You can always tell when you’re watching a film by the Coen brothers. Their Blood Simple.
The Coens’ films can always be counted on for a handful of unforgettable scenes, especially as they’ve mastered the craft of creating iconic minor characters who only appear briefly. So, here are the most memorable scenes from IMDb’s 10 top-rated Coen brothers movies.
Inside Llewyn Davis (7.5) – Llewyn’s Audition For Bud Grossman
The Coens named this the trickiest scene to crack in Inside Llewyn Davis’ script when they were interviewed by Vulture about their writing process because they struggled to find the perfect song for Llewyn’s big chance to crack into show business.
Finally given the chance to audition for top-tier music manager Bud Grossman, Llewyn performs a soulful rendition of the ballad “The Death of Queen Jane.”
The Man Who Wasn’t There (7.5) – Ed’s Execution
In the final scene of The Man Who Wasn’t There, the Coen brothers’ surreal homage to film noir, Billy Bob Thornton’s lead protagonist, Ed Crane, is awaiting execution on death row.
The black-and-white palette is used beautifully here, transitioning from the pitch-black of the hallway to the bright, washed-out white surrounding the electric chair.
True Grit (7.6) – Mattie Kills Chaney
At the end of her long search for the man who killed her father, Mattie Ross finally manages to exact revenge. As Chaney comes to, Mattie grabs a rifle from the hands of an unconscious LaBoeuf and shoots him in the chest.
Unfortunately, the recoil from the gun knocks her into a cave, where a rattlesnake bites her. This paves the way for Rooster Cogburn to return and triumphantly save her.
Blood Simple (7.6) – The Final Shootout
Lorren Visser, the morally bankrupt P.I. hired by Julian Marty in the Coens’ first film Blood Simple, remains one of the directing duo’s most sinister villains. He deviates drastically from Marty’s original plan, culminating in a frightful climax in which Visser finally tracks down Abby.
Thinking he’s Marty, Abby shoots and fatally wounds Visser. When she hears his voice, she’s shocked to discover that it’s a totally different guy.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (7.7) – The “Man Of Constant Sorrow” Performance
The most memorable moment from the Coens’ crime comedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a movie that changed the bluegrass industry forever, is the Soggy Bottom Boys’ performance of “Man of Constant Sorrow.”
The song has been covered by a ton of different artists, but the scene in O Brother, Where Art Thou? is so iconic that a fictional band performed the best-known version of it.
Barton Fink (7.7) – Hallway On Fire
The titular playwright in Barton Fink is horrified to discover that his mild-mannered neighbor Charlie is actually a serial killer who likes to behead his victims.
The next time Barton sees Charlie after this staggering revelation, he’s walking through the fires of Hell, ensuring that film scholars would never figure out this movie’s meaning.
Miller’s Crossing (7.8) – “Look Into Your Heart!”
About halfway through Miller’s Crossing, Tom Reagan is recruited to drag Bernie out into the woods and shoot him in the head. When they get out there, and Bernie is on his knees, staring down the barrel of Tom’s gun, he begs for his life.
John Turturro plays the scene beautifully, really selling Bernie’s despair in his repeated cries of “Look into your heart!” That’s what makes it all the more shocking when he ends up using Tom’s mercy to blackmail him.
The Big Lebowski (8.1) – “This Is What Happens, Larry!”
When a young kid’s homework is found in the Dude’s recovered car and the briefcase of cash is missing, Walter assumes that the kid has stolen the money. So, they go to his house and find a sports car parked outside, which seems to confirm that he took the money.
The kid, Larry, refuses to speak up, so Walter takes a crowbar to the sports car and bashes it to pieces, yelling, “This is what happens, Larry, when you f*** a stranger in the a**!” The sports car turns out to belong to somebody else and the whole thing is a hilarious misunderstanding.
Fargo (8.1) – The Woodchipper
The plan to kidnap Jerry Lundegaard’s wife and take the ransom money from her wealthy father goes very quickly awry in the hands of bumbling career criminals Carl and Gaear.
When pregnant cop Marge Gunderson finally tracks them down, she finds Gaear disposing of the corpses of both Carl and Jerry’s wife in a woodchipper. It’s an unforgettably gruesome moment that could only happen in Fargo.
No Country For Old Men (8.1) – Moss’ Death
The Coens’ Oscar-winning neo-western masterpiece No Country for Old Men brilliantly subverts the typical story structure to bluntly depict a brutal, lawless world. As Bell arrives at the motel where Moss has been hiding out, he hears gunshots and sees a pickup truck peeling away. When he enters Moss’s room, he finds him dead on the floor.
After the whole movie built up Anton Chigurh as the greatest threat to Moss, it was anticlimactic in the best way that Moss was killed off-screen – and Chigurh wasn’t the one who killed him. Bell is left with just as much defeated confusion as the audience.
