Miller’s Crossing
This film was a little bit of a surprise. When Loris told me about “Miller’s Crossing”, he mentioned it with “Barton Fink” which he really liked and “Fargo” which he didn’t. I have never been a great fan of “Fargo” and thought that “Barton Fink” had quite a few lovely scenes I am still talking about – in fact I just quoted the film today. Nevertheless, “Barton Fink” did not really excite me, so I started “Miller’s Crossing” with relatively low expectations. Boy was I wrong. Usually, films by the Coen brothers are interesting to me on a rather intellectual level, but “Miller’s Crossing” hit a nerve somewhere, and I have no idea where it is.
On Wikipedia, it was stated that the Coens produced “Barton Fink” in a somewhat quick and dirty way because they were stuck on “Miller’s Crossing”. Indeed, the film has an intricate plot, but it’s not like it’s hard to follow it. There is this aspect of this film which I felt a surprising excitement for, yet on the other hand I seem to hit the same writer’s block in the process of reviewing it like the Coens did when they wrote it.
Overcoming aforementioned writer’s block was hard, and I am still not sure whether I did at all. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I was mostly mesmerized with the plot. The premise started off somewhat similar to “Blood Simple”, at least when it concerns the quasi-love-triangles, and then proceeded to becoming a complicated fight between the many characters who all have different interests and plans. I can totally see how it can be hard for such a plot to make sense, and I thought it was almost as gripping as “L.A. Confidential”, the film I consider the unattainable benchmark for a great, intricate thriller. Perhaps it was also the form – the meaning of the title “Miller’s Crossing” was only revealed halfway through the film, and it was perhaps the most brilliant scene, thanks to John Turturro’s wimpy sobbing. “Miller’s Crossing” did not have a single extraordinary scene like “No Country for Old Men” did, but the story itself had many more interesting elements. Everything about the film is a double-entendre, and every character has a second face – of course I loved that.
On a side note, I think the femme fatale of the story looks like Hilary Swank, and Hilary Swank probably wins the prize for being the least attractive actress I know. Then again I am kind of used to femme fatales in film noirs who are not attractive in a traditional sense, so Marcia Gay Harden did quite a great job with Verna in my opinion. She seemed believable despite her lack of pleasing character to my eye – that should be a compliment to her acting. Everybody else is pure brilliance. I loved John Turturro as the crying, pleading coward and laughed out loud when he begged for his life for the second time. I thought he was almost better than as Barton Fink even. Maybe the only thing this film lacks is John Goodman, but there was no rule suited for him so it is all forgiven.
I wrote this posting with the attempt of defending the film in my mind, but I found myself incapable of doing so. But all in all, “Miller’s Crossing” was an entertaining Coen for me, with pseudo-philosophical gangsters, a mysterious protagonist, a rather vicious femme fatale and other characters who are all, in their own way, very human. The fact that it is only no.4 in my Coen brothers ranking right now is already an indication that I really, really love their films, almost with no exception.