The Coen Brothers Unmade To The White Sea Could Have Been Another Classic
The Coen Brothers have made several classics throughout their careers and unmade war movie To The White Sea could have been among them.
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The Coen Brothers were set to make World War II drama To The White Sea in the early 2000s, and the cancelled project could have been another classic for the duo. The Coen Brothers made their directorial debut with 1984’s Blood Simple, a noirish thriller with a pitch-black sense of humor. Their creative partnership would yield some of the best movies of the last three decades, including Fargo, No Country For Old Men, The Big Lebowski and many more.
The Coen Brothers’ movies display an uncanny knack of tone, as they’re able to blend genres in ways that logically shouldn’t work, but somehow do. They’ve also written screenplays for movies they didn’t direct such as Suburbicon or Gambit, but without their guidance, these projects never quite gel. Most directors have had famous projects that got away, such as Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon or Tim Burton’s Superman Lives, but the Coen Brothers take on 1993 thriller To The White Sea is one of the most lamented.
To The White Sea was penned by author James Dickey, who also wrote Deliverance, and is a sparse, brutal war story. It follows B-29 gunner Muldrow, who is shot down over Tokyo and has to make his back to his native Alaska. Far from being a hero, Muldrow is portrayed as a ruthless sociopath, who views anyone he encounters as an enemy and even kills those who help him. The story also flashes back to Muldrow’s time in Alaska and how his father trained him to be a killer.
The Coens’ script for To The White Sea has been praised and the movie was gearing up for production, with Brad Pitt (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) in the lead. Since Muldrow doesn’t speak Japanese, the character is essentially silent after the first few pages, and no attempt is made to soften him. The movie was set to shoot in 2002 but was delayed. The large budget needed to bring it to life combined with the script’s bleakness made financing difficult to put together. Pitt would head off to make Troy instead, a decision he has since lamented. He views To The White Sea as a project that got away, and his disappointment in Troy also made him reassess how he approaches screenplays.
It feels like some of the terse spirit of the cancelled project found it’s way into 2008’s No Country For Old Men, but the Coen Brothers take on To The White Sea is unlikely to be revived. There were rumblings of a new adaptation from a different creative team in 2015, but this has yet to move ahead.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/to-white-sea-movie-coen-brothers-unmade-classic/