4. The Setting
The 1960s are very much in vogue at the moment, what with Mad Men making the period's fashion, hair styles and so on seem very chic once again. Though we won't be seeing any of that here, the
zeitgeist is what people are in the mood for, even if we're going to see it from the other side of the field, this time New York's Greenwich Village, where the famed folk scene grew its roots. This should make for a setting at once unique within the story yet still somewhat familiar, and if there's anything we know the Coens do well - other than their delightfully dour humour - it's period detail. Just look at their recent A Serious Man; every frame of that film bled the late 1960s, and there was never any doubt that what we were seeing was that time. The footage we've seen so far suggests that once again, the Coens have evoked a very particular sense of time and place, yet without abandoning the very contemporary idiosyncrasy that made them famous.