In short
This Film Spotting “Archive” episode revisits the Coen Brothers’ 1990 gangster noir Miller’s Crossing. Guests (hosts) Adam and Josh discuss how the film’s opening—Tom Reagan dropping ice/whiskey while Johnny Casper complains—demonstrates masterful control of sound, framing, and character positioning.
Key claims
Tom’s “hat” symbolizes his personal ethics/principles, even if he’s not a moral hero; the movie asks “why bother with ethics in a world of violence and angles?” They argue Tom’s reason is ambiguous, making viewers detectives alongside him.
Notable examples
the dialogue-free Rug Daniels/toupee reveal in an alley; the silent hit sequence with unseen killers; the Carter Burwell score and Tom’s woods dream dissolve; Marcia Gay Harden’s Verna as an “unlikely femme fatale”; and the “space” staging that keeps Tom half between Leo and Casper.
Guests
Adam and Josh (Film Spotting hosts).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOWelcome to Filmspotting
1:05 to 2:15
Hosts introduce the episode and set the stage for the discussion.
“The July Savings Event from Apple Vacations is here.”
Welcome to Filmspotting
7:30 to 9:10
Hosts introduce the episode and set the stage for the discussion.
“Well, I had a good, what, 10 months on you?”
Exploring Miller's Crossing
9:10 to 11:20
A deep dive into the Coen Brothers' film Miller's Crossing.
“I can't help but think about that first assassination attempt on Vito Corleone in The Godfather, where we just see their legs as they run past that fruit stand and shoot Vito.”
Cinematic Techniques in Miller's Crossing
11:20 to 13:50
Discussion on the film's stylistic elements and storytelling techniques.
“And I think it's just partly the rhythm of the dialogue, the words, the phrasing that we have come to associate with the Coen brothers, even just ending on that line, Leo has, Finney says, take your flunky and dangle.”
Character Dynamics and Themes
13:50 to 14:00
Hosts analyze character interactions and ethical themes in the film.
“The opening scene is the one that I always think of just because that memory is so indelible of experiencing it.”
Exploration of Characters and Themes in Miller's Crossing
14:00 to 22:46
The hosts analyze the complex character dynamics and moral questions in Miller's Crossing.
“it did strike me what Byrne is doing with the ice and how the Coens are, of course, framing him.”
Character Development and Coen Brothers Rankings
24:51 to 28:00
The hosts discuss character development in Miller's Crossing and share their rankings of Coen Brothers films.
“Okay, let's keep talking about space a little bit more because it's also going to give me a chance to bring up Marcia Gay Harden as Verna, who is maybe the domino before the domino I mentioned.”
Ranking the Coen Brothers Films
28:00 to 29:10
Learn how the hosts rank Coen Brothers films and their personal favorites.
“I have it at number three and then I have no country at number two, which is the one I probably should revisit to really clamp down this list.”
Understanding Miller's Crossing
29:10 to 30:13
Explore the complexities of Miller's Crossing and how perspectives change over time.
“But, Josh, for me, it was number nine because of how far removed I was from seeing it originally.”
Exploring Themes of Ethics
30:13 to 36:20
Discuss the ethical dilemmas presented in Miller's Crossing and character motivations.
“The existential dilemmas that confound their characters consistently from movie to movie also just so happen to be those dilemmas that confound most of us in everyday life.”
Show all 13 chapters
Character Dynamics and Relationships
36:20 to 40:54
Delve into the relationships between characters and their implications within the film.
“So then we, because we don't know what's driving him, We don't know what his endgame is.”
Availability and Listener Engagement
40:54 to 42:50
Find out how to watch Miller's Crossing and engage with the show.
“I mean, if he didn't know that he was going to be let alone to walk Bernie into the woods where the two henchmen couldn't see them, I don't know that that was his game plan.”
Availability and Listener Engagement
42:53 to 43:26
Find out how to watch Miller's Crossing and engage with the show.
“Apple Vacations, where your story starts.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Adam Kempenaar:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
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0:59Adam Kempenaar:SpendQuest is a free-to-play social casino. Avoid where prohibited. Visit SpendQuest.com for more details. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. The July Savings Event from Apple Vacations is here. Book by July 23rd and save up to$400 off your flight and hotel package to Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, Hawaii, or Europe. From all-inclusive escapes to bucket list adventures, Apple Vacations makes it easy to create memories with the people who matter most. Start today at AppleVacations.com or contact your trusted travel advisor.
1:34Adam Kempenaar:And now, another appliance triumph from our friends at Grand Appliance.
1:39Josh Larsen:I love hosting summer parties, but dread reaching over a hot oven door to juggle appetizer trays.
1:46Adam Kempenaar:So I asked the experts at Grand Appliance for advice, and they recommended a Bosch wall oven with side swing doors for easier access. It's amazing. No reaching over the heat, and they installed it in no time. Host like a pro with expert advice from Grand Appliance. Shop grandappliance.com.
