We just watched Blood Simple, which astonishingly enough we didn’t realize was a Coen brothers film until the credits started rolling — a good sign, I think.

If I talk too much about this movie I will ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, and since I think it’s a brilliantly crafted piece of work, smart, well-paced and incredibly detail-oriented from start to finish, I don’t want to ruin it. What’s interesting about it is that it’s really not a film that’s about plot (although the plot is laid out well) or character, or meaning — it’s a film that’s about mood, above all. Every frame is deliberately designed to create a very specific mood, one of a certain strange kind of sinister beauty. I will say that it’s a fascinating experience to find your heart so often in your mouth, thumping with anticipation, when in a sense there’s absolutely no mystery in the plot — just a great deal of suspense.

Some wonderful moments: Abby noticing the dog in the corner of the room and its panting getting louder and louder while Marty tries to strangle her, Loren’s beat-up Beetle appearing suddenly in the window when Abby lies down to go back to bed, looking down on Ray in his chair through the rotating blades of the fan, the sound of the shovel scraping against the road as Ray stands over Marty, the blood spots coming through the towels on Ray’s back seat, those amazing beams of light shooting through into the darkened bathroom when Loren puts all his bullets through the wall…

…maybe I have ruined it after all. But probably you can forget everything I just said quite easily, and go out and rent this movie or put it on your Netflix list. If you’re at all a fan of films in which characters, caught in the mad tangle of their own misdeeds, keep pushing themselves further and further into horribly bad trouble (I know I am!), you’ll really enjoy this.