![\"The](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/440\/2009\/09\/dudeabides1.jpg\")
<\/a>In 1984, a violent little homage to film noir heralded the arrival of filmmaking brothers, Joel and Ethan Coen. Blood Simple<\/em> was personally significant to me because, at 19, I was between colleges and jobs, and for the first time seriously exploring my Catholic faith. The Coens\u2019 film cooked up a little scheme in my brain that I could design a joint course of study to combine film studies and theology.<\/p>\n Who knew a couple of Jews from Minnesota could so potently illustrate to a Catholic kid the link between religion and the movies? And not in the secular, Woody Allen-esque vision of the cinema as church surrogate, a place of awe and reverence. The imagery and storyline of Blood Simple<\/em> \u2013 its title alone apparently evoking a succinct explanation of Christian theology \u2013awakened the idea in me that film could be a powerful medium for exploring religious themes in a nontraditional way.<\/p>\n It was the knife they drove through M. Emmett Walsh\u2019s hand that did it.<\/p>\n That gruesome act of violence at the climax of Blood Simple<\/em> surely conveyed obvious symbolism linking the crucifixion of Christ to the atrocities committed in the Coens\u2019 sin-filled landscape. True, Marty Visser, the psychotic avenger played by Walsh, was hardly a Christ figure. But perhaps the blood of Visser would redeem his killer, an adulterous wife played by Frances McDormand?<\/p>\n I was overreaching, for sure. I never did attend film school or seminary, or design my own college major combining my two primary interests. And 25 years later, I\u2019m not convinced Blood Simple <\/em>is any more spiritually significant than any other noir-ish thriller that visits biblically proportioned consequences on the black hearts of its protagonists.<\/p>\n But God bless Cathleen Falsani for trying to convince me it is. Not only is Falsani confident that Blood Simple<\/em> \u201cis a meditation on free will\u201d \u2013 illustrating theologian Frederick Buechner\u2019s observation that \u201call moments are key moments\u201d \u2013 she also finds spiritual undertones in every single film in the \u201cCoeniverse,\u201d as she dubs their filmography. Even Intolerable Cruelty<\/em>! Even the intolerably cruel Burn After Reading<\/em>! Even the one film by the Coens I have purposely avoided, The Ladykillers<\/em>!<\/p>\n Falsani\u2019s new book is called The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers<\/em>. It gets my vote for the sharpest, coolest book title of the year, even if it\u2019s a bit misleading, and even though she ultimately fails to persuade that the brothers\u2019 films are inherently spiritual. Published by Zondervan, the book is aimed at a Christian audience but is likely to disappoint readers looking for a Christian-specific analysis of the \u201cCoeniverse.\u201d Falsani is eminently egalitarian in her approach to the spiritual precepts she believes are present in the Coens\u2019 films, and this is both a strength and a weakness of her book. At times, she overreaches even farther than my 1984 analysis of Blood Simple<\/em>, finding elements of Christianity, Zen Buddhism<\/a> and Judaism present in the Coens\u2019 films, but ultimately coming up with a m\u00e9lange of generic spirituality.<\/p>\n Falsani, a religion columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times<\/em>, writes in an easy-going, accessible style, and she humbly concedes that hers is not the final word on whether the Coens\u2019 films contain deep, spiritual insights:<\/p>\n What I see may not be what you see, and that is at it should be. As you travel with me on this tour of the Coen brothers\u2019 moral universes, I hope you\u2019ll disagree with conclusions that don\u2019t ring true and draw your own. As the great slacker saint of Los Angeles, Jeffrey \u201cThe Dude\u201d Lebowski, so eloquently put it in the end, \u201cThat\u2019s just, like, your opinion, man.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To be sure, Falsani isn\u2019t trying to pound a particular worldview into anyone\u2019s skull. Her book presents a straightforward meditation on her own view of the theological and spiritual values she believes are embedded in the Coens\u2019 films. At times, though, I found myself wishing she\u2019d adhere less to the laid-back, \u201cDudeist\u201d philosophy of Jeffrey Lebowski and opt instead for the tactics of his buddy Walter Sobchak (memorably played by John Goodman), the \u201cardent legalist,\u201d Jewish convert, and \u201ctheological opposite\u201d of the Dude in The Big Lebowski<\/em>.