2:05Josh Larsen:Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited, the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. See any standard 2D movie anytime with no blackout dates or restrictions. Sign up now on the Regal app or at the link in our description and use code FILMSPOT26. to receive 15 % off.
2:30Josh Larsen:What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in art? No. Now look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a conversation.
2:39Adam Kempenaar:Hey, film spotters, we have for you what turned out to be maybe our longest conversation on the show ever. Maybe longer than the Tree of Life. I don't know. It's possible.
2:51Josh Larsen:We'll have to do the math, check the archives, but certainly it's in the top five longest reviews.
2:57Adam Kempenaar:Fargo, 30th anniversary Pantheon Project review. Spoilers, we both quite like the movie. That conversation coming to you Friday, and then the next picture show just tomorrow, as you're listening to this possibly on Wednesday, the day these archive shows drop. On Thursday, you'll hear the next picture show's pairing of Supergirl and the Cone's True Grit. So we thought, let's just keep it going. Let's keep the Cone Brothers love going and let's drop our conversation from 2018 when we gave the sacred cow treatment to Miller's Crossing. Let's put that back in people's feeds. And you have to be excited about that, Josh, considering where you have Miller's Crossing ranked in your Cone Brothers list.
3:42Josh Larsen:Number one, I'm sure it comes up. It's been there for a while. It remains. Spoiler, still remains after Fargo. The Fargo did get a little bump as we'll come up in our conversation. But yeah, so good to dig back into one of the formative movies for me in terms of starting to wrap my mind around how good a movie could be and how it is actually functionally good. So Miller's Crossing, yeah, seminal title.
4:10Adam Kempenaar:Here is that conversation about 1990s Miller's Crossing. Bernie ain't satisfied with the honest dollar he can make off the vaguely. He ain't satisfied with the business I do on his book. He is selling tips on how I bet. And that means part of the payoff that should be riding on my hip is riding on someone else's. So back we go to these questions. Friendship. Character. Ethics.
4:38Josh Larsen:It was the clinking ice that got me, Adam. The year was 1990, and I was a budding high school cinephile just beginning to take movies seriously. And an aspiring whiskey drinker? Not yet. I'd get there eventually. Debbie and I were on a big date downtown to see a movie that was just too artsy to be playing in the suburbs. The Coen Brothers' prohibition-era gangster drama Miller's Crossing, in which Gabriel Byrne stars as Tom Reagan, right-hand man to older crime boss Leo, played by Albert Finney. The movie opens with the two of them in Leo's office, listening to the complaints of a lower-ranked racketeer played by John Pulido.
5:12Josh Larsen:Specifically, the movie opens with a close-up of Tom dropping ice into a glass, then tipping some of that whiskey. Something about the way the ice is shot, the way the camera slowly moves away from the glass, the way the sound design reminds us of that glass throughout the rest of the scene. I mean, Tom says everything he needs to by the way he clinks those cubes, swirls them, or keeps them silent. I snapped to attention and realized what it was like to watch a movie in which the filmmakers were in masterful control of every element so that image, movement, sound came together exactly the way they intended and for a particular effect.
5:46Josh Larsen:In short, Miller's Crossing was the first time I can remember realizing, oh yeah, this is a real movie. We decided to revisit Miller's Crossing, which met an early demise in our film-spotting madness tournament of 1990s films, for a Sacred Cow review, Adam. And guess what? Oh yeah, this is still a real movie. Yeah, everyone really should just stop listening right now and re-watch Miller's Crossing. That's a good idea. I want to talk about so much. The performances, the Carter Burwell score, the hats. I do have a grand unified hat theory. Can't wait. But first I want to hear if there was a scene on this revisit that enthralled you like the movie's opening enthralled me, or are you going to give me the high hat and claim that on this revisit, Miller's Crossing struck you as a lesser Coen Brothers movie?
6:30Adam Kempenaar:It sounds like you're not. No, I'm not going to be doing that. In fact, it has moved up my Coen Brothers ranking list. I love it. A good three spots. It could go higher over on Letterboxd. I'm so happy. I'll link to that. Yeah, if anyone cares, in our show notes at filmspotting.net. And maybe we'll get into that list a little bit more here in a moment. First, though, I do want to point out, Josh, that that setup was wonderful. Really nice job with the intro. But really, you missed a great opportunity there. All you had to say was, Adam, what's the rumpus? They like that phrase, don't they? And as our regular Film Spotting listeners know, the people who subscribe to the podcast and have been following along with our Vincent Minnelli marathon, on.
7:09Adam Kempenaar:This is that bit of serendipity, that bit of coincidence spotting. We sometimes get crossover between films that have no other similarity to each other whatsoever. There's a rumpus reference in The Bad and the Beautiful. I missed that. No, there is. It's right there. I'll have to look up what the exact line is. But having just seen Miller's Crossing, it definitely stuck with me. You were a more sophisticated film connoisseur. Well, you are now. You were then. Well, I had a good, what, 10 months on you?
