Product Description

Join award-winning author and columnist Cathleen Falsani as she explores the serious existential questions raised in the movies of the wildly popular and always irreverent Coen brothers. Coen fans and film lovers will appreciate Falsani's unique blend of contemporary insight and spiritual discernment that is both entertaining and illuminating.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28371 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780310292463
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
It must be true that God can be found even in the quirkiest of places. Chicago Sun-Times religion journalist Falsani mined the 14 films (since 1984) of Joel and Ethan Coen to find God and to articulate their spiritual and religious questions and challenges. The Coen brothers have a reputation for injecting a lot of dark humor into their movies, but as the author illustrates, the comedy is an avenue to deeper issues. Death, betrayal, greed, the seeming absence of God and the dire consequences of one's choices are the complex themes expertly handled by the filmmakers. Falsani does not posit that these films are overtly religious, but she does successfully convey their spiritual insights about the human condition. Each chapter provides a movie plot summary and concludes with an insightful segment dubbed The Moral of the Story. Falsani is an expert at pop culture analysis and her love for the celluloid arts shines forth brightly—her interpretations are nuanced and sophisticated without being pretentious. Film lovers, whether religious or not, will be pleased. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From the Back Cover
Whether you've seen only a couple or every single one of their fourteen films enough times to quote them by heart, you know Joel and Ethan Coen make movies like no one else in cinema. The Oscar-winning Coen brothers' quirky and enduring films are rich with meaning--much of it hidden just beneath the surface, gems of spiritual and existential insight waiting to be excavated.

Join award-winning religion columnist Cathleen Falsani as she explores the deeper truths found in these engrossing movies. Falsani examines each of the Coen brothers' films, from their debut, Blood Simple, to their latest, A Serious Man. Ranging from iconoclastic comedies such as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski to an unblinking treatise on the nature of evil in No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers have created moral universes in which some of life's essential questions are asked--if not always answered.

These queries run the gamut from the meaning of life and enlightenment, to the fundamental nature of truth and love. There is seemingly no question the Coen brothers are afraid to tackle, either with a wink and a smile or brutal honesty (and sometimes both). As Falsani examines the soul of the movies, she weaves her own experiences, impressions, and cultural and spiritual analysis with a journalist's keen eye for investigation and a film lover's passion for the cultural medium.

By turns thought-provoking and entertaining, you'll come away with a new admiration for these sometimes bizarre, always clever, and unmistakably virtuoso filmmakers and their films.

About the Author
Cathleen Falsani, author of Sin Boldly, The Dude Abides, and The God Factor, is the award-winning religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. She attended Wheaton College and also holds masters degrees in journalism and theology. She lives in Laguna Beach, California, with her husband and fellow journalist, Maurice Possley.

Customer Reviews

The Dude Abides...Not Just Coen Brothers' Fans Will Take Comfort in That
In The Dude Abides--The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers, award-winning religious columnist Cathleen Falsani offers a unique and engaging look at the "spiritual messages" she finds permeating the Coen Brothers' movies.

Now, "spiritual message." Odds are, that's not what most moviegoers expect to find in the darkly comic and brutally violent cinematic vision of Joel and Ethan Coen. Neither is the word "gospel," for that matter. While wisely resisting the temptation to cram their films into what she calls a "God-shaped box," Falsani succeeds in tracing the theological threads she sees holding the "Coeniverse" together.

She writes, "While marked by murder, mayhem, deception, and all manner of chaos, there is an order--a moral order--to the world depicted in Joel and Ethan Coen's films. That's the good news. The bad news is that when the moral order is upset, the consequences can be dire, brutal, and swift."

Published by Zondervan, a Christian book publisher whose mission, according to its website, is to produce "resources that glorify Jesus Christ and promote biblical principles," The Dude Abides will probably challenge (in a good way) the expectations of Zondervan's evangelical readers as well as the more secular-minded among Coen Brother fans.

As a self-described "sometimes churchgoing Catholic-turned-Baptist-turned-freelance Episcopalian" who has interviewed the likes of Bono from U2 and some guy who ran for president named Barack Obama, Falsani is certainly up to the challenge of navigating her text between the two groups. Her down-to-earth writing style glides easily from summarizing convoluted Coen Brother movie plots to drawing from Zen Buddhism, Jewish mysticism, and her own open-hearted Christian faith to interpret them.

The book covers each of the Coen Brothers's movies, from their 1986 debut Blood Simple to A Serious Man (due out this fall), with each chapter focusing on a different film. Falsani uses a "forest and the trees" approach to organizing the chapters, providing a short overview of the movie first, followed by a more in-depth theological discussion of it before concluding with a brief "Moral of the Story." This structure not only provides a great introduction to each movie for those who are unfamiliar with the films, but also appeals to a die-hard Coen Brothers fan like me.

