1243 No Country for Old Men

[kaujot]

It's not about that anyway. It's about Sheriff Bell's changing response to the ineluctable violence. That's why he's put in opposition to the guy spouting off about "all those damn punk kids" or whatever it was. That scene is meant to suggest different registers of disillusionment; a qualitative distinction.

Ellis is the not the other county sheriff. Ellis is Ed Tom's relative (can't remember how, now) that ET goes to see near the end of the film. The one with the cats.

[portnoy]

Personally, I've always wanted to adapt Outer Dark to the screen...

I liked the book but have you read Child of God?

Child of God and The Orchard Keeper are the two I haven't gotten around to - I'm sure I'll read them soon enough, but other stuff just keeps popping up and begging to be read first.

Did you hear about this?

[Michael]

Personally, I've always wanted to adapt Outer Dark to the screen...

I liked the book but have you read Child of God?

Child of God and The Orchard Keeper are the two I haven't gotten around to - I'm sure I'll read them soon enough, but other stuff just keeps popping up and begging to be read first.

Did you hear about this?

Teaching Child of God to ninth graders?! And in Texas of all places! I'm not for banning books and such but the book is the most sickening, disturbing I've ever read. Not that I don't like it, I love it. Comparing to this book, American Psycho is a lullaby. Child of God is the Irreversible of novellas. The story amazingly vividly details a serial killer who wears a fright wig and fucks rotting corpses like a bullfrog. The images and details burn in your mind and scar forever.

Jesus, I wish I had that teacher!

[Cold Bishop]

Well, from what I can gather he didn't teach it. He recommended it to one student, who happens to be an Advanced Placement Student.

While I feel it was a little absent minded on his part, given the book and the place, I doubt he would recommend it to a kid who he didn't feel could handle it maturely (given the AP class).

Hell, I remember high school reading classes, and all the books on the reading list were always the most dull and geriatric stuff imaginable (and don't get me started on Accelerated Reader.) It doesn't surprise me that a lot of kids get turned off of reading. I was smart enough to realize that I was never gonna find the books I wanted to read in school, but most kids aren't gonna put up that sort of effort. A book like Child of God would be the perfect remedy for the banality of the average curriculum. I wish I had that teacher, indeed.

Plus, I recall reading Naked Lunch in 8th grade, and handling it perfectly well, so I don't think its unbelievable that a kid could handle Child of God. More of a case of parents freaking out if anything.

[Nothing]

Blood Meridian

We can still pray this doesn't happen, although it now seems much more likely.

Personally, I've always wanted to adapt Outer Dark to the screen...

Last I heard, ICM were asking $1m+ upfront for any available McCarthy property - this was before the Coen film was in the can.

[HerrSchreck]

There's a certain magic in Swiss Cheese Narrative Film.. Tarkovsky, Dreyer, Bresson, Antonioni: versus other, more conventional films there's far too little but yet there's So Much More. It's magic the way their poetry works out so perfectly and fully in the end, and pulls you back for repeated viewings like a polar magnet.

This sounds like you have more of a contention with contemporary Hollywood filmmaking than with the Coens specifically. You're talking about more of an elliptical structure with lots of spaces but which allows the viewer to draw more and more connections over time. But none of the filmmakers you cite are American, and none of them are contemporary. They all come from very different places. Is this not condemning the filmmaking tradition (conventional action/story-based Hollywood filmmaking) as a whole out of which the Coens spring? While I tend to agree with you,

This is really what brings out the worst in me: where are you getting these ideas from? When or where did I say I have "a contention with contemporary Hollywood filmmaking than with the Coens specifically". Is it that impossible for lovers of this film to accept that my (or anyone else's) dislike for the film lies strictly in the skills and poetic intuition of the filmmakers themselves? It almost sounds like a rationalization ("well, schreck simply doesn't like Contemporary Hollywood Filmmaking so it would naturally follow that that's the reason he cant see this film as a masterwork. Thus: it's not the film-- it's schrecks prejudices before he walked into the cinema", or
"Well, schreck does not like films with unconventional narrative where certain zones of the narrative are left in shadow or completely unresolved; thuse, it's not the film-- it's schrecks prejudices before he walks into the cinema."
Note also the extreme variances between Nothing and M's conjectures. One thinks I have a problem with open-ended ambiguity (patently non-Contemporary Hollywood mainstream-style filmmaking), and another thinks I have a problem with Contemporary Hollywood mainstream style filmmaking.