<\/p>\n Part of the problem is that Falsani tries to mine a spiritual lesson from all 14 of the films written and directed by the Coens. (She includes their latest, A Serious Man<\/em>, about a Jewish physics professor who is a contemporary stand-in for Job, which is set to release in October 2009.) It\u2019s a noble but ultimately ill-advised approach, because some of the theories she posits are as thin as an unleavened wafer.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Burn After Reading<\/em>, for example, is \u201ca sobering tale of what happens when we don\u2019t follow God\u2019s laws,\u201d a story that follows in the tradition of King David, King Saul and Judas Iscariot. Even less convincing: \u201cThe title of the film could be accurately interpreted as a description of what humankind has done with God\u2019s Word.\u201d In The Hudsucker Proxy<\/em>, Falsani writes, the deus ex machina that stops Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) from falling to his death is \u201cthe unseen hand of God (granting) Barnes an undeserved second chance.\u201d<\/p>\n Other interpretations seem too pat, and not particularly theological. Falsani calls The Man Who Wasn\u2019t There<\/em>, for example, a cautionary tale about \u201cliving your life\u201d without merely being a spectator; Intolerable Cruelty<\/em> teaches that \u201cmarriage is sacred; and love, even a deeply imperfect love, is good.\u201d<\/p>\n Another issue is the structure she uses. Each chapter, dedicated to one film, is compartmentalized into subheadings titled \u201cThe Forest\u201d (a brief description of the narrative); \u201cThe Trees\u201d (a painstakingly detailed reconstruction of the film\u2019s plot); and \u201cThe Moral of the Story\u201d (an all-too-brief description of the spiritual truth or lesson Falsani derives from the film).<\/p>\n Falsani spends too much time painting a verbal portrait of \u201cthe trees.\u201d Many readers are likely to get lost in the descriptive intricacies of, say, Miller\u2019s Crossing<\/em> or Barton Fink<\/em>. It\u2019s not because Falsani\u2019s writing isn\u2019t entertaining and engaging, but because many of these passages have the effect of dulling the films\u2019 power instead of enhancing it. It\u2019s awfully hard for any author to convey a film\u2019s spirituality solely by describing the plot, without sufficiently examining the filmmakers\u2019 use of music, cinematography, lighting and other cinematic tools.<\/p>\n (On a related note, since Falsani focuses exclusively on narrative, it seems inconsistent to include The Ladykillers<\/em> and No Country for Old Men<\/em>, since the Coens adapted both screenplays from other authors\u2019 source material. No Country for Old Men<\/em> is arguably the most spiritually significant of the brothers\u2019 films, barring A Serious Man<\/em>; but the central theme of theodicy \u2013 if God exists and is good, why does evil persist in the world? \u2013 is the creation of the novel\u2019s author, Cormac McCarthy, not the Coens.)<\/p>\n Where Falsani succeeds most is where she steps out of the confines of the book\u2019s structure and addresses specific theological precepts. In her chapter on Fargo<\/em> \u2013 one of her most convincing \u2013 she references H. Richard Niebuhr\u2019s five paradigms for how faith functions in the world. Marge Gunderson, the pregnant sheriff played by Frances McDormand, represents Niebuhr\u2019s paradigm of \u201cChrist transforming culture,\u201d Falsani posits. In other words, Marge is the personification of the idea that \u201cChristianity has the power (and the responsibility) to convert culture to a more godly orientation and that it\u2019s possible to make the world a better place in this lifetime and not just in the hereafter.\u201d<\/p>\n She comes back to this, quite convincingly, in her chapter on The Ladykillers<\/em> (perhaps the most critically hated of the Coens\u2019 films, and the first that was based on material by another author). Ms. Munson (Irma P. Hall), a pious church lady and would-be victim of a group of imbecilic villains (is there any other kind of villain in the \u201cCoeniverse\u201d?), \u201cclearly demonstrates Niebuhr\u2019s \u2018Christ against culture\u2019 model, seeing the world as a corrupt and dying place full of treachery and backsliding, hanging by a gossamer thread over the fiery pit \u2026.\u201d It\u2019s a powerful and well-articulated observation.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>