7:37Josh Larsen:Something like that? It must have been the 10 months.
7:39Adam Kempenaar:But it took me longer to fully appreciate Miller's Crossing. In fact, it took me this viewing of Miller's Crossing to really love this film as much as you love it. And I do want to go back a little bit before I answer your direct question there. I've said before, I think, on the show recently that this was my first Coen Brothers film. And that's not actually true, because I saw Raising Arizona 50 times as a kid in the 80s and loved the movie, but I had no awareness of it as a quote Cone Brothers film, even in 1991 or maybe 92, Josh, by the time I saw this, I think you were a little bit ahead of me in becoming a cinephile.
8:13Adam Kempenaar:It was around the time of my senior year the summer before and watching this movie on VHS. I definitely did not see Miller's Crossing in the theater in Iowa. Who knows if it even came to a theater in Iowa at that time, honestly, but I was just starting to get into film. And this movie, yes, was being presented to me as a film of note by directors of note, but I had no precedent for it whatsoever. I had no sense of their style, their preoccupations, all the things that we have come to most of us love and appreciate about the Coen brothers. Had no sense of it then, of course. And I do remember being struck by some of the same sequences I was this time.
8:48Adam Kempenaar:I'll go to the two big stylistic set pieces, of course. Danny Boy. The failed hit on Leo. Just a beautiful dialogue-free dance. A tracking shot from the open window. You don't see the perpetrator come in, just the sound. The curtain's blowing. You know someone's in the room. You don't see the bodyguard killed. You just hear it. Then you see his body and the killer's legs walking away to the door. He opens it. Another killer with guns comes in. And then the smoke we see, but they don't, as they go up the stairs, cross-cutting with Finney in bed, just enjoying the music, smoking a cigar, his puff of smoke down to the smoke he smells coming through the floorboards, and the killer's walking, and we only see their legs up the stairs, perhaps an homage to The Godfather.
9:31Adam Kempenaar:I can't help but think about that first assassination attempt on Vito Corleone in The Godfather, where we just see their legs as they run past that fruit stand and shoot Vito. Finney escaping out the window, shooting the one killer through the window with a thousand bullets, just this spray, Perhaps they're an homage to the spasm of death at the end of Bonnie and Clyde, a reference I would not have been able to make back when I saw this the first time. And then the gunfight with a car down the street. There are cinematic pyrotechnics and actual pyrotechnics in this sequence. Why wouldn't a budding teenage cinephile be blown away?
10:04Adam Kempenaar:And this middle-aged cinephile was just as impressed. Of course, the other one you have to point to with this movie, look into your heart. just as good the second time as it was the first time. Bernie Birnbaum, played by the great John Turturro, a Coen Brothers regular being taken out to the title Miller's Crossing, where he's going to be killed by Gabriel Burns' Tom Reagan. And the tension of that, the precision of the movement cutting between Tom, his quiet terror, as he moves still, slowly, with Bernie's desperate terror. Both men anticipating that that scene is only going to end one way, with both of them being dead.
10:40Adam Kempenaar:and we as viewers see no way out for either guy. It's intense. It's wonderful. Tommy, you can't do this. You don't bump guys. You're not like those animals back there.
10:54Adam Kempenaar:It's not right, Tom. They can't make us do this. It's the wrong situation. They can't make us different people than we are. We're not muscled, Tom. I never killed anybody. I used a little information for a chisel, that's all. It's my nature, Tom. I can't help, but somebody hits me an angle. I play it. I don't deserve to die for that. Do you think I do? I will say, even though I wasn't as sophisticated as you then, that opening scene was another one that really caught my attention and frankly stunned me. And I think it's just partly the rhythm of the dialogue, the words, the phrasing that we have come to associate with the Coen brothers, even just ending on that line, Leo has, Finney says, take your flunky and dangle.
11:33Adam Kempenaar:And just listening to a character, not just ask for something, but frame it by expressing his worldview, which is what John Pulido does. We've seen that in a lot of Coen Brothers movies. Pulido's so good. Just died in September 2016. And he's the unsung hero. He's the MVP of this movie. And that's it, Josh, is what really stunned me, I think, as a newcomer to the Coen Brothers and really to cinema as a whole was the performance. John Pulido's performance, that character, that sweaty, expressive, gesturing Johnny Casper is exactly the type of mannered, idiosyncratic character that we've seen now so many times in other Coen Brothers movies, including sometimes by John Pulido himself.
12:14Adam Kempenaar:I know for sure he appears in Barton Fink. That felt so new and fresh to me at the time. And the way the Coen Brothers keep the camera focused on him for almost two minutes before anyone else in the scene speaks. And here's another potential homage to The Godfather. It's like the opening scene of that film where We have the character sitting across from Vito. It's a close up on him. And he says, I believe in America. He expresses his worldview, even as he's asking for a favor from someone who is capable of granting it. And in The Godfather, it starts on that close up and pulls back to a wider shot.