M the reason I mentioned Dreyer Antonioni Bresson etc is not because they are non American, but because they are the prime exponents of the kind of cinema that appears to be being blended with Crime Melodrama. I am a fan of all cinema. I have no stylistic prejudices, really, where I'd say "I'm not going to see this because it is, stylistically, within the zone of XYZ.." Nothing is more wonderful than going to the cinema because folks have been saying good things about it, and your hopes are fulfilled. This goes for modern Disney musical cartoons like The Great Mouse Detective, so many of the Coens earlier excellent works (peaking imo w Millers Crossing), to PTA's There Will Be Blood.

The Coen brothers are very chatty, spiely, character driven directors. Quietude, introspection, and the poetry of vacancy are not the landscape to which they've developed whatever chops they may or may not have (left). The conceit of killing off your main character midfilm, and trying to get across the sense of the non-narrative nature of not only Life Itself but manic outbursts of violence, and essentially "stealing" from your audience the character in whom theyve invested their emotional frieght-- this is wonderful terrain, and ripe for sublimely poetic & moving authorial statement. One of the films that "got me into film" was a film that scared the bejeezus outa me at 4 yrs old called Horror Hotel (aka City of the dead), which kills off the main protegonist mid film, and since it came out so close to Psycho, debates rage who was the first to do so.

Absolutely anything can be made to work. There are no rules in the cinema. I don;t want to sound smug but only an extreme newcomer to cinema would look at NCFOM and see an extremely unconventional narrative. But all cinema is challenging to the director. It's not enough to have a good book, its not enough to have a good script-- you have to make a movie that works. You have to make a movie that works for people who havent read the book-- you have to create a universe that functions in cinematic terms. If you send people out of the cinema asking questions, they should most emphatically NOT be questions that are worthless time consuming questions that serve no function for the viewer than to... essentially waste time and get annoyed for Nothing.

Certain things are worth withholding, certain things are not. Certain facts of life remains forever ambiguous. When people are within a conventional narrative crime melodramatic framework where Establishment is being handled in a mostly traditional fashion... then suddenly are not sure who is who, why they're there, what decade it is, who this person is to whom... or there are lapses of exposition when a critical event such as the killing off of the main character is not clearly prmulgated (by whom, why), a sense of ryhthmic inconsistency gnaws at the viewer. If you are going to be left meditating on something, it should be worth meditating on. There should be a poetic payoff. There should be a reason for it, it should be part of the compositional, stylistic, or mood-structure of the film.. otherwise people are going to feel like you're just Fucking Up.

There's nothing wrong with going far far further than the Coens did in this film.. purely anonymous characters who drift in and out with no seeming motivation, lack of plot, upside down and reversed ellipses throwing sense of time and unfolding almost completely out the window.

What it all boils down to is how I feel when exiting the cinema. When I enter I'm prepared to surrender myself to the machinations of a man or woman who is going to give me a substitute, so to speak, of the world outside. I shut off and the film starts up, and begins working with me, messing with me, pushing my buttons, playing pea-under-the-shell, three card monte, working my emotional makeup.

A good director keeps me on his side: he can toss me anything, but the execution is such that I'm always with him. A bad director causes me to say "this dick just blew it," or causes me to say "I am just getting NOTHING from this man here," and my resistance toughens to a personality who is not winning me over.

And like I said, this film wasn't all bad by any means.. but I think their flirtations with narrative ambiguity are misfires and hamhandedly executed. For me there was no reward at the end of the grey areas. They just felt like bad filmmaking.

Also, I don't see how more of a 'Swiss-Cheese Narrative' style would have helped No Country for Old Men in being more explicit on the plot points you said were unclear. You'd think that would confuse things further. Clarification via elision?

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing, or maybe you mistyped what you meant. It sounds to me like you're asking "Do you think even more narrative holes would have helped the film clear up its narrative holes?"

For the record, Swiss Cheese Filmmaking is just my shorthand for "POetic Ambiguity; Withholding the usual routes to viewer satisfaction; huge blanks in the narrative." Many favorites of mine employ this style. But if you think I meant "More Coeny holes please!", thats not what I was saying and I don't think I came anywhere even near offering that as a diagnosis for repairing the broken sections of this film. The last thing this film needs is more crap like establishing the Time/Era of the film via offhand comments (while the viewer is preoccupied with imminent-murder suspense) about a date on a quarter, expositing the death of the main character in a meaninglessly obtuse fashion (when less significant murders previously have been exposited with great effect).

