I already know what you’ve thought when you saw the title of this review. “Why bother reviewing a classic? If it’s that good, its quality and its reputation should speak for itself loud enough.” Well, a classic movie is not like a mandatory reading in high school. Not everybody has the patience to sit through the two hundred minutes of Akira Kurosawa’s majestic Seven Samurai. That’s just an example. I’ve been a fan of the Coen brothers for more than ten years, but up until now, I had never seen Blood Simple. If you have never seen it either, please don’t be as foolish as I am and run to your video store right now. The 1984 masterpiece should cost you peanuts to rent and provide you with the finest possible noir entertainment on screen.
The story is classic, cliché even, but the angle is so fresh that it doesn’t matter. Abby (Frances McDormand) is unhappily married to Julian (Dan Heyada), a club owner with morose temper. She fools around with her younger employee Ray (John Getz), a young, naive and handsome guy who works for him at the bar. Julian is turning all sorts of colors with rage and jealousy, so he hires a private eye (Emmet Walsh) to gather some evidence of adultery. Drowning in his anger and his depression, Julian is not satisfied to know Abby is cheating on him with Ray. After he comes to the bar and ask Julian for the two weeks of pay he’s due, he slides into a very dark place and decides to hire his private detective to get rid of Ray and Abby. Simple enough, huh? Yeah, that kind of plan always looks a lot better on paper.
What makes Blood Simple so great is not it’s story as much as how the Coen brothers decided to tell it. They step out of Hollywood’s narrative convention in order to heighten the tension in their movie, to an almost unbearable high. There is this awesome, jaw-dropping scene, right in the middle of the film, that lasts maybe twenty or thirty minutes, in between Julian and Ray, where there’s no words exchanged. Literally, there’s no dialogue whatsoever except maybe background voices. Whatever sound there is, flowing water, wind, radio or crickets are narrating, as the characters pull off a high tension scene without saying a word or even firing a bullet. They do a great use of shadow and darkness. There are some of the best, most atmospheric and efficient night scenes.
The Coen brothers are reputable for their meticulous nature. They leave zero inch of their frame unused. Every angle is calculated, but once they have composed their image, they leave all the necessary space to their actors to create some of the darkest characters. Frances McDormand is particularly breathtaking as Abby, a part that required a large and subtly nuanced game, because she gets to be the femme fatale without even looking to double cross anybody. The scope of her selfishness appears gradually through the movie and by the last scene (which is epic, by the way), she comes off as dark as the other characters.
Dan Heyada and Emmet Walsh also deliver superb scenes, whenever they are together or on their own. Julian’s speech to Ray, when he claims the two weeks’ pay, should be included in any top ten of the greatest speeches of cinema. Emmet Walsh probably has the most cliché of the roles, but he makes his P.I as sleazy and despicable as it gets. Really, you don’t know who to root for in Blood Simple, since all the characters are so hell bent on destroying each other; you’re not sure who has ideals worth saving.
Blood Simple doesn’t have the spectacular scope of No Country For Old Men and not the layered script of Burn After Reading, but it’s a spectacular movie that owns what it tries to say. It gets the point across. Frank Bill, author of Crimes in Southern Indiana, once told me that his favourite stories has “not a wasted word in them”. I’m pretty sure he’s a fan of the Coen brothers and of Blood Simple. Because there’s no a frame wasted in this movie. It’s one of the best noirs I’ve ever seen on screen.
PROS
Frances McDormand
Bleak Atmospheres
Not afraid of violence
CONS
Some will find it a little slow (personally, I like slow)
SCORE: 95%