Falsani's movie analyses should also intrigue the uninitiated and fans alike. She sees the Coen oeuvre as consisting broadly of cautionary tales (such as Blood Simple), "Judeo-Christian morality plays" (like Fargo), holy fools (Hi McDunnough in Raising Arizona), foolish hubris (Barton Fink), and unflinching explorations of the nature of evil, Job-like suffering, and the distance or seeming absence of God (No Country for Old Men, A Simple Man).

Her interpretations also provide nuanced ways of understanding the quirky characters populating Coen Brother films. For example, she places The Dude (the burnout main character of The Big Lebowski) within kabbalistic lore as a lamed-vavnik, "a righteous soul with whom the eventual healing of the world abides". Other theological takes may seem a little strained, though. The pregnant sheriff in Fargo, Marge Gunderson, is certainly an endearingly good-hearted character, but is she really a redeeming Christ figure as Falsani posits?

There are other interpretative quibbles I have and I do think Falsani relies too heavily on recapping plot than interpreting it, but, as The Dude would say, that's just, like, my opinion and her opinion, man. Besides, that may just be the point. Falsani doesn't intend for her book to be a definitive study of all things Coen. With its section of group study questions at the end, the book's intention may be to help elicit conversations (albeit from a more or less Christian frame of reference) about these complex movies (sample: "After exploring the Coens' fourteen films, what do you think the two brothers make of God?").

For Falsani, the Coen Brothers' cinematic gospel is more concerned with posing life's deepest questions than it is with providing us with ultimate answers to them. In The Dude Abides, she makes a good-faith effort to offer her responses to the existential questions the unorthodox filmmakers raise and invites her readers to do the same.

Maybe by sharing our responses with one another in a similar spirit, regardless of our religious faith or lack thereof, we'll find a way to abide together a little better. And I don't know about you, but as the Stranger says at the end of The Big Lebowski, I take comfort in that.

You've got to be kidding me!
I LOVE the Coen Brothers. They are the unrivaled champions of American film making. This book does absolutely ZERO as far as giving insight into what makes them tick. We're to believe that this book delves into a deeper meaning than what's on screen by naming it "The Gospel...", but all this book does is give a general overview of the plot to their movies. Sorry, but I can go to imdb for that.
This book dedicates 95% of its pages to generalized descriptions of their movies. That's it. Hardly any analysis whatsoever. Each movie has its own chapter dedicated to it, and the author spends 7-10 pages describing the entire plot with an occasional quote. At the end the author adds a brief paragraph or two telling us what she feels is the "moral" of the film. If you were to add all of her own personal thoughts and insights into the Coen Brothers' film works, you would come away with maybe five pages of fluff. As I started reading the book, I actually said out loud, "you've got to be kidding me with this!". Why would anyone interested in the Coen Brothers read a page synopsis when they can just go watch the movie? And why would anyone who has seen their films bother with this book? They wouldn't. And shouldn't. Just go see the movie if you haven't already. To add insult to injury, she prefaces the book by talking down to the reader by saying, "opinions are important, and they are subjective, colored, and shaped by life experiences". Gee, thanks Einstein. Like I needed someone to tell me that. It's even more insulting to realize that she has no opinions of her own in the book. Where are these colored opinions shaped by life experiences, oh enlightened author?
I also feel this book is a bit deceptive in its advertising. "The Big Lebowski" is, without a doubt, the most popular of all the Coen Brothers' films, and the author chooses to put the dude on the cover and name the book "The Dude Abides" to generate interest. However, she doesn't give any thoughts as to why she gives the book this title, and doesn't offer any extended analysis of "The Big Lebowski". Not that I care that "Lebowski" isn't covered more, but it's clear that she's phishing for customers knowing that Achievers everywhere will be interested in its dudetastic cover. I've already written another review on Amazon about my dislike of "The Big Lebowski" being used to peddle subpar products, and this book does exactly that.
She should have named this book "Coen Brothers' Movie Transcripts In Massively Edited Form". It would have been far more accurate.
Maybe I'm just jealous. If I knew I could get published by writing 10 page summaries of films on the level of an 8th grade writing project I would have done this years ago!

Not as deep as it sounds
I was very excited about this book just from the title. My husband and I have enjoyed many of the Coens brothers' movies and have often hashed out our views on the plots, characters, etc. When it arrived I dove right in...and was finished about an hour later. I was not really disappointed; I was ambivalent. While I was glad to have the synopsis available for the movies I had not seen, it seemed that more work was put in to each movie's synopsis than was put into the analysis.

I had hoped for deeper analysis, maybe bringing up good points about the plot or characters that I had not previously explored. Sometimes the analysis seemed very thin and at other times it seemed forced. The most interesting part for me was the forward by Rabbi Allen Secher; after finishing that part, I found there were times I had to push myself to keep reading.

If you are looking for a light primer on the movies of the Coen brothers, this is a great read. If you are looking for more in-depth analysis, you should keep moving on.