The way I can best describe it: it's the punctuation marks in this film that annoy me.There's no sense of composition to it, or preparedness. It feels very sloppy and unthought out. It feels like that classic Coen self indulgence.

[Grand Illusion]

he is just unceremoniously discarded.

This being precisely the point.

Moreso than a lot of adaptations, NCFOM can very much be seen as a screen 'translation' of a literary work. It doesn't quite achieve this, nor does it rise above it, however I believe that your dissastisfaction, which strikes me as a philosophical opposition more than anything else, would extend to the book.

I think you're saying this based on the fact that I appear to be coming out against NCFOM's more nihilistic viewpoint. The discarding of the lead character certainly upends the traditional humanist filmmaking politic, but it's not really the inherent nihilism that I disagree with.

It's just that the lead is the only well-drawn character in the film. Once the Coens jettison Brolin's character, we're left with a one-dimensional, force-of-nature villain, flipping coins like Tommy Lee Jones did in Batman Forever, and Tommy Lee Jones himself struggling to make his speeches compelling.

It's not the nihilism I disagree with. It's the solipsist narrative (among other things), that no real characters exist outside of the protagonist. Thus, I find the disconnect for myself to be either with the structure of the film or the writing/development (and, dare I say, performance) of everyone but Josh Brolin and perhaps Kelly Macdonald.

Must a narrative film abide by more conservative rules? The point of empathy extended until the final beat? The three-act structure clearly apparent?

That's not what I'm trying to say at all. I hope I've clarified.

[Nothing]

When people are within a conventional narrative crime melodramatic framework where Establishment is being handled in a mostly traditional fashion... then suddenly are not sure who is who, why they're there, what decade it is, who this person is to whom... or there are lapses of exposition when a critical event such as the killing off of the main character is not clearly prmulgated (by whom, why), a sense of ryhthmic inconsistency gnaws at the viewer. If you are going to be left meditating on something, it should be worth meditating on. There should be a poetic payoff. There should be a reason for it, it should be part of the compositional, stylistic, or mood-structure of the film.. otherwise people are going to feel like you're just Fucking Up.

You do seem to be failing to pick up on rather a lot of things:

- Chigurh's murder of the two associates is addressed in the conversation between Harrelson and the boss.

- It is obvious that the mexicans have killed Moss - Bell sees them driving away in their van and there is no indication of Chigurh's presence until later when he has to visit the hotel to recover the money.

- The decade is established early on with the coin scene and, besides, this isn't essential to the narrative, rather a detail that adds thematic richness.

So essentially you're complaining because you feel a 'conventional crime narrative framework' shouldn't require you to work a bit - except perhaps CmC wasn't setting out to create a conventional crime narrative framework. It may not be Sayat Nova but that doesn't excuse critical laziness.

Now whilst I believe Jones succeeds in creating a compelling Sheriff Bell, I would agree with Grand Illusion that Bardem's cartoonish portrayal of Chigurh is hugely overrated and feel that the film fails primarily because the Coens turn so many of McCarthy's characters into broad caricature. However, this is a problem with the direction/casting, not the writing imho.

[M]

This is really what brings out the worst in me: where are you getting these ideas from? When or where did I say I have "a contention with contemporary Hollywood filmmaking than with the Coens specifically". Is it that impossible for lovers of this film to accept that my (or anyone else's) dislike for the film lies strictly in the skills and poetic intuition of the filmmakers themselves? It almost sounds like a rationalization ("well, schreck simply doesn't like Contemporary Hollywood Filmmaking so it would naturally follow that that's the reason he cant see this film as a masterwork. Thus: it's not the film-- it's schrecks prejudices before he walked into the cinema", or
"Well, schreck does not like films with unconventional narrative where certain zones of the narrative are left in shadow or completely unresolved; thuse, it's not the film-- it's schrecks prejudices before he walks into the cinema."

