Viking Night: Raising Arizona
By Bruce Hall
June 8, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Joel and Ethan Coen enjoy the sort of culturally relevant niche that very few writers, directors or producers are ever fortunate enough to claim. Part of the reason may be that there aren’t many people in the world who can do so many things at such a high level and get consistently good results. For those not in the know, the Coen brothers are creators of such classics as The Big Lebowski, whose fans are almost religiously devoted to one of the most memorable comedies of the 1990’s. Among the faithful, almost everything the Coens create is like getting an extra birthday. For everyone else, the appeal is probably a little hard to understand. I suppose it’s a bit like driving a Jeep; if you’ve never experienced it, you can’t understand.
If you want to understand, know that for the Coens it all started with the noir thriller Blood Simple, released way back in 1984. If you haven’t seen it, the best description I could give you is “Kind of like a David Lynch movie, except that it’s good.” But while Blood Simple may be what put the two brothers on the map, the film that set the tone for the Coens’ enduring popularity was their second project, Raising Arizona. If Blood Simple is the sort of Hail Mary you throw at the beginning of your career when you’re trying to get noticed, Raising Arizona is the sort of film you make when you feel your instincts have been proven and you’re comfortable making risk part of your regular game plan. It’s also the first of a comedy brand; unique in its ability to combine pleasant things with horrible things in a way that makes you laugh and cringe at the same time.
Lighter in tone than its predecessor, Raising Arizona is the story of H.I. McDunnough (Nicolas Cage, at his quirky best), a soft-hearted, small-time hood with a grade school education and a fetish for convenience store holdups. “Hi,” as he’s called by his few friends, does his best to stay out of trouble but the problem is that he’s not really good at anything – especially staying out of trouble. Hi just can’t seem to catch a break, until he meets the woman of his dreams in a pretty lady cop called Edwina (the sublime Holly Hunter) – whom everyone calls "Ed." Ed has booked Hi into custody more than once, and the two kindred spirits share a spark during a fingerprint session and eventually marry.
Things are great for a while, as Hi puts his life of crime behind him and devotes himself to his marriage. It seems almost too simple at first – kiss your wife, go to work, come home, have dinner, kiss your wife, go to bed. But soon, the couple find themselves unable to conceive, and the tension gets to be more than either can handle. It isn’t long before Hi starts casing convenience stores again and Ed settles into a profound state of depression. Soon they’re both out of work, out of money and out of everything but time – to sit and think about how much they’d like to be parents.
When you have no job, no money and an extensive criminal record, having children doesn’t seem to be a very good idea, if you ask me. When a local businessman and his wife give birth to quintuplets, however, Edwina concocts a plan to relieve the new parents of their most photogenic bundle of joy. In real life, kidnappings rarely go as planned, and in an eccentric PG-13 comedy like Raising Arizona, they never do. Between his meddling boss, a couple of bumbling escaped convicts and the most intimidating bounty hunter since Boba Fett (who wouldn’t stand a chance, by the way), Hi finds it difficult to keep his clandestine new “family” together. And Edwina is wracked by guilt over the abominable nature of their crime.
While I am sure this probably doesn’t sound like a comedy, the nature of the Coen catalogue is that nothing is ever quite what it seems to be on the surface. Gritty thrillers like Fargo contain elements of unlikely humor that channel already grim source material into a macabre morality tale. Likewise, comedies such as Raising Arizona possess a sort of mean-spirited surrealism that makes it easy to like almost universally unlikable characters, and typically sets up a surprisingly uplifting parable in the final act.
Part of the appeal of the Coens to their fans is the fact that a drama as dour as No Country for Old Men is just a quick rewrite away from being as bizarrely humorous as Raising Arizona, and vice versa. I’m convinced that with relatively minor changes to just a handful of scenes, The Big Lebowski is no longer a comedy – it’s a sick, morbidly amusing extortion drama. That’s an unsettling dichotomy, but whether you’re a Coen devotee or not, you have to admit it makes for effective and memorable entertainment.
It also is the most common criticism leveled at the Coens, and Raising Arizona in particular. The humor is a little mean spirited, and the characterizations within the film would seem to be something of a condescending swipe at Red State culture. Yet I would suggest that this is more a stylistic touch rather than a patronizing one. We could just as easily come down on the film for making light of child abduction – no laughing matter in reality, but Raising Arizona makes it clear from the beginning that what we’re about to see is anything but reality.
A Coen comedy trademark is the construction of modern fables, complete with environments that exist in a slightly surreal world parallel to our own. Here, the laws of physics, logic and time aren’t exactly what we’re used to but it is meant to underscore the fact that what you’re seeing is utterly fictional. More often than not, the characters are regional or class exaggerations, intended to make them distinct or sympathetic. If anything, the mean streak present in most Coen comedy is – in my opinion – borne more out of disdain for their characters than for the audience. Hi and Edwina are the protagonists of Raising Arizona, but they’re also ignorant rubes who need to be taught a lesson and the meat grinder they are put through by their creators is meant to do just that.
Over the years, I’ve vacillated between liking this film a lot and liking it a little, and I think the primary reason would be the movie’s peculiar tone. But each time I’ve seen it, I find that as with most of the comedies produced by the Brothers Coen, the final act brings the film together and tightens all the story threads into a pleasing bundle that fits nicely into your heart. Most of the characters in Raising Arizona are in severe need of redemption, but in the end they either find it or they get what’s coming to them – and as the viewer it’s hard to argue with the results. But more than anything you’re made to realize that there’s the potential for good in the most unlikely people, and the willingness to take your time looking for it can make all the difference in the world.