Old-timey music:' The songs of the Coen Brothers
If you've seen the brilliant trailer for the Coen Brothers' new film A Serious Man, you already know the film's attachment to Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love." For their entire careers, however, Joel and Ethan Coen have wittily showcased incongruous pop songs and soaring original instrumental music in their films, as this retrospective reveals.
Carter Burwell has composed music for the Coens going back to their 1984 debut, Blood Simple. Burwell's insistent, moody piano score may not be as memorable as the violent film noir's recurring use of a Motown hit. As screenwriter/blogger Todd Alcott points out in his terrific analysis of the film, "'The Same Old Song' is used three times in the movie, suggesting that the fatal mistakes the characters make are all part of an unstoppable continuum."
A quirkier, more innovative soundtrack came to the fore with the Coens' second film, the Southwestern screwball comedy Raising Arizona (1987). Nicolas Cage's wry narration as petty hood H.I. McDonough finds an exuberant counterpoint in Burwell's racing banjo music, whistles and yodeling. Maybe the countrified strains mock the film's trailer-park cast just a little bit, but the music also carries the audience along in a state of galloping giddiness, in perfect time with the rapid-fire jokes. Incidentally, the film's use of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" derives from Pete Seeger's "Goofing-Off Suite:"