Your emotional responses to others' postings aren't especially relevant. You didn't say that you don't like contemporary Hollywood filmmaking. I inferred it, because No Country For Old Men's narrative style is that of a typically Hollywood film. An event occurs in the life of our protagonist, conflict arises as a result, and the conflict is resolved in the end (here the protagonist leaves before the end, but the narrative structure proceeds the same anyway). This structure is realized through functional dramatic exposition. You seem to say that the Coens assign themselves too many literal plot points to detail, and then fail to make art of it because they are technically incapable storytellers and because that isn't the way to go about telling stories with film in the first place (you prefer Swiss-Cheese narrative style). To me, that sounds much more like a criticism of conventional Hollywood filmmaking, which has always been action- and story-based and which would make a virtue out of the explication of a series of dramatic facts to tell a story. One thing happens and then another thing happens, and things continue to happen and we as omniscient spectators are privy to all of it neatly laid before us.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing, or maybe you mistyped what you meant. It sounds to me like you're asking "Do you think even more narrative holes would have helped the film clear up its narrative holes?"

For the record, Swiss Cheese Filmmaking is just my shorthand for "POetic Ambiguity; Withholding the usual routes to viewer satisfaction; huge blanks in the narrative." Many favorites of mine employ this style. But if you think I meant "More Coeny holes please!", thats not what I was saying and I don't think I came anywhere even near offering that as a diagnosis for repairing the broken sections of this film. The last thing this film needs is more crap like establishing the Time/Era of the film via offhand comments (while the viewer is preoccupied with imminent-murder suspense) about a date on a quarter, expositing the death of the main character in a meaninglessly obtuse fashion (when less significant murders previously have been exposited with great effect).

The way I can best describe it: it's the punctuation marks in this film that annoy me.There's no sense of composition to it, or preparedness. It feels very sloppy and unthought out. It feels like that classic Coen self indulgence.

No, that's how I took your meaning, as 'poetic ambiguity'. But my question remains, how does that help the Coens improve the coherence of certain plot points in No Country for Old Men? How would Tarkovsky have explained exactly who Chigurh was, and the nature of his relationships with various shadowy gangsters and drug smugglers, with poetic ambiguity? Or what year it was in the quarter-flipping scene at the gas station? I saw his remark not as the Coens trying to hamhandedly convey the year in which the film is set. Nothing of the sort. The mention of the date on the coin was to characterize Chigurh as fateful, inevitable death. The man in the gas station could never have guessed decades earlier that he and that coin would have come together in such a way, but there they are, victim and coin, inevitably.

[Grand Illusion]

- It is obvious that the mexicans have killed Moss - Bell sees them driving away in their van and there is no indication of Chigurh's presence until later when he has to visit the hotel to recover the money.

I don't believe that the fact that it was Moss who has been murdered is immediately obvious. At least it wasn't to myself nor the people I saw the film with. We all had the same reaction that, until Chigurh visits Lady Moss, we doubted that Moss was dead.

This isn't just because Moss avoided the big shootout with Chigurh. This is much less problematic to me than the fact that the Coens don't show Moss's face or much of his body when he is dead. They don't show it at the hotel. They don't show it at mortuary, even when his wife is called in to identify the body, which she never even does except by crying.

I'm not so much troubled by the lack of a shootout with the Mexicans (and much, much less troubled by the lack of a face-off with Chigurgh) than I am by the use of camera angles to immediately obscure if it was even Moss who had really died. Then, the narrative continues its linear stroll as if nothing has happened. I was definitely left questioning the fate of Moss, rather than its intellectual or emotional implications, which seems to be what HerrSchreck is getting at .

- The decade is established early on with the coin scene and, besides, this isn't essential to the narrative, rather a detail that adds thematic richness.

Am I imagining things or wasn't Moss a Vietnam vet?

Now whilst I believe Jones succeeds in creating a compelling Sheriff Bell, I would agree with Grand Illusion that Bardem's cartoonish portrayal of Chigurh is hugely overrated and feel that the film fails primarily because the Coens turn so many of McCarthy's characters into broad caricature. However, this is a problem with the direction/casting, not the writing imho.

Could be. All I know is what's on screen and if I responded to it.

[Nothing]

I don't believe that the fact that it was Moss who has been murdered is immediately obvious.

I guess it may be a different experience coming in cold. As I knew it was Moss even before they showed the body, this wasn't something that even crossed my mind. But - I think the first viewing of a film is pretty-much by-the-by anyway. A good film should stand-up to - and improve - upon multiple viewings, by which point all of the smaller plot details would no doubt be clear. Whether the film is worthy of multiple viewings in other regards is another question on which I'm not currently qualified to comment.

[flyonthewall2983]

I had to watch that scene again to discover it was Moss on the floor of that apartment. It didn't feel that obvious the first time, but the 2nd time was one of those "duh" moments.

