Dude the obscure

By Kurt Armstrong and ChristianWeek | September 15, 2009

The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers joins the growing list of good-news-meets-pop-culture-icon books which so far have included The Simpsons, Tony Soprano, Oprah, and Harry Potter.

Cathleen Falsani's book looks at all fourteen of the Coen brothers films, from their debut Blood Simple to A Serious Man due out this fall, looking for moral and ethical themes. She's not claiming the Coens for Christianity—"It would be dishonest to try to wrestle the Coen brothers' films into a God-shaped box"—instead she says she wants to engage the "important spiritual and moral questions" they raise.

If you've never seen a Coen brothers movie, The Dude Abides might help you decide whether or not you want to watch any of them. The Dude Abides is long on description and short on thoughtful engagement. Almost the entire book is taken up with detailed plot summaries of the 14 films. Falsani gives a good account of the Coen brothers' dark sense of humour and graphic depictions of evil. Like the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, Coen brothers' movies can be shocking, gory, vulgar and disturbing. And like O'Connor, the Coen brothers are unsentimental about the human capacity for good and evil. Their films leave us disturbed and unsettled. Even a movie like The Big Lebowski, the Coen brothers' best comedy, is laced with a macabre sense of humour. But other than good descriptions of the movies, the book has little to offer.

Each chapter ends with a brief reflection—Falsani's take on the moral of the story. But even those are mostly disappointing. Like all good art, Coen brothers' movies are challenging and disorienting. They don't offer simple moral conclusions. Despite her intentions, Falsani ends up trying to wrestle these movies into a religious box.

The Coens aren't for everyone. Falsani is clearly a Coen brothers fan; so am I. But her book adds little to our understanding of these films. While it's usually the case that a movie doesn't measure up to the original book, in this case, I'd say skip the book and watch the movies.