Offbeat Universe Of Coen Films Halfway Between Real, Surreal

The “Fargo” backlash has begun.

Actually, it began the moment the movie hit the big screen, which isn’t surprising. The films of Joel and Ethan Coen just tend to turn some people off.

This is fairly easy to understand if you examine the kinds of themes the Coens explore. Murder and betrayal in “Blood Simple” and “Miller’s Crossing.” Murder and paranoia in “Barton Fink.” Babynapping and armed robbery in “Raising Arizona.”

Back to murder and betrayal in “Fargo.”

No doubt it takes a certain kind of person to see the humor inherent in these movies. There is, after all, nothing funny about the kinds of violence that are so prevalent in the Coens’ films - being buried alive, being machine-gunned, being vaporized by grenades, being shoved into a woodchipper.

But here’s, to me, what salvages the Coens-eye view: Nothing in their films, especially the violence, is presented as mere realism. Nothing is presented as mere surrealism, either. Instead, the Coens populate a universe between both extremes.

And in that offbeat universe, common references - the kinds of demented behavior, in fact, that earn daily headlines - are used as a ploy to get viewers thinking.

What are we supposed to think about? Well, maybe about the humor we use as an emotional defense against the more overtly outlandish aspects of human experience. The same kind of humor that, were it missing, would see us run out screaming into the night.

Besides, in terms of “Fargo” at least, we are not left with a vision of violence. We close with two people, clinging to each other in the midst of a world where too many people accept the insane as merely the ordinary. I love you, they mutually say.

The final image of “Fargo” is hopeful. And forgiving.

Who could be upset with that?

“Fargo” was released on video in October. Here are this week’s releases:

Lone Star

****

Writer/director/editor John Sayles applies his immense storytelling talents to this tale of the new American West, weaving complex racial and family relations into the investigation of a 40-year-old murder. Chris Cooper stars as the sheriff of a Texas border town who suspects that his late father (Matthew McConaughey) killed for profit. In the course of his investigation, he discovers secrets long kept hidden involving both his father and himself. Sayles, always an astute observer of the American psyche, weaves his story seamlessly, depending on his ever-developing cinematic prowess and the acting of such veterans as Cooper (“Matewan”), Elizabeth Pena and Joe Morton. McConaughey (“A Time to Kill”) is impressive in what amounts to a cameo, but Kris Kristofferson is even more effective as the most snake-like lawman ever to buckle on a six-gun. In the end, “Lone Star,” truly a movie of the ‘90s, argues that while the past affects us, it doesn’t have to own us. In other words, forget the Alamo and let the future be what it will. Rated R

William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet

****

Imagine William Shakespeare, tattooed and wearing a nose ring, drinking from a bottle of malt liquor and twirling his chrome-plated 9mm automatic. That is how the Bard might have directed this version of his great love story, which virtually jumps off the screen as an energetic blend of Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, John Singleton urban drama and Oliver Stone everything else. Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes star as the youngest, hippest pair of “starcross’d lovers” since Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. And they benefit from a decent cast of co-stars, including John Leguizamo as Tybalt, Harold Perrineau Jr. as Mercuitio, Pete Postlethwaite as the Friar and Miriam Margolyes as Juliet’s nurse. But the real star here is director Baz Luhrman (“Strictly Ballroom”) who updates Shakespeare to the ‘90s in a way that is bound to alarm purists even as it draws young movie fans closer to Elizabethan sensibilities than they might otherwise have ever come. This is ‘90s filmmaking, love it or no. Rated PG-13

Michael Collins

***

The problem with most cinematic biographies is that the demands of storytelling always take precedence over the truth.

The problem with this Neil Jordan portrait of the Irish revolutionary Michael Collins is that even the relative truth as Jordan portrays it doesn’t give a full view of what happened in the violent years of 1916-22.

Jordan’s Collins (Liam Neeson) is seen as the man who diligently, if reluctantly, turned the Irish struggle away from open warfare - which always favored the occupying English forces - to guerrilla terrorism.

The irony is that when Collins, having forced the English to the bargaining table, wanted to stop the violence, he became a victim of the very methods he pioneered. What’s lost here is Collins as a real man. Lost, too, are the intimate details involving his relationships with best friend Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn), love interest Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts) and especially with Eamon De Valera (Alan Rickman), the man who started as Collins’ comrade, split with him and then went on to be Ireland’s most influential political force of this century.

Even given this limitation, though, Jordan keeps us engaged with quick pacing and a good eye for visuals, whether they involve the Irish countryside or exploding buildings.

And there’s always something to be said for a movie that preaches the worthiness of putting down the gun in the face of so many “Braveheart” clones that continue to glamorize war and romanticize death. Rated R

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: WHAT’S NEW TO VIEW Now available: “Somebody to Love” (Cabin Fever), “Michael Collins” (Warner), “The Proprietor” (Warner), “Mistrial” (HBO), “Lone Star” (Columbia TriStar), “Extreme Measures” (Columbia TriStar), “William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet” (Fox). Available Tuesday: “101 Dalmatians” (Buena Vista), “The Associate” (Buena Vista), “Emma” (Buena Vista), “The Ghost and the Darkness” (Paramount), “Secrets and Lies” (Fox).