The Hudsucker Proxy

365 Films

Entry #46

The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

Directed by Joel Coen

The Coen Brothers seem to take an inordinate amount of pleasure out of subverting the expectations of even their most ardent fans.  After the academy award winning triumph of Fargo, they followed it up with the stoner-bowling-Chandler-LA love letter, The Big Lebowski.  After the grim, hard-bitten neo noir of No Country For Old Men came the bugged out live-action cartoon spy satire, Burn After Reading.  Their 1994 bomb, The Hudsucker Proxy quite neatly fits into this trend by following perhaps the most abstract and heady effort of their career, Barton Fink.  The key words to note in Barton, Fargo, and No Country are award winning.  Every time the boys get heaped with a whole lot of praise, they find a way to churn out a follow up that only a handful of people could love or even see.  Such is the reputation that Hudsucker has been unfairly saddled with: an inferior follow up.  Not only is the film the biggest box office dud the duo has ever produced (don’t quote me on that, I’m not entirely sure I just don’t feel like looking it up…yeah, you heard me) it also ranks fairly low in critic respectability rankings (although I’m not sure how official these rankings are).  I think time has been kind to the film and when the unfair burden of expectation has been lifted, Hudsucker reveals itself to be one of their most accessible and charming productions to date.  Digging deep into the well of Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and even the Warner Bros cartoon collection proves to be a comfortable fit for the Coen brothers.  Although at times the seams show when the pastiche is trying a little bit TOO hard-Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance is a culprit here, she gives it her all but the character never quite rises above the Rosalind Russell imitation it so intensely strives for.  And the sagely yet too magical black janitor Moses seems like an import from the past that had long since reached its expiration date (but don’t get me wrong, I love Bill Cobbs).  That being said the film is a marvel of art deco influenced production design and instantly quotable screwball dialogue.  The casting of Tim Robbins as the imbecile with the hearth of gold Norville Barnes makes good on the promise of Robbins’ lanky frame as a physical comedian.  Sterling supporting performances abound and as previously stated, even if the Jennifer Jason Leigh thing never quite comes together she does have some marvelously choreographed verbal jousts with her male counterparts.  Her scenes battling the editor and a colleague at the newspaper have a particularly zany sting.  Films like this are damn near impossible to pull off, just look at George Clooney’s 2008 dud, Leatherheads for proof.  The screwball comedies of the 30’s and 40’s have a time capsule quality that makes any attempt to recreate it for a modern era just seem like a desperate plea for nostalgia.  By burrowing so deep into their influences, however, the Coen brothers reached a sort of infinite loop of the original and homage.  The DNA of their filmmaking breeds so effortlessly with that of the era in which they are frolicking that you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.  Committing to that kind of dedication in the execution and making it look so effortless is as fascinating to watch as that damn hula-hoop swinging around the kids hips, damn near as strange too. Now let me ask you a question: Would an imbecile come up with that?