12:51Adam Kempenaar:Here, it's the opposite. It actually starts wider on Polito and moves in. It gets closer as the scene goes on. But how animated he is contrasted with the stillness and the quiet of everyone else in that scene. Other than clinking the glass, Tom pretty much doesn't move except for the moment when he walks across from the back over to Leo's side. And we'll get to that a bit later as well. By the end of this five minute plus scene, Polito is bent over yelling at Leo. And he's so worked up that it seems like he's about to have a heart attack for real right there in front of us on screen. I mean, again, it just felt so new and exciting.
13:25Adam Kempenaar:It's exciting now. And this time I did notice even other aspects of the scene that excited me even more. But I've talked enough and I want to know what experience you had with that opening scene and with the film as a whole the second time around. Don't think that I'm some guinea fresh off the boat and you can kick me. But I'm too big for that now. I'm sick of taking a strap from you, Leo. I'm sick of marching into this goddamn office to kiss your Irish ass. and I'm sticking a high hat.
13:52Josh Larsen:The opening scene is the one that I always think of just because that memory is so indelible of experiencing it. Watching it again, though, it did strike me what Byrne is doing with the ice and how the Coens are, of course, framing him. And you talked about it. I think the reason we see Palito originally in a wider shot is so that we also notice that shadow in the back and we connect it with the bar that we see. And we think, oh, that's the guy who was making the drink. we are always, no matter how gripping Polito is and what he's saying, we are always aware of Tom Reagan in that scene. And that is the point because he will turn out to be the main character and it's all about him.
14:33Josh Larsen:And I watched it again just last night. And what he's essentially doing is affirming what Johnny Casper is saying. So without, by using that ice, it's like a punctuation mark to his complaints. So he's letting Leo know that this guy's got a point. He's got a beef. You should listen to him. And then we get Leo's response. We get the close-up shot of Tom's look of surprise because he thought everyone was on the same page. And that's the first domino that falls in an incredibly intricately plotted film noir narrative that just on its own is a pleasure to try to follow and put together, but also is rooted in this moral conundrum that's really at the heart of this film.
15:20Josh Larsen:It's not even a moral conundrum. For me, Miller's Crossing is asking, should we bother with moral conundrums? That's kind of the foundational question. And then it lets us watch its characters squirm and wrestle with that themselves. I think that's why Johnny Casper is going to have a heart attack because he doesn't get the quote-unquote morality he expects. And, of course, Tom Regan wrestles with that as well. So let me just hit a couple of the other moments, though, that did jump out at me as much as that opening. You mentioned the dialogue-free elements. How about that silent movie moment of revealing Rug Daniels dead in the alley?
15:59Josh Larsen:Okay. No one says a thing. Instead, we get a shot of the dog, shot of the boy. We don't know what they're looking at. And then comes the money shot of Rug Daniels with his wig askew. And we realize, oh, this is the guy they were just talking about. And all of that information is plotted, but also in something that could be pulled from almost a Charlie Chaplin short, like a really grim Charlie Chaplin short.
16:23Adam Kempenaar:There's a great joke in there, too, right, that it comes up multiple times throughout the film that Tom Reagan, the brains, who's always piecing everything together based on evidence, is sure that he knows certain things about this whole scenario because of what happened to Rug Daniels. And he's trying to figure out what happened to the toupee as if that has significance. We're the only ones who know. We're the only ones who know that a kid just took it and it has no grander cosmic point beyond it. But it's stymieing Tom throughout the entire film.
16:51Josh Larsen:And there's some of that dark humor that they're so well known for. I mentioned in our The Bad and the Beautiful review earlier this week, as part of our Minnelli Marathon, you talked about a dissolve you noticed in that film. How about this is that great dissolve of all time, one of the greats at least, from Tom alone in the woods at Miller's Crossing, standing still in his overcoat, his hands are down, the gun is pointing down, and we just dissolve to the two henchmen who brought him there leaning against the car back on the road, exact same spot. And man, that whole setting, it only appears twice in the film, although we kind of get it when Tom recounts his dream.
17:29Josh Larsen:The opening credits and the dream. And the credits. So maybe two significant scenes. But that music, the Carter Burwell score, and those pines and looking up from the ground to the sky as we slowly track through them, that's one of the transcendental moments in cinema for me. And by that, I mean, it's incredibly moving in a way I can't quite pinpoint. There's something ennobling about it, even though it's marking a march of death, essentially. And having those two things held together in the same moment with nothing but music and camera movement, it's miraculous.
