The Coen brothers Christmas movie

A feel-g00d story from the Coens. This, I gotta see.

“It is formal in the sense that it is a straightforward presentation,” Joel said. “We weren’t trying to tune it up stylistically. When we were thinking about how to shoot the scene, the default position was more pretty, more classical.”

There are some Coenesque touches amid the western classicism. Rooster and Mattie encounter a mountain man who has been roaming the hills for a long time, perhaps too long, and seems overly fond of the bear rug he wears as a coat and costume. And given that Rooster is in the habit of getting his man, usually with the assistance of a bullet, there’s a measure of retributive violence. But then again, no one is fed into a wood chipper as in “Fargo.”

“The book is quite violent, but the level of violence was a consideration for us in a way that it has not been in the past,” Ethan said, in part because the PG-13 rating will open up the movie for audiences beyond their fan base. “Some level of violence had to be in there to demonstrate the implacability of what Hattie is up against at a very young age, but compared to what you see on HBO it’s quite tame.”

Scott Rudin, who produced the film, said that its formal, reverent approach to the western, a place where quests are undertaken and adventures are had, is on the screen everywhere you look.

“I don’t think that Ethan and Joel did this movie because they felt that they wanted to reinvent the western or remake another film,” he said. “The patois of the characters, the love of language that permeates the whole film, makes it very much of a piece with their other films, but it is the least ironic in many regards.”