Jeffery Overstreet and Matt Zoller Seitz are two of my favorite authors / movie critics. I value their opinions and their beliefs. So I was very excited to see that they sat down to discuss my favorite living directors (Joel and Ethan Coen) and talked about their view of God. You can read the full discussion over at Overstreet’s blog “Looking Closer.”
Religion, while it binds communities and brings meaning through ritual, is ultimately not enough. I’m not willing to brand the Coens as “covert Christians.” And even if I did, the word “Christian” is about as meaningful anymore as the word “conservative” or “Democrat”, or the term “the American way.” It means a million things to a million people. But they are definitely drawn to a vision of the cosmos that resonates with my understanding of Christ’s teachings. That is to say that “righteousness,” the ways of religion, and the law-focused method of an “Old Testament” worldview, are ultimately insufficient.
We cannot earn our way to heaven by being good. We cannot save ourselves. The Coens know that “all have sinned,” and they know that “the wages of sin is death.” Everybody is likely to die miserably in their movies, whether as a result of their own evil or someone else’s.
But there is something out there, some kind of offer of grace, and when we glimpse that, goodness happens in us. We begin to love not for selfish reasons, but as a response, as a reflection, as if we are instruments being tuned up by something greater than ourselves.
No, I think that the clearest summation of their worldview comes from Mattie in their True Grit remake: “You must pay for everything in this world, one way and another. There is nothing free except the grace of God.”
If you enjoyed that snippet, I hope you’ll read the full discussion. And if that isn’t enough there is a whole book written on the topic of the Coens’ theology. The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers by Cathleen Falsani