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18:07Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, it is. There's something poetic, obviously, about the way it's constructed, but something poetic just in that gesture of looking up towards the sky, trying to somehow make sense of this, which is really the point of this whole film. And I do want to go back just briefly to the opening scene, though, Josh, because what really stood out for me this time, beyond all the great points you made, is the movement. Exactly how Tom is moving from the beginning of the scene to the very end of the scene, even after John Pulido has exited. And I'll confess, sometimes I'm a bad movie watcher. This was the first time I'd seen this movie since that time in 91 or 92.
18:41Adam Kempenaar:And even after finishing it and loving the opening scene, If you had asked me again, how does Miller's Crossing open? I would have said the first shot is John Pulido's face. I didn't remember the glass. I didn't remember the drink. I just put so much weight. It was so vivid in my mind. Pulido's face that I was sure that's how it started. I was also sure that's how it started because I thought it was this homage to the Godfather. They were riffing on that idea of opening with that favor being asked for. And I wanted to see just how closely they were paying tribute to it. If in fact they were. I also just wanted to watch the movie again because it was so much damn fun the second time here, the first time on this revisit that I started the film again.
19:22Adam Kempenaar:And I was immediately struck by the brilliance of how they use the space. And it's through the entire film. There are seven examples I could point to of characters being at a distance or at a very close proximity to other characters in the scene that other filmmakers just don't frame people in that way. And it doesn't add to the psychology and it doesn't add to the humor the way the Coen brothers do it. But it starts right in that opening scene because it opens on that drink, as you've noted, the ice, the whiskey, the sound first appropriate, as you said, because there are so many instances of that throughout this film.
19:55Adam Kempenaar:And it's appropriate for its influences. This movie's influences on screen and in fiction, thinking about Dashiell Hammond, how much of his influence you see in their work, the drink. And we know this from any hard boiled film we've seen or read the material. That's just going to be a recurring motif. They're going to walk into any scene and pour a drink. So, okay, you don't really think too much of it. But then when it does cut to Casper for the first time, you don't really know in the background who's holding that drink. It looks like it should be whoever that is. He's not in focus, but he's holding something and he seems to be by the bar.
20:29Adam Kempenaar:Okay, we're going to come to learn that it's Tom. He's on Polito's side of the table. He's not on Leo's side. you do see one guy a sort of henchman you assume right behind palito a bodyguard of some kind but what side is this guy the mysterious guy in the back on it's not clear yet a minute into the scene still completely out of focus the whole time tom this mystery man starts walking towards the camera along the side of the frame casper actually notices him and the corner brothers show in close-up him noting him going by it's significant yeah he gives him a glance once that shadow crosses him.
21:04Adam Kempenaar:Once Leo speaks, breaking up Polito's dialogue, that's when we're finally introduced to Tom, and he's clearly entrenched on that side of the table, on that side of this potential dispute. As the movie then cuts back and forth a little bit, it's a two-shot. For three or four shots in a row, it's always pairing Leo and Tom together in this frame. And when we do see that Tom disagrees with him, he thinks his boss is making the wrong play, he tells him, and where does he do it? As soon as Polito finally exits along with the Dane, Tom goes and sits not even just right across from him at his desk. He goes and sits halfway across the room on a couch.
21:40Adam Kempenaar:He's halfway between where the scene began over on that side of the room where he was for most of the scene right behind Leo. Visually, he's backing him that entire time. Now he's not. Now he's right in the middle of it all, just as he's going to be for the rest of the movie. He's going to be stuck playing both sides. You're never sure completely where his loyalty lies. You're never sure what his angle is. You're never sure what his motivation is. And they emphasize that really subtly just with where he's positioned in the frame right in that opening scene. Yeah.
22:10Josh Larsen:And how he's trying to balance that deference to Leo with what he believes to be right and his own principles and Casper's legitimate argument.
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24:47Josh Larsen:Shop grandappliance.com. Okay, let's keep talking about space a little bit more because it's also going to give me a chance to bring up Marcia Gay Harden as Verna, who is maybe the domino before the domino I mentioned. That sets this in motion, dating Leo essentially to protect her brother, John Turturro, who you mentioned, who's ripping people off, ripping Johnny Casper off. Yet she's with Leo so that Leo will offer protection, even though Bernie's in the wrong. She is amazing in this movie. She's really good.
25:18Adam Kempenaar:An unlikely femme fatale, too. Exactly. I don't think of Marcia Gay Harden that way. You would never expect that.
25:24Josh Larsen:But man, does she chomp into this role and make it much more than a caricature of a type that could easily just be funny. And I think it all comes together in a scene that does also use space. Well, it's at the club where Tom, they've had a spat. She and Tom, for those who haven't seen it, are also involved with each other. And they've had a spat. And so he comes charging into the women's restroom area. And what does he say to her? Something about, say he claims his job is to intimidate helpless women. Or I've been intimidating helpless women. And she says, find one and intimidate her. Okay, great line.
