Few things feel as ominous a curse in Hollywood as the “sophomore slump” and the Coen brothers found themselves in potentially perilous territory following their unanimously praised debut Blood Simple (1984), a stark entry in the neo-noir genre that pervaded the first half of the ‘80s. Rather than following up their stylish thriller with another genre exercise, Joel and Ethan Coen refuted convention, and common wisdom, by hedging their bets on comedy. Raising Arizona (1987) is patently hard to pin down, much like many of the films the Coens made in the years to come, and runs the gamut from well-timed domestic squabbles to moments of cartoon-esque spectacle, like Preston Sturges for the Joe Dante generation.
The set-up for Raising Arizona’s crime-comedy hijinks is relatively simple: a couple existing on other sides of the law, H. I. McDunnough (Nicolas Cage) and Ed (Holly Hunter), discover that they can’t have children so they decide to kidnap one of the five quintuplets recently born to local furniture salesman Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), which, naturally, leads to plenty of complications. Not unlike Blood Simple and, especially, the later Fargo (1995), the Coens consistently feel ahead of their audience in subverting genre conventions: a daring prison escape (featuring convicts played by John Goodman and William Forsythe) results in bouts of hick comedy rather than action, a trip to the convenience store to buy diapers leads to violence, and the bounty hunter chasing after the couple more readily resembles a vision from Mad Max than anything existing in ‘80s America.
What makes Raising Arizona stand out, not only within the Coens’ oeuvre, but American comedy from its era, is just how far the Coens are willing to push the genre’s eccentricities to its limits. Raising Arizona never reaches the inanity of a spoof, but the consequences of reality seldom matter to its characters or to anyone watching them. As we witness its lead characters dodge each other, the law, and characters hellbent on ending their time on earth, we begin to recognize them as invincible. It feels like the Coens are myth-building by way of Looney Tunes, projecting a vision of the United States teeming with characters that are larger-than-life, defined by their wanton recklessness, sky-high hair, and ownership of the frame—as if nothing else in their world or ours matters. Raising Arizona not only predicts the similar, yet more restrained, crime-comedy trappings of Fargo and the zany character work of Barton Fink (1991) and The Big Lebowski (1998). But, perhaps most of all, this is the Coens’ companion to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), another road comedy set in the American South where criminals act as the film’s saviors and you just can’t trust John Goodman.
Raising Arizona screens this Wednesday, July 31, at 4 Star Theater. Zach Schonfield, author of How Coppola Became Cage, will be in attendance for a Q&A.
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