The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
Directed by Joel Coen
A naive business graduate is installed as president of a manufacturing company as part of a stock scam.
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What critics compared The Hudsucker Proxy to
They’re marked with circular scribbles that recall the spherical symbolism of Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Hudsucker Proxy , which, even more than The Matrix , seems to be the movie that the Daniels are chasing—a holy grail of wise-guy existentialism that’s also a case study in indie auteurs getting to play with a big budget.
Grand Budapest moves at a frenzied pace not unlike that of The Hudsucker Proxy or Raising Arizona .
There’s a charming ludicrousness to this segment that harkens back to Coen comedies like O Brother or The Hudsucker Proxy .
It’s as if someone might want to introduce the Coens’ work to someone who’d never seen a single one of their films before – Hail, Caesar! , Raising Arizona , The Big Lebowski , Barton Fink , The Hudsucker Proxy – but couldn’t decide which one to go with, so they packed everything into one film.
There are so many sight gags – not since The Hudsucker Proxy days have the shot choices felt so giddily inventive – jokes, witty lyrics and verbal badinage that repeat viewings are essential.
The Coens’ love of language runs at least as deep as their visual sense, and at times the verbosity produces a rhythm to equal the Coens’ screwball comedy “The Hudsucker Proxy.”
In particular, Coen Brothers films that adhere to popular Classical Hollywood genres; such as film noir (Blood Simple, Fargo), gangster (Miller’s Crossing) and screwball comedy (The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty); are both affectionate homages and subversively self-aware.
I walked into their seventh movie, The Big Lebowski, wondering if it would either be as great as Fargo, or as misguided as The Hudsucker Proxy.
It is a visual tour de force, but as a whole the movie slowly deflates into a cross between "Arizona" and "The Hudsucker Proxy" (the latter also shot by "Lebowski" and "Fink" cinematographer Roger Deakins).
I used to believe they were simply genre tourists on this mission to do one for every genre, but it becomes apparent with each new No Country for Old Men and True Grit unlocking each vintage Miller's Crossing and The Hudsucker Proxy that they were interpreting genres long before they took on specific pieces as a whole.
The Coens' career has alternated between pictures where the connection to audiences was made with exhilarating success (the recent "Fargo") and others (the completely baffling "The Hudsucker Proxy") where all circuits were down.
The film was shot by veteran cinematographer Roger Deakins, in the fourth of his 11-and-counting collaborations with the Coens (they had previously worked on Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Fargo).
It’s as plainspoken as a Copland strain, as grandiose as a Gershwin chord and, yes, so very near the classic levels of hilarity in out-and-out comedies “Raising Arizona” and “The Big Lebowski” (for what is the latter if not a more confident riff on some “Hudsucker” gags after several massive bong rips).
I like the Coens best when they’re delivering either full-on demented comedy (“Raising Arizona,” “The Hudsucker Proxy,” “The Big Lebowski”) or when, as in “No Country for Old Men,” they work hard to establish the humanity of their characters.
Though there are no acting epiphanies here to rival Tony Shalhoub's in Barton Fink or Jennifer Jason Leigh's in The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), A Serious Man doesn't have a single dull or merely functional performance; even bit players have their pregnant comic moments.
Paul Newman did it, in The Hudsucker Proxy and Nobody’s Fool after all.
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Remember the line in the Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy: "You know...for the kids."
I made the same complaint about The Hudsucker Proxy, and that came out more than a decade ago.
A dense, fast-paced, digitally enhanced wonderland, the film rarely stops to let you catch your breath, but where a movie like Moulin Rouge or even The Hudsucker Proxy is nearly torpedoed by its own self-conscious excess, Amélie keeps returning to Tautou’s blessedly simple performance, which is very much the eye of the storm.
Burn After Reading fits into the Coens' filmography on the Raising Arizona-The Hudsucker Proxy-O Brother, Where Art Thou? side of the aisle, where the brothers' built-in handicaps as screenwriters are most apparent.
Of course, the Coens also wrote and directed “The Hudsucker Proxy,” so they’re aren’t incapable of producing the occasional misfire.
They followed their Cannes darling Barton Fink with the zany The Hudsucker Proxy, the Oscar recognition for Fargo yielded the stoner classic The Big Lebowski, and the willfully difficult, demanding The Man Who Wasn't There was quickly followed by the lightweight Intolerable Cruelty and a flimsy remake of The Ladykillers.
From Raising Arizona to The Hudsucker Proxy to Fargo to The Big Lebowski to O Brother, Where Art Thou, the Coens regularly assemble their stories to satirize if not outright ridicule the best laid plans of men with the brains of mice.
And quite a swell comedy it is, too; not as many laughs-per-minute as in Lebowski, certainly, nor even in The Hudsucker Proxy , but thanks to the supremely talented cast working at the peak of their abilities, it never wants for gut-busting dry comedy ("gut-busting dry comedy", now that I think of it, is another hallmark of the Coen style).