26:00Josh Larsen:Beautiful delivery. Things get violent. She hits him. He throws a glass at her, breaks a mirror. She just looks at him and they hold her, give her that moment.
26:09Adam Kempenaar:I suppose you think you raised hell.
26:11Josh Larsen:And then the spacing comes where she saunters out and the camera. Leave him. Leave him in the back. Leave him, sticks with her. Yeah. Except for that shot back to him. But at this point, because we've been following with her, it's a reverse tracking shot and he's getting smaller and smaller. Being diminished. In the frame, being diminished. That is just a beautiful combination of performance. And as you said, spacing that is also one of the highlights of the film, I think.
26:39Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, I will say about Marsha Gay Harden that she plays enough notes here that I think we as viewers initially think we know everything we need to know about her based on the description of her that we get, based on everything Tom says about her. And that really is Tom's key to this whole movie we'll talk more about. It's how he's able to discern the true nature of people. But he may be right about Marsha Gay Harden's Verna, but she plays it complexly enough that we're not quite sure he's right. We think there might be more to her.
27:06Josh Larsen:I think there's way more to her. giving her credit for that's a good point too we mostly hear her describe we almost get more scenes as many scenes let's say of her being characterized by others than she gets herself yeah and yet i think marcia gay hardin holds her own and manages to turn a lot of these men around within
27:28Adam Kempenaar:the plot and for her own needs uh despite not getting all that time so miller's crossing was number one on your coen brothers films ranking i'm guessing it stayed there after this rewatch
27:39Josh Larsen:and this is you know this is a in a sense a pointless conversation because these are well it's pointless because it's pointless but also because with the coen brothers we're talking very small degrees here yeah i'm only going to say i did watch true grit within the last week which is another one i need my number four coen brothers film so there's another one that would have been in the running hail caesar is fairly fresh in my mind it was my top film of that year I have it at number three and then I have no country at number two, which is the one I probably should revisit to really clamp down this list.
28:08Josh Larsen:But yeah, after this revisit, I'm definitely keeping it there.
28:12Adam Kempenaar:So it is all about degrees and this is totally arbitrary anyway. But our Coen Brothers top 10 really doesn't look very similar at all other than us both having no country pretty high. You have it at number two. I have it at number one. I have that top tier, which for me is no country Fargo, then inside Llewyn Davis and then barely a drop off at all. Right. That's how it goes with that. To tier two, Raising Arizona. I put it that high. I exalt Raising Arizona because I think it just might be, if not the funniest film of all time. It's in my top five comedies ever made. So it deserves to be there at number four.
28:43Adam Kempenaar:Then I had Barton Fink, Lebowski, A Serious Man, Blood Simple, then Miller's Crossing. That's how far down I had it. And I'll get to the reasons why in a moment. But I had it then just ahead of True Grit at number 10. Now, because of how much I love Miller's Crossing, watching it again, I've bumped it up to number six and I could make a case for having it ahead of Raising Arizona and Barton Fink. It's just so hard because they're all so great. But, Josh, for me, it was number nine because of how far removed I was from seeing it originally. It wasn't fresh in my mind at all. But also because, if I'm being totally honest, I remember walking away from it really, really confused.
29:24Adam Kempenaar:as wowed as i was by the filmmaking i know i was lost watching the film and what i realized watching it again is that what changed here in the what 27 years is that true since i've seen this movie let's just move on how is that possible most of our listeners aren't even that old to think that's how long it's been since i've seen miller's crossing what's changed isn't just that I got older, that's for sure, that I got smarter, maybe, maybe just a little, or that I've read more detective fiction or watched more detective movies, though that is true as well, I realized that the Cone brothers have actually been responsible for teaching me how to watch movies.
30:05Adam Kempenaar:Not only watch movies in general, but watch their movies. They've taught me a certain worldview that I can now understand. The existential dilemmas that confound their characters consistently from movie to movie also just so happen to be those dilemmas that confound most of us in everyday life. And we could discuss the reasons why, if there are reasons why Tom ultimately does what he does, why he is playing all of these angles and all these people against each other and where he ends up. Is it because it was always driven by loyalty to Leo or is the reason reason itself in some way, Josh? And I wonder if this is getting at even what you were kind of hinting at in terms of the larger questions this movie is posing, the very thing that so many Cone characters to me seek and try to live by, whether it's Ed Crane and the man who wasn't there, which I know you love more than me, I appreciate it, you really love it, to Larry Gopnik in A Serious Man, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men, and even Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, is trying to establish order or reestablish a perceived order that was lost that exists now in this chaotic world.
31:15Adam Kempenaar:And I can't say that that exploration began with Miller's Crossing because there are elements of it, undeniably, in Raising Arizona and in Blood Simple. But I do think it's explored most emphatically and brilliantly to that point here in Miller's Crossing.