[HerrSchreck]

Your emotional responses to others' postings aren't especially relevant ...

You didn't say that you don't like contemporary Hollywood filmmaking. I inferred it

In the world series of our convo here, those back to back sentences are a grand slam of irony. Irony aside, I thought I was talking about the film, talking about it in my own terms, according to my own tastes. The problem here is that a couple of posters want to steer the subject onto me. I e , not what's going on inside the film, but what is going on inside of schreck that he does not feel what we feel while watching this film. So in that sense, yes, we are not providing one another much nourishment.

You seem to say that the Coens assign themselves too many literal plot points to detail

Never said that or anything even close.

(you prefer Swiss-Cheese narrative style)

Never said that, and I've been straining to say otherwise. I prefer an experience that functions as a Good Movie, in all its many incarnations.

To me, that sounds much more like a criticism of conventional Hollywood filmmaking, which has always been action- and story-based and which would make a virtue out of the explication of a series of dramatic facts to tell a story. One thing happens and then another thing happens, and things continue to happen and we as omniscient spectators are privy to all of it neatly laid before us.)

I made no such extrapolation. This is me talking about one film. One film is not a genre or regional industrial ism unto itself, so this tendency to extrapolate out into the ether of industrial literature (where WILDLY divergent films are bunched up for the sake of easy tagging) categorization doesn't serve our conversation. Many intelligent people who had not read the book came out of the theater not knowing who certain people were, what the connections between certain people were, who was killed when Moss was killed, who killed Moss, who the sheriff in the wheelchair was... and that these were NOT things we were supposed to walk away guessing about. That's called "bad storytelling".

[No, that's how I took your meaning, as 'poetic ambiguity'. But my question remains, how does that help the Coens improve the coherence of certain plot points in No Country for Old Men? How would Tarkovsky have explained exactly who Chigurh was, and the nature of his relationships with various shadowy gangsters and drug smugglers, with poetic ambiguity? Or what year it was in the quarter-flipping scene at the gas station? I saw his remark not as the Coens trying to hamhandedly convey the year in which the film is set. Nothing of the sort. The mention of the date on the coin was to characterize Chigurh as fateful, inevitable death. The man in the gas station could never have guessed decades earlier that he and that coin would have come together in such a way, but there they are, victim and coin, inevitably.

Dude we've got to stop. I just told you I don't think more ambiguity is the repair for the "broken" sections of this film, and now you ask me how Tarkovsky would have done it "to make it better" so to speak.

But as an aside and to show you the wildly divergent interpretations one can have as a result when one "trusts" wispy little expositions to deliver a whole world of poetic amplitude, I got none of "mention of the date on the coin was to characterize Chigurh as fateful, inevitable death"... first off its not inevitable because the man wasn't killed, so it read to me as "meaningless, entirely random and psychologically chicken shit" death. Death at the hands of the ultimate punk. A serial killer blaming a coin for his senseless killing rather than admitting possession of The Furies. A typical enough arrangement (most serial killers are not mentally acute enough to own up to their chicken shit natures out in the open), but to show a dude flipping a coin, then blaming the coin for the murder he then commits... that is the extremest opposite of The Pale Rider of the Pale Horse. Fateful inevitable death is just that-- death itself doesn't appear if it's not Time To Die. Perhaps McCarthy exposited the metaphor more impressively in the book, but in the Coens hands Chigurhh just comes off as a slightly vacant, vaguely confused, chicken shit punk who enjoys the conversation prior to killing, enjoys the power of withholding and administering murder and the attendant fear and breakdown in his victims prior to the trigger pull. The coin flipping completely lacked a metaphysic, or sense of metaphor for the darker forces in the world (or death itself); it read to me like his Show business, common to many who possess a sort of pathology. Small people feel a need to become exalted, to fuck with the Big Forces which have fucked them over so majorly in their own lives... thus you ride the train and see unbalanced people taking over the car and preaching incomprehensible fire sermons, or homeless people making huge speeches about their state and disposition that go on forever. It's about controlling those you perceivce to be your own controllers... and this is the way the coin flipping thing read to me-- completely unimpressive and vacant of metaphor.

I think this film would have worked much better if they filled in those factual blanks left half rendered (since most of the film is fairly standard melodrama anyway, albeit in a quiet fashion, and there seems to be no "reason" certain hard facts are left unestablished, the vagaries seem to lack a plan). A straight, quiet, meditative film along the style mostly at hand-- keeping the nice restrained, bleak tempo already established-- could have, for me, made the film very good.

