Raising Arizona (1987)
Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Had I seen this before: Yes
First of all, I suspect this film was my introduction to the Coen brothers, given that it came out when I was a young but relatively aware kid and I cannot now recall a time before I had seen it. As such, it probably played a somewhat outsized role in the formation of my taste in movies to the point that I almost avoided covering it here because I'm not even sure how to talk about it (cut to me sobbing in the car like Holly Hunter, wailing "I just love it so mu-hu-hu-uch"). Is Raising Arizona the reason I am drawn to things that are delightfully off-kilter but keep you at a safe emotional distance? Heightened reality with a sort of dream logic? Dialogue that no real humans would say but that my brain rewinds and replays in order to appreciate each word, like a string of beautiful polished stones in bizarre colors? Characters that would make an excellent couples costume at Halloween? John Goodman, generally?
In order to avoid a blog-length tautology--I like this movie because it's good, it's entertaining because of how good it is, etc.--I'm going to dig down a little bit into how it pulls off what it does, which at first blush seems absolutely impossible. If you have never seen Raising Arizona, here is what the movie is about: H.I. ("Hi") McDunnough, played by Nic Cage at maybe his most endearing, is a repeat-offender petty thief. Ed, played by Holly Hunter, is the police officer who repeatedly books him. They fall in love, get married, Hi goes straight with a factory job, and they start trying for a baby only to discover that Ed is infertile. What they do not do next is take the Up-montage-route of making elaborate and adventurous travel plans that they will never actually follow through on as a couple. What they do instead is, upon seeing a news story that locally-famous furniture salesman Nathan Arizona and his wife have just welcomed quintuplets that are almost "more than [they] can handle," decide that the best course of action is to...take one. Of the babies. An entire human child. And they do!
This is, prima facie, a very upsetting premise. Every time I start this movie I think "the kidnapping thing is going to bother me too much this time." Child in danger, no thank you. Bereft mother, absolutely not. I am a person who noped out of the first season of Stranger Things mostly because the idea of waking up one morning to discover that one of my children was not in their bed was so overwhelming to me that it drowned out all the "fun" aspects of the rest of the show. How can this possibly be a movie that I love from top to bottom every time I watch it?
Here is, I think, the most important factor: Nathan Jr/Junior/Hi Jr/Ed Jr/Glen Jr/Gale Jr is not actually an entire human child in an emotional sense. I have personally birthed and been the primary caretaker for two human babies and have, through various birthday parties and playdates and such, been exposed to many more. Nathan Jr. is not like those babies. He does not whine. He does not cry. He does not demand to be picked up. He does not lose his mind if you leave his sight for 90 seconds to go to the bathroom. When you set him down in a crib he just sits there. If you hand him a bottle he quietly drinks it. If you burn rubber in your getaway car that you forgot to put him and his car seat into because you were so distracted by trying to get away from the scene of the robbery you just committed, he and the car seat will still be sitting calmly right in the middle of the road where you left them. It is intimated that he defecates, but he does not make the tell-tale concentrating face when he does it. He is maybe--maybe--comparable to an extraordinarily well-trained dog.
He also causes most of the adults he comes in contact with to either fall so helplessly in love with him as to immediately feel the intense need to adopt him and name him after themselves or to become consumed by the idea of cashing in on the reward for returning him (and sometimes both). He is purely a baby-shaped MacGuffin. As soon as the initial kidnapping occurs, Mrs. Arizona and the other babies are removed from the action, leaving only Nathan Arizona Sr.--a man whose catchphrase is "Do it my way or watch your butt!"--as the avatar for Jr.'s rightful family. Because his father seems more incensed at this disruption to his schedule than heartbroken about his missing child, the emotional stakes are set on a low burn, leaving room for hijinks to flourish unimpeded.
None of the characters are really real--you might be invested in the overall happiness and well-being of Hi and Ed, but this is a film that includes a credit for "Feisty Hayseed." Everyone in this universe is turned up somewhere between two and seventeen notches. A lot of it comes down to the way the Coens write dialogue (and manage to cast people who can convincingly pull it off). They explained in an interview about this film that they wanted the characters' lines to reflect local dialect as well as their presumed reading material: magazines and the Bible. In explaining Ed's infertility, for example, Hi tells us that "Edwina's insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase." Something about confident dummies in fiction who casually sprinkle a bit of King Jamesian flare into their rhetoric always works for me, even though the universe I personally live in is full of confident dummies who are actively destroying literally everything. No charm. No flare.
Anyway, I'm not sure why you're still here reading this when you could be watching John Goodman and William Forsythe playing escaped-convict-turned-irritating-houseguest brothers ("We released ourselves on our own recognizance")? Or Sam McMurray playing Hi's Polish-joke-spewing self-awareness-lacking wife-swap-attempting boss ("I'm talking about what they call nowadays an open marriage")? Or Frances McDormand in sparkling high comedy mode playing his baby-advice-giving wife ("You gotta give 'em dep-tet boosters yearly or else they'll develop lockjaw and night vision")? I can't imagine whatever you're up to today is a better use of your time than suddenly realizing that you're not worried about the baby and you're not sure why.
Line I repeated quietly to myself: "You and me's just a fool's paradise"
Is it under two hours: Yes
In conclusion: I may have sorted out more or less how the movie gently guides you away from anxiety about a stolen child, but damned if I know how they manage to bring it back around and make me cry at the final voice over every time.
Vintage Jell-O Ginger Upper Salad from Delishably
There's a lot of food in this movie, presumably because the Coens are deeply keyed into what I personally care about as a viewer. One of the things that keeps everything nicely dreamlike is the fact that the movie seems to be set around the time it was released, in the late 80s, but there is a throwback aspect to the costumes and set design that give it a vaguely 60s feel. (I was around in the 80s and I definitely don't remember so many women at the grocery store with curlers in their hair, for example). The food is no exception--when Hi's terrible boss brings his family over ("decent people" according to Ed) the spread has a sort of mid-everything feel (-century, -western) down to the jiggly Jell-o mold being manhandled by a toddler.
Up next: I inadvertently watch Peter Fonda get shot again
