THE HUDSUCKER PROXY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman. Screenplay: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen & Sam Raimi. Director: Joel Coen.
Please complete the following sentence based on your reactions to the previous films of Joel and Ethan Coen (RAISING ARIZONA, BARTON FINK). The Coen brothers are: a) a pair of intellectual dilettante/pop cannibals whose films lack any kind of soul. b) a pair of brilliant visual stylists who manipulate genre into something completely original.
Your choice will probably tell you all you need to know about how you would react to THE HUDSUCKER PROXY. Coen brothers fans will revel in their delightfully off-center perspective and their twisted sense of humor; their detractors will grouse over their cold mechanics and inaccessibility. And both sides will be correct. Fortunately, there is more that dazzles than there is that distracts.
THE HUDSUCKER PROXY opens on New Year's Eve 1958, as Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) prepares to jump from the 44th floor of the Hudsucker Building. The story behind how he ends up there flashes back one month as naive go-getter Norville arrives in New York from Muncie, Indiana. He gets a job in the mail room of Hudsucker Industries on the same day company founder and president Waring Hudsucker (Charles Durning) chooses to leap to his death from the window of the board room. Hudsucker's right hand man Sidney Mussburger (Paul Newman) decides to install an easily manipulated buffoon as the new president in an attempt to shake investor confidence, force down the price of the stock and allow the board to buy a controlling interest. That buffoon is Norville Barnes. When the news goes public, reporter Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) smells a rat, and sets out to expose Norville as a fraud, much to the delight of Mussburger and the board members. However, Norville has at least one trick up his sleeve.
Many of those off-putting elements which have limited the Coens' appeal are still in place. Director Joel is given to wild, manic set pieces and near constant camera movement, which often seem to yell, "Look at me, I'm a director!" Fans of vintage cinema note that their spins on established genres read like film school projects: make a "film noir," make a gangster film. THE HUDSUCKER PROXY clearly owes most of its inspiration to Frank Capra's MEET JOHN DOE, with nods to Sturges and Hawks along the way. At a certain point, however, homage gives way to parody; Jennifer Jason Leigh's clipped Katherine Hepburn/Barbara Stanwyck delivery is cute for a while but eventually becomes annoying, while Paul Newman simply seems cartoonish as the snarling, cigar-chomping wheeler dealer. But perhaps most disappointing is the character of Norville, whom the Coens and co-scripter Sam Raimi didn't seem to have any interest in making interesting. There's almost a mockery of Capra's everyman heroes, who were simple but always imbued with common sense. Norville is just a dolt, and Robbins plays him that way. Consequently, it's hard to care about anything except what is on the surface.
Of course, there is plenty more going on on the surface of a Coen brothers film than any dozen other films put together. Dennis Gassner's production design is part Gotham City, part BRAZIL, but stunningly evocative in its own right, while Carter Burwell provides a fantastic and diverse score. However, it is with two magnificent visual pieces that HUDSUCKER makes its mark. The first involves Hudsucker's fall to his demise, a dizzyingly comic blue screen effect. The other, even better, is a montage beginning with the testing and marketing of Norville's big idea, the Extruded Plastic Dingus, leading to a brilliant scene of one boy beginning a fad which will sweep the nation. There are dozens of individually memorable moments, lines and scenes, which makes it all the more frustrating that they aren't supported by a memorable story.
With triumphant films like MILLER'S CROSSING and BARTON FINK, the Coens have established themselves as among the most original filmmakers of their generation. Still, it has only been on rare occasions that they have appeared as concerned with creating characters as they have with framing shots. THE HUDSUCKER PROXY is worth seeing for its quirky invention, but it's hard not to wish that so much talent could come with a little more heart.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Extruded Plastic Dinguses: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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