[M]

In the world series of our convo here, those back to back sentences are a grand slam of irony. Irony aside, I thought I was talking about the film, talking about it in my own terms, according to my own tastes.

Not really. The first sentence refers to your assertion that 'this is what brings out the worst in me', of which I'd remind you that your emotions about other posters' views expressed in the board don't have any bearing on anything. The second sentence refers to your statements about the film, and so, having said the above, doesn't relate to the first in the slightest. I am of course presuming that your statements about the film are subject to discussion and to comparison with competing ideas and the dictates of reason? I thought that's what we were doing, discussing the film? And not just expressing our personal feelings? If the latter, you're right in that my responses to you are probably out of place, but no more out of place than what you posted in the first place.

Many intelligent people who had not read the book came out of the theater not knowing who certain people were, what the connections between certain people were, who was killed when Moss was killed, who killed Moss, who the sheriff in the wheelchair was... and that these were NOT things we were supposed to walk away guessing about. That's called "bad storytelling".

Or some people didn't get certain things and others did. I understood right away that Moss had been killed at the hotel, because the preceding shot at the hotel if you'll recall lingered on him as if to say (after the subsequent shot had come this was clear) that you're not going to see him again so get a proper look at him. Which is interesting too, and reinforces the idea of the inevitability of death very effectively, relying only on visual information to do so. I do not know who exactly the parties are involved in the initial drug deal that causes the events of the film, but there are films in which shadowy criminals emerge and then disappear again without revealing precisely their identities or their relationship to the story. You don't leave room for the possibility that your ignorance or confusion may be intentional on the part of the story teller in a film. If that is a possibility, why do you not allow for it here, and what is the difference between this film and a film that legitimately uses viewer confusion for effect? If that's not a possibility, why not?

But as an aside and to show you the wildly divergent interpretations one can have as a result when one "trusts" wispy little expositions to deliver a whole world of poetic amplitude, I got none of "mention of the date on the coin was to characterize Chigurh as fateful, inevitable death"... first off its not inevitable because the man wasn't killed, so it read to me as "meaningless, entirely random and psychologically chicken shit" death. Death at the hands of the ultimate punk. A serial killer blaming a coin for his senseless killing rather than admitting possession of The Furies. A typical enough arrangement (most serial killers are not mentally acute enough to own up to their chicken shit natures out in the open), but to show a dude flipping a coin, then blaming the coin for the murder he then commits... that is the extremest opposite of The Pale Rider of the Pale Horse. Fateful inevitable death is just that-- death itself doesn't appear if it's not Time To Die. Perhaps McCarthy exposited the metaphor more impressively in the book...

The man at the gas station didn't die, but that doesn't matter. The audience has been made to feel the dread of impending death. At that, Chigurh is characterized such. Use common sense. There is next to nothing to gain dramatically to simply relate the calendar year in which the story is set. But there is a very compelling reason to convince the audience of the nature of the character of the villain in the scene. This is the motivation for the scene, not so I know it's 1980 or whatever it was. That I don't know the year it's set in even after seeing the film I think demonstrates the flimsiness of your argument that that was the motivation of the scene. So you're right in that sense. It would be a weak attempt to relate the year in time in the film. But that wasn't the impetus behind the inclusion of the date on the coin. It was to get across some sense in the viewer of blind fate. Chigurh often stares blankly himself throughout the film as though he were blind or impartial to his actions and their effects. That you didn't get that isn't a counterargument. That's your subjective impression. There's nothing inherent in the film that's deficient, which is kind of why our impressions aren't very useful tools in interpreting films and assigning them value.

[exte]

Coen's doing long Q&A panel discussions with Spike Jonez as moderator.

[HerrSchreck]

...don't have any bearing on anything.
....doesn't relate to the first in the slightest.
....Or some people didn't get certain things and others did.
I understood right away that Moss had been killed at the hotel, because the preceding shot at the hotel if you'll recall lingered on him as if to say (after the subsequent shot had come this was clear) that you're not going to see him again so get a proper look at him.
...the man at the gas station didn't die, but that doesn't matter.
...the audience has been made to feel the dread of impending death.
Use common sense. (gulp!)
There is next to nothing to gain dramatically to simply relate the calendar year in which the story is set.
But there is a very compelling reason to convince the audience of the nature of the character of the villain in the scene.
This is the motivation for the scene
demonstrates the flimsiness of your argument that that was the motivation of the scene.
But that wasn't the impetus behind the inclusion of the date on the coin. That you didn't get that isn't a counterargument.
There's nothing inherent in the film that's deficient

Dude I can't keep doing this with you. Absolute after Absolute as though there is Right (your prognosis) and Wrong (any deviance from your experience). I continuously couch my phrasing with the terms "for me the film doesn't", "in my view"... i e this is my experience.

