but a defense of the Coen Brothers. And even though I am not constantly on about Tarantino or the Coens, I am just as big of a fan of theirs as you are of Miyazaki.
I also felt really happy after I watched the Big Lebowski, but it wasn't nearly as great as an experience as watching Scott Tenorman Must Die. So yes, I believe that Scott Tenorman Must Die is possibly greater work of art than anything the Cohen Brothers ever done, for me at least. Anyway, the guys who make South Park are quite brilliant in their own way and they also seek the same type of emotion as the Coens do. Family Guy is a bit lower in quality, though some episodes made me really happy as well. Overall, I cannot honestly say that I prefer the Coens work over Family Guy. Both made me really happy, though The Big Lebowski is significantly better than any single Family Guy episode.
I also didn't understand No Country For Old Men so I don't regard it as their best movie (I liked Fargo and The Big Lebowski much more). I personally consider the types of emotions these films seek to create are lower than, for example, the types Kurosawa's films seek (which is a sublime feeling, a feeling of something great, something above simple "happy"). Now, there is also the question of preference between types of emotions. So, it is still hard for me to think that a work that doesn't seek to attain what I define as sky should be regarded as part of the sky. So, since the Coens never tried to make what I would consider a great movie, I wouldn't consider them great directors.
I don't hold gross/dark comedy in very high regard. Maybe because it is a more forgettable feeling, for me at least, such as jokes involving extreme violence (Pulp Fiction is a festival of jokes involving extreme violence, as Kill Bill, though they are the best in what they do) if compared to the subtle cartoon of Porco Rosso and it's innocent comedy or the raw emotional power of Ikiru. Anyway, the only Coen or Tarantino film that I ever felt the desire of watching again was Pulp Fiction, because I think it transcends a bit it's own genre limitations and achieves something really beyond mere escapism.
I watched Coen films for years before I discovered Miyazaki, since I discovered Miyazaki I never watched a Coen film again, the last one was A Serious Man a few years ago. Like most other movies, I regarded them as simply entertainment, something to kill time. When I watched Spirited Away, it was something very, very different from what I was used to, the only film comparable to it that I had watched before was Kubrick's 2001, in terms of spontaneously achieving that feeling of sublimity that goes beyond entertainment but impresses itself into the heart. I never found such feeling while watching the Coens, or Monthy Python, or Family Guy or Seinfeld. I never expected to find it in a cartoon and I actually wish I didn't love these movies so much since they have taken too much time out of my real life. It bordering on what a psychiatrist might say that it is a mental illness that I am so affected by these movies so that my real life is negatively affected, I once watched Nausicaa and I was unable to think in anything else besides that cartoon for over a week, the Nausicaa manga was even worse. That never happened to me on work of any other director or any other work of fiction.
So, I like Coens films, but I honestly have difficulty understanding how someone might truly love them to the degree of wishing to love them less, for practical reasons. This review is pretty much on my line of thinking regarding No Country For Old Men:
http://criticafterdark.blogspot.com....and-ethan.html, though this critic is a bit too hard on it.