31:29Josh Larsen:Yeah, so the confusion element, you know, this movie does make sense if you follow all the threads. But as we've learned from the original film noirs, that doesn't really matter. Right. You know, like it's the plot isn't the point. It's more the ideas that the movie is interested in and the mood that it sets. So it's to its credit that Miller's Crossing, which is very hard to follow how this all comes together, does come together. It does. It absolutely does. So they've done their work. Now I see that. But right. But on a first watch, when you're already awash in all of the visual information and technique, it can be very difficult to put those pieces together.
32:04Josh Larsen:So completely understandable. But it does hold up. Now, as to these larger questions you're talking about, this brings us to my hat theory. And what I think, and I'm just talking about Tom here. Is this your next book, by the way? Are you sure you want to get into it here? No, it's not going to go on that long. Don't worry. Tom's hat, it represents the ethics, the principles, the standard that he's going to hold on to no matter what the cost. Now, I don't mean that he's an ethical character. No. In fact, there's no way that he is. Exactly. But he has, in his mind, he has a standard that he holds to, and that's represented by his hat.
32:43Josh Larsen:The last grasp is that physical manifestation. So if he loses his grip on it, this goes to what you were saying, it's anarchy. That's the word that John Polito uses. Okay, so here's some evidence of Tom's ethics. Again, ethics in quotes. He won't take Leo's offer to square his gambling debts. Okay, that would be the wrong thing to do. He wants to pay it himself. He tells Leo protecting Bernie is a bad play, partly because Bernie doesn't deserve the protection. Casper hasn't broken the rules. Right. Bernie has. Reason. Yes, there's a reason there. The bartender at one point says to Tom, I admire a man of principle.
33:19Josh Larsen:Okay. Now, again, whatever that might mean. I love the line, the quick one, but it plays into this where Tom, he comes awake. I think this is after he's been beat up by, I forget who he's been beat up by at this point, but he just says immediately, where's my hat? That's the first thing that comes to mind because, again, he just has to have a grasp on that. Notice the scene after he confesses to Leo. about him and Verna. And Leo gives him, in his words, the kiss off. What does he do at the very end? Throws him his hat. He's earned it by telling the truth and the dream. Okay. This balances that hard line of giving us too much information, but I think has enough poeticism to work.
33:59Josh Larsen:He talks about this dream where his hat blew off, goes rolling down this trail. And Verna says, well, what did it change into? She's heard this dream before. He says, nothing, just stayed a hat. And he didn't chase it. He says nothing more foolish than a man chasing his hat. So here's this idea, the silliness of morality. Yeah, if you have some integrity or principle in this world, you hang on to it all the time. But what's the point of that in this world, this world of death and violence and angle playing and cheating and double crossing? So I really do think the movie is an open question, ultimately, over whether ethics are even worth it.
34:37Josh Larsen:I think you can make an argument that it comes down essentially that we're not going to say what ethics those are, but yeah, it's good to have those. I think that's something in the Carter Burwell score that's capturing that sensibility. But ultimately, it's asking us that question. Why bother with ethics in a world like this? And, you know, and Bernie then is your sugar. He's your agent of chaos. Yeah, he really is here. And so that's Tom's hat. I don't know how this would play for everybody else's hats. Like you'd have to sit down and watch how they interact. But it's such a point of emphasis by the Coens.
35:13Josh Larsen:That emphasis is the right word.
35:14Adam Kempenaar:And the other thing with the Coens is they could just be screwing with us. They absolutely could at all times. And I'm with you. I'm with you completely. I'm buying all of it because we see Tom and we see the film overall very similarly. I think that has to be the manifestation of that principle, those ethics, whatever you want to call it. I come back to the word that comes up in the movie, reason. In fact, one point where he's arguing with Leo, he says, no, you do things for a reason. You have to at least have something motivating that. And so then what's fascinating about Tom is we as viewers never know what his reason is.
35:47Adam Kempenaar:So we are just as he is always playing detective. And that's what he is. He's not because he's really just the brains. He's not the brawn behind Leo, but he is a confidant. he's not someone who's actually out there solving cases, but just like detectives in other Coen Brothers films and in Dashiell Hammett stories, he is constantly just piecing together clues.
36:07Josh Larsen:And those guys are always kind of in the middle, right? They're not at the bottom of the pond in the scum. They're not out of the water with the law. They're swimming in the murk. That's it.
36:18Adam Kempenaar:They're dark knights of sorts. That's really what they are. They are exactly in the middle. So then we, because we don't know what's driving him, We don't know what his endgame is. So we're detectives too as viewers. Just as he's watching every other character, paying attention to everything they say and do, how they say it, what they have with them, the size and shape of things. He's drawing information from literally everything he can discern. And we as viewers then are picking that up from him as well. We're trying to decide what all those hat movements mean, why he keeps talking about the hat and everything else he does.
