Given the relative recent success of the Coen brothers, particularly in light of last year's amazing Oscar run, I thought it might be helpful to explain a few things. 'No Country for Old Men' provided many movie goers, especially younger film fans, with the first true mainstream introduction to the prolific pair's style. For many of those fans, it was a bit of a rude awakening. Given the films strong thematic and allegoric elements and its dubious and highly debated "ending", the film stringently stratified viewers into opposing factions; those who loved it and those who hated it. Of course the Academy fit into the first category, but the viewing public as a whole was divided.
In my experience, these diverging viewpoints tend to follow the Coens' films. I can only assume that it's because of the filmmakers' penchant for quirky and stylistic pieces, but regardless of the reason, the Coens are not considered by many as the impactful and visionary directors, writers, and producers they are. In an attempt to do my part to educate the general film community, permit me to point out a few things that might make their silver screen efforts a bit more palatable.
What seems to be the most pressing and often expressed concern with the Coens' work is their tendency to "end" their films. Often (as is the case with Fargo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, etc.) the Coens' stories are not possessed of a true denouement. This is the most noticeable of the Coens quirks though it isn't a habit that is singular to them. Their movies don't finish, they just end.
To the sensibilities of the typical American film viewer, this is odd, because the three act story structure (beginning, middle, and end) is so ingrained in our cultural dramatic history. American films are formulaic. We are used to seeing very straightforward, very easily understood works of cinema. However, the Coens work hearkens to other film traditions, particularly the European traditions which have evolved with a much wider array of narrative subject matter, structural set-ups and narrative devices.
In American films characters are typically solely present for narrative function. In this regard the Coens are unique. Like only a few other successful filmmakers, their characters tend to function better as archetypal embodiments of ideas. This is particularly difficult to achieve with out dealing with certain subject matter, which is why I suspect the Coens frequently pen stories involving easily qualifiable characters (policemen, killers, etc.). Using these particular characters allows the Coens to easily categorize characters by virtue of their personal philosophies or actions (the female cop in Fargo, Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, The Barber in The Man Who Knew Too Much, etc.).
The last of the Coens' characteristics is their tendency to write plots about characters caught up in extraordinary circumstances. In that sense they are modern film noire-auteurs. Their plots are usually winding and generally really explode with an early discovery, decision, action that the main character would have been ambivalent toward in normal circumstances. These early experiences bring the characters into the world in a new and more convincing way that is much more involving and engrossing for the viewer.
The strength of the Coens is the fact that they don't fit the mold.
While our tendency to make films using the Syd Fields method (again, three act story structure) is apparent in the majority of modern American theatre fare, it is definitely one of the greater weaknesses of the American cinematic marketplace. From month to month it gets hard to distinguish one explosion/gore/sex/quip fest from another. Rarely do we get the chance to glimpse work of any substantive novelty, and when we do, the majority of these films limp along at the box office before being put out to pasture to HBO Signature or the DVD market.
In a time of nearly indistinguishable releases in the theatres, the Coens' work separates them and carves a niche for fans of their techniques. If you keep these things in mind, you will be able to appreciate their films much more.
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