker 2: bad idea to marry Verna and says it's not worth
Speaker 2: going to war over, he says she's a grifter, she's
Speaker 2: just like her brother. Case after case throughout the film,
Speaker 2: he can almost perfectly predict what others will do because
Speaker 2: it's in their nature. They can't help themselves from being
Speaker 2: exactly who they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think that's absolutely right, But I want
Speaker 1: to ask you, do you think he believes that about Verna?
Speaker 1: Because I think if there's a degree of bittersweetness to
Speaker 1: their relationship and why it does work as well as
Speaker 1: it does, is I trust there's something genuine there between them.
Speaker 1: And the reason is this is the only relationship the
Speaker 1: two of them are involved in where there's no practical benefit, right,
Speaker 1: there's risk involved. So there's something genuine attracting them to
Speaker 1: each other. That is not a play. There's not an
Speaker 1: anm okay. Now, eventually there comes to be one, especially
Speaker 1: for Verna, I think, but at least when we first
Speaker 1: meet them, the impression is there together because they want
Speaker 1: to be. They just want to be. No one else
Speaker 1: in this film has that bottom.
Speaker 2: Line as antagonistation as the relationship is at times, there
Speaker 2: is that connection. I agree with you, and in fact
Speaker 2: I was so buying that relationship that watching it this
Speaker 2: second time, I thought for sure we were going to
Speaker 2: come to realize that what his true endgame was. The
Speaker 2: one thing that he was always hanging on to wasn't
Speaker 2: his love for Leo, but in fact his love for Verna.
Speaker 2: For her, that was what was influencing every decision he's
Speaker 2: making at the end of the film. And we won't
Speaker 2: say too much here for people who haven't seen it,
Speaker 2: but at the end of the film, I don't think
Speaker 2: the brothers validate that at all. I don't think Tom's
Speaker 2: behavior and the actions he take do not in any
Speaker 2: way validate that reading of the films.
Speaker 1: And you know, she violates his principles in her ensuing
Speaker 1: actions as things start to fall apart again whatever, I
Speaker 1: want to identify those principles as because he's a shifty
Speaker 1: guy too, that standard she doesn't meet, and so's.
Speaker 2: And his principles surprise us and can found us throughout
Speaker 2: the film because we think, we think we want him
Speaker 2: to be the good guy. We want him to be
Speaker 2: the good guy, and the Coen Brothers know that, and
Speaker 2: so we are accepting of the idea that he's not
Speaker 2: a killer. Well, he isn't a killer, really. He clearly
Speaker 2: has a distaste for it. He's not particularly good at it.
Speaker 2: There's that great clumsy scene where he tries to mimic
Speaker 2: without knowing he's mimicking it, but tries to mimic the
Speaker 2: grace of Leo in a scene where he tries to
Speaker 2: beat a killer down the stairs and take them by surprise,
Speaker 2: it doesn't happen that way for him, but there is
Speaker 2: a moment where we see that to act on his principles,
Speaker 2: if he is forced to act on his principles, he's
Speaker 2: willing to make that decision that the same way someone
Speaker 2: like Anton Schagur does on a much grander level.
Speaker 1: And that really serify that level. Yeah, that really stuck
Speaker 1: out to me this time when he does take Bernie
Speaker 1: to Miller's crossing. And what I forget maybe it's form
Speaker 1: of denial as well, is that as far as he knew,
Speaker 1: he was gonna shoot him, right, I mean, if he
Speaker 1: didn't know that he was going to be let alone
Speaker 1: to walk Bernie into the woods where the two henchmen
Speaker 1: couldn't see them, I don't know that that was his choice,
Speaker 1: that was his game.
Speaker 2: That's one of the great questions here, right.
Speaker 1: It's like he was given these cars to deal with
Speaker 1: and he lets Bernie go, so we can kind of
Speaker 1: now feel he's maybe a good guy. But if those
Speaker 1: two henchmen had been right next to him, he probably
Speaker 1: would have shot him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he might have. It's one of those great questions,
Speaker 2: one of those great mysteries I think surrounding this great film,
Speaker 2: Miller's Crossing, is available to rent or buy on DVD
Speaker 2: and stream on most platforms. If you have seen the
Speaker 2: movie and agree or disagree with our thoughts, we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from you feedback at film spotting dot net.
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Speaker 2: Look forward again to that conversation about Fargo coming to
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Speaker 3: This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Good Bye,