Directorial duos like the Coen Brothers challenge an implicit pillar of auteurism. 

How can two individuals execute a unified vision? Which has always begged the questions (at least to this egghead): what do they bring to the pairing individually, and what’s added through their collaborations together?

Even though two movies is too small of a sample size to glean meaningful trends . . . especially this late in the Coens’ careers . . . because the sort of artists they are now is not necessarily who they’ve always been . . . in fact, who they’ve always been might be what they’re trying to branch away from….

Despite all these caveats, Joel’s Macbeth and Ethan’s Drive-Away Dolls can’t help but feel like windows into their individual approaches to cinema, which can be compared to their duo work to figure out which aspects they may have been individually responsible for, and which were byproducts of their team-ups.