I can't tell if I'm reading half-baked internet intellectualism or a sendup of it.
A more cynical person would wonder how much splitsider.com pays per word.
The Coens don't do straight-up adaptations nor do they even veer near one; they love little pastiches and components and elements and they do not play fair. The advertising for Fargo claimed it was based on a true story which it's not. I've heard several claims made about O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Coens' knowledge or lack thereof about The Odyssey but regardless the film isn't an adaptation or a full retelling, there's just elements to it that the Coens picked up and used.
They play around with the source material liberally. It begins by evoking a muse. A man named Ulysses long separated from his family undertakes an arduous journey home with some companions, only to discover his kids think he's dead and his estranged wife is entertaining a new suitor. There's a one-eyed monster of a guy who eventually gets his by a sharp stick through his (good) eye. There's some real sexy ladies by the water who sing to the men, love them up and possibly, like Circe, transmogrify 'em. There's a blind seer who is kinda like Tiresias and a guy named Homer and a guy with the middle name Menelaus. The film ends discussing the "heroic task" of having to find a ring at the bottom of a huge body of water (which happened to Theseus, not Odysseus). The Coens take what they want, slyly allude to what they wish, and dare you to see more into it.
Once you start identifying parallels, much like the perceived synchronicity in the Pink Floyd/Oz Dark Side of the Rainbow mashup, you tend to see more and more. Escaping from a chain gang is kinda like escaping from the underworld (or perhaps into it). Ulysses and his "crew" cross a large sea of waving wheat. There's a blind man in charge of making music. But then there's the legend of Robert Johnson and his crossroads deal with the devil.
From this you can see quite a lot into the Coens' work, but I agree that the life of Wittgenstein isn't quiiiite encoded into The Big Lebowski. Again, the film is shrouded in all kinds of source myths; it's supposed to be a version of The Big Sleep but only retains certain story elements (blackmail, old money weirdo, a made-up story about a runaway wild child) and full-on makes up the rest, which is a Chandler noir pastiche with some Nihilists thrown in for good measure. I suppose you can see whatever you'd like in the rest, but fer cryin out loud don't stretch yourself too hard.
Serious pomo exploration of a cult film or a pisstake of the kind? Not sure, but it's just caused a lot of words to tumble out of some smart people so I guess it's doing one of the jobs it was meant to do.
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A more cynical person would wonder how much splitsider.com pays per word.
The Coens don't do straight-up adaptations nor do they even veer near one; they love little pastiches and components and elements and they do not play fair. The advertising for Fargo claimed it was based on a true story which it's not. I've heard several claims made about O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the Coens' knowledge or lack thereof about The Odyssey but regardless the film isn't an adaptation or a full retelling, there's just elements to it that the Coens picked up and used.
They play around with the source material liberally. It begins by evoking a muse. A man named Ulysses long separated from his family undertakes an arduous journey home with some companions, only to discover his kids think he's dead and his estranged wife is entertaining a new suitor. There's a one-eyed monster of a guy who eventually gets his by a sharp stick through his (good) eye. There's some real sexy ladies by the water who sing to the men, love them up and possibly, like Circe, transmogrify 'em. There's a blind seer who is kinda like Tiresias and a guy named Homer and a guy with the middle name Menelaus. The film ends discussing the "heroic task" of having to find a ring at the bottom of a huge body of water (which happened to Theseus, not Odysseus). The Coens take what they want, slyly allude to what they wish, and dare you to see more into it.
Once you start identifying parallels, much like the perceived synchronicity in the Pink Floyd/Oz Dark Side of the Rainbow mashup, you tend to see more and more. Escaping from a chain gang is kinda like escaping from the underworld (or perhaps into it). Ulysses and his "crew" cross a large sea of waving wheat. There's a blind man in charge of making music. But then there's the legend of Robert Johnson and his crossroads deal with the devil.
From this you can see quite a lot into the Coens' work, but I agree that the life of Wittgenstein isn't quiiiite encoded into The Big Lebowski. Again, the film is shrouded in all kinds of source myths; it's supposed to be a version of The Big Sleep but only retains certain story elements (blackmail, old money weirdo, a made-up story about a runaway wild child) and full-on makes up the rest, which is a Chandler noir pastiche with some Nihilists thrown in for good measure. I suppose you can see whatever you'd like in the rest, but fer cryin out loud don't stretch yourself too hard.
Serious pomo exploration of a cult film or a pisstake of the kind? Not sure, but it's just caused a lot of words to tumble out of some smart people so I guess it's doing one of the jobs it was meant to do.