36:50Adam Kempenaar:What is his plan? Does he even know what his plan is? these are questions that hang over the whole film in, I think, a really compelling way. That's the suspense for us as viewers. We know everybody else's motivation. I think it's introduced and pretty clear. We could describe in about 30 seconds what everybody else in this film wants. What does Tom want? Well, I think it does get back to establishing or reestablishing some kind of order, but that's a very ambiguous kind of ethereal thing and really isn't even completely clear until the end of the movie, but I do think that the real difference between him and the other characters besides the fact that he's smarter alluded to all the time.
37:26Adam Kempenaar:And we see that in action, but it's his understanding of human nature. Once he's able to discern who each character is, then he's got you. He can almost predict how you are going to act. That's the one thing amidst all this chaos is he's able to figure out what's driving you. And I think about the scene. There are many examples of this, but when Bernie comes to his house and he says, hello, Tom, what's the rumpus? How'd you know it was me? And he says, you're the only one I know who'd knock and then break in. Your other friends wouldn't break in. He says, my other friends want to kill me so they wouldn't have knocked.
37:57Adam Kempenaar:But he knows who Bernie is fundamentally. He knows who he is so he can figure out who that guy is in the room based on putting together a few clues. When he tells Leo it's a bad idea to marry Verna and says it's not worth going to war over, he says she's a grifter. She's just like her brother. Case after case throughout the film, he can almost perfectly predict what others will do because it's in their nature. they can't help themselves from being exactly who they are.
38:24Josh Larsen:Yeah. So I think that's absolutely right. But I want to ask you, do you think he believes that about Verna? Because I think if there's a degree of bittersweetness to their relationship and why it does work as well as it does is I trust there's something genuine there between them. And the reason is this is the only relationship the two of them are involved in where there's no practical benefit, right? There's risk involved. So there's something genuine attracting them to each other that is not a play. There's not an angle. Now, eventually there comes to be one, especially for Verna, I think. But at least when we first meet them, the impression is they're together because they want to be.
39:04Josh Larsen:They just want to be. No one else in this film has that bottom line relationship.
39:07Adam Kempenaar:As antagonistic as the relationship is at times, there is that connection. I agree with you. And in fact, I was so buying that relationship that watching it this second time, I thought for sure we were going to come to realize that what his true end game was, the one thing that he was always hanging on to wasn't his love for Leo, but in fact, his love for Verna. That was what was influencing every decision he's making. At the end of the film, and we won't say too much here for people who haven't seen it, but at the end of the film, I don't think the Coen brothers validate that at all. I would agree.
39:40Adam Kempenaar:Tom's behavior and the actions he take do not in any way validate that reading of the film. And you know why?
39:45Josh Larsen:She violates his principles. Yeah. In her ensuing actions, as things start to fall apart again, whatever you want to identify those principles as, because he's a shifty guy to that standard she doesn't meet. Yeah. And so she's out.
39:59Adam Kempenaar:And his principles surprise us and confound us throughout the film. Confound is a good word. Because we think that he— Well, we want him to be the good guy. We want him to be the good guy. And the Coen brothers know that. And so we are accepting of the idea that he's not a killer. Well, he isn't a killer, really. He clearly has a distaste for it. He's not particularly good at it. There's that great clumsy scene where he tries to mimic, without knowing he's mimicking it, but tries to mimic the grace of Leo in a scene where he tries to beat a killer down the stairs and take them by surprise. It doesn't happen that way for him.
40:30Adam Kempenaar:But there is a moment where we see that to act on his principles, if he is forced to act on his principles, he's willing to make that decision that the same way someone like Anton Chigurh does on a much grander level.
40:43Josh Larsen:And that really stuck out to me this time when he does take Bernie to Miller's Crossing. And what I forget, maybe it's form of denial as well, is that as far as he knew, he was going to shoot him, right? I mean, if he didn't know that he was going to be let alone to walk Bernie into the woods where the two henchmen couldn't see them, I don't know that that was his game plan.
41:06Adam Kempenaar:That's one of the great questions here, right?
41:08Josh Larsen:It's like he was given these cars to deal with and he lets Bernie go. So we can kind of now feel he's maybe a good guy. But if those two henchmen had been right next to him, he probably would have shot him.
41:20Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, he might have. It's one of those great questions, one of those great mysteries, I think, surrounding this great film. Miller's Crossing is available to rent or buy on DVD and stream on most platforms. If you have seen the movie and agree or disagree with our thoughts, we'd love to hear from you. Feedback at filmspotting.net.
41:43Adam Kempenaar:If you're a FilmSpotting family member, you can access discussions like that one at your fingertips whenever you would like, plus a weekly newsletter, early access to events and more. Look forward again to that conversation about Fargo coming to your feed this Friday. If you would like more information about the family, you can get that at FilmSpottingFamily.com. Thanks for listening. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
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From the publisher
This week's archive episode is Adam and Josh's 2018 Sacred Cow review of the Coen Brothers' period gangster film Miller's Crossing.
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