I'm going to try to stay Nice here because you have a great attachment to this film, so I won't keep saying identifying "stuff I didn't dig too much" (note I never said it was a bad film) because it'll set you off. You're absolutely correct to experience this film as a masterpiece if your emotions predispose you to that experience. But nobody is in a position (unless you're Joel or Ethan Numbnuts, and even they must be careful) to speak in concrete terms what the "motivations" for scenes are.

What you received with great pleasure and awe, I received with a raised eyebrow and a giggle. That doesn't make your common sense any lesser than my own (although your statement in red sorta makes me giggle too).

Clearly this film means a lot to you in some way, and hearing a dissenting opinion puts you on a mission to "set the facts straight." You misread so much in my earlier posts, attached conjectured meanings that were nowhere to be found in the first place, that the fact that you took away a whole load of freight from that film that I didn't is actually to be expected. Even after repeatedly emphasizing my points calmly but with phosphorescence you still attached nonexistent extrapolation and subtext.

So I'll say again-- "No I thought in terms of narrative skill, this film had awkward moments of hamhanded, almost improvised attempt at grey poetic exposition",

You'll come back and say "No, you saw the film incorrectly, didn't see what others saw, and therefore lack common sense,"

then I'll say "See yoshimori, I stayed calm and didn't use the hammer on the kid! It can be done!"

and then call it a day. Let this constitute the sum of all those to-come subsequent events to unfold on my end. And may I resist the temptation to expend any more energy hereby.

[M]

Dude I can't keep doing this with you. Absolute after Absolute as though there is Right (your prognosis) and Wrong (any deviance from your experience). I continuously couch my phrasing with the terms "for me the film doesn't", "in my view"... i e this is my experience.

I would prefer not to continue either, and it isn't my intention to bother you or waste your time or challenge your right to hold any opinion you like on anything. But you've posted your views about a subject on a public board, here with much assurance and even arrogance (am I supposed to be thankful? fearful? that you have refrained from using 'the hammer on the kid'?), which only invites argumentation.

You want to have it both ways. You want to ridicule No Country for Old Men as though it ought to be ridiculous for everyone (you'll say I'm reading into your words again, but your over-the-top rhetoric gives you away). You didn't get certain points so the film's constructed poorly, although surely others did get the points you didn't, which prompts the question as to what is the difference between this film and a well-constructed film some other viewer doesn't understand parts of. But then you want to retreat behind 'your opinion' when questioned on some of your comments, which is unassailable because opinions are just tastes and there's no accounting for taste. My first post in this thread was written in the hopes of exploring some of what I thought was wrong with the film, namely that I thought it was quite conventional despite some of the superficial narrative flourishes, it did lack a kind of poetic ambiguity, and the characterization was overly male-centered and overly plot-driven. But I don't think the film is at fault because I didn't come to know who some of the gangsters were. Is that okay with you? Does that mean I'm profoundly affected by the film or that I wear the Official No Country for Old Men t-shirt with Bardem's head screened on it to bed every night? That's my opinion, but the difference between us is that I'm prepared to discuss my opinion with others and use evidence from the film to substantiate it. You respond with bluster and condescension when your impressions are confronted with contrary theories. And you've presumed yourself with Absolute Certainty some personal attachment I have to the film although I never gave any indication either way. I didn't think you were biased against 'contemporary Hollywood' films and so therefore you hate this film. I only thought your arguments about the film specifically were more interesting as criticism of a certain type of filmmaking, of which No Country for Old Men is, in my opinion, an examplar. If anything, I'm biased against this sort of contemporary Hollywood filmmaking, but you'd never know it because you haven't stopped blustering long enough to ask.

But yes, let's not press on. You have lots of other threads to fill with your impressions of things.

[pemmican]

Heh. Sorry to butt into the fight, but that's hilarious - giving Child of God to a 9th Grader to read, Advanced Placement or not... I mean, in 9th grade, I was reading Robert Crumb comics, the horror stories of Robert Bloch, and Creepy and Eerie magazines; I think that was the year I read Richard Matheson's Hell House four times in a row, loving it so much... I don't suppose I can demonstrate, odd as I am, that such experiences didn't warp my character a tad, but teenaged boys eat this stuff up, and I'm sure I would have LOVED Child of God if someone had put it in my sick little hands back then.

At the same time, any teacher who gives the book to his teenage pupils must be remarkably naive: how could one not expect such a result? Why not give your students the 120 Days of Sodom, or Bataille's Story of the Eye? Better yet, coach them in how to masturbate - it's perfectly natural and normal, after all...

I find all this very amusing...

P.

[Cold Bishop]

At the same time, any teacher who gives the book to his teenage pupils must be remarkably naive: how could one not expect such a result? Why not give your students the 120 Days of Sodom, or Bataille's Story of the Eye? Better yet, coach them in how to masturbate - it's perfectly natural and normal, after all...

I actually learned about and wanted to read "Story of the Eye" around that time, but could quite understandably never track down a copy at the time. Probably would have done the same with De Sade if it didn't all seem so tedious and repetitive. It all depends on the student, but naivety is right in any case.

And by 9th grade, kids need no teaching about masturbation.

[pemmican]

It gets weirder, in fact. I've been surfing around, looking for more information:

A) The book was apparently on an "approved reading list" for advanced 9th grade students, which the above article obscures. One teacher approving it suggests that he needs a reality check; a group of teachers approving it actually damages my own sense of reality. Isn't all this happening in the Bible belt, ferchrissakes?

B) The teacher who assigned it was only 25 years old.

C) The student he assigned it to was a FEMALE!!!! (I mean, jeez, a guy reading about a dispossessed hillbilly peering into car windows at a couple making out and masturbating, ejaculating onto their fender - the episode where Lester begins his sexual descent, which culminates in murder and necrophilia -- has at least a frame of reference for such stuff - but what would a teenaged girl make of the same? And how would she feel about her 25 year old male teacher having given it to her?).

D) And now Tierce, the teacher, is being investigated for having had inappropriate sexual relations with his students, some of whom have come forward.

Not sure where the truth lies, but there are some very wrong things going on in this story, and Tierce may well deserve to be held accountable for some of them.

P.

[flyonthewall2983]

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit asinine to label Chigurh a serial killer like so many have?

[M]

Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit asinine to label Chigurh a serial killer like so many have?

No, you're not the only one. Chigurh's a gangster, for whom the killing is a means to something, not an end in itself. That he appears to be mentally unbalanced in the film colors his character that way a bit though.

[Cockney_Geezer]

i don't get what you mean by unbalanced.

i think he is the most balanced of all the characters, he doesn't seem to have any consciousness at all. i don't think Chigurh contemplates anything he does, he is too busy concentrating on the present

[flyonthewall2983]

No, you're not the only one. Chigurh's a gangster, for whom the killing is a means to something, not an end in itself. That he appears to be mentally unbalanced in the film colors his character that way a bit though.

Historically, very few serial killers have murdered out of greed. That's one reason why I don't see him as one, but I agree with Geezer's point too. He doesn't lose his temper and is as calm as mice pretty much through the whole film. There is most likely an internal imbalance going on in the deeper parts of his psyche, like Tom Cruise in Collateral. Which is why the aftermath of the car crash is so interesting to me, because I think after it he starts to see things in himself he may not like anymore.

On another subject, this film is a great example of the less is more philosophy some people have towards film music. The film hits the viewer like a severe thunderstorm with no rain. The rain, of course, being a pulsing soundtrack and other enhancements a great thriller like this normally needs.

[M]

i don't get what you mean by unbalanced.

i think he is the most balanced of all the characters, he doesn't seem to have any consciousness at all. i don't think Chigurh contemplates anything he does, he is too busy concentrating on the present

I just meant unbalanced in the sense that he seems to at times enter into a kind of frenzy or irrational frame of mind when committing some of his acts of violence, which some read (here improperly) as insanity or irrational killing for the sake of killing. On the other hand, his deadpan manner at other times may read to some as some psychotic disassociation from the effects of his violence. Either way, that isn't the function Chigurh fulfills in the story. He's systemic violence, but not mad passionate violence. He's a byproduct of a morally corrupt society. Dismissing him as just some serial killer is to gut the social commentary from the film.