1243 No Country for Old Men

[domino harvey]

this is almost as obnoxious as the Brokeback Mountain thread.

[oldsheperd]

As someone who moved to Albuquerque around 1980, my feeling is that this is really about the last gasps of a John Fordesque "West". Roger Deakins captured a lot of imagery that evokes West Texas. Most of this film was actually shot around downtown Albuquerque. I've seen the film twice and as someone who still lives in the Albuquerque area this film anticipates the upcoming Reagan era and hyper-expansion of the desert west whereas there is practically no mesa left. I remember going with my Dad to shoot guns in the mesa like Moss, nowadays you can't do things like that. Moss' character finds the money but I find it unusual that his demeanor is very unescited about the whole thing. Witness the first scene b/w him and Carla Jean. Although he lives in trailer park and drives a "beat up" pickup, he still has a job and his wife works. They're not starving to death. It's a strange relationship between the old West where men defended their home and families to where a man now defends a satchel of money to a pointless endgame. Maybe a stretch but I really think that's kind of the gist of it. I do also feel that maybe although the Coens grew up in Minnesota, it's a lament for the sparse beauty of the West that eventually is intruded upon by modern concerns. I remember someone telling me that New Mexico is always a year behind the new thing in New York and California. Remember how the Sheriff's friend complains about kids with green ahir and bones in their noses. The west no longer has that identity. Problems with drug smuggling, Wal-Marts on every corner and unchecked suburban sprawl are stripping this area of it's beauty and nostalgia. Believe me, I see it every day when I go home.

[M]

this is almost as obnoxious as the Brokeback Mountain thread.

You're funny. From the suggestion box thread:

Welcome to the internet, just do what we all do with threads on this board we have no interest in reading: don't read them.

And, from an interview with Time Out London, the Coens say: "Though we did cut it back, the stuff about things getting worse is very interesting. How much of that perspective on things is old age talking, and how much of it is true? Cormac put in Bell’s conversation with his uncle, which we always felt was the centre of the story; it suggests, “This is just the world, it’s not anything new.” But if you were living in Germany in 1939 and said things were getting worse, you’d be right. So it’s not just old age. That’s why this story’s 1980 setting is important; it was a time when the cross-border drug wars were getting very, very violent."

[domino harvey]

this is almost as obnoxious as the Brokeback Mountain thread.

You're funny. From the suggestion box thread:

Welcome to the internet, just do what we all do with threads on this board we have no interest in reading: don't read them.

Did I say delete this thread? If anything, sticky it.

[Jack Phillips]

I remember going with my Dad to shoot guns in the mesa like Moss, nowadays you can't do things like that.

Which is why the Coens were unable to film in such settings and so had to have them rendered via CGI.

[HerrSchreck]

why this story’s 1980 setting is important[/b]; it was a time when the cross-border drug wars were getting very, very violent."

As opposed to those earlier drug wars solved over egg creams, and a game of Battleship followed by a pillowfight?

Actually--seriously-- that's the first legitimate answer to the original question I posed that sucked back me into this. I take it they meant in terms of Texas. Though I'm not sure the amount of powdered/refined heroin at that time coming thru (definitely not from) south america (drabs of "black tar" came from Mexico, desitined for LA & the upper coast, sometimes trickling into TX in small qtys) was at all significant. The Medellin Cocaine cartel started in the 70's and basically started with C at that point due to DEA harassment of its existing marijuana ops, needing a replacement for weed which was too bulky and difficult to hide. The 70's disco era, with its huge C appetite helped that trend along.

Columbian heroin, the single "white" or "brown(ish)" powdered form of the drug (meant to compete with the Turkish/Corsican, and Southeast Asian product) in its stereotypical state as portrayed in the film, didn't appear until approx 1990. SO I'd still be interested in knowing specifically what the book or movie is supposed to be portraying. Mexicans make "mud" or "tar" heroin, very cheap marketwise, especially back then... which is sticky like roofing tar or opium, and very crude. It doesn't come in powdered kilo bags as shown in the film.And again-- south america was not producing refined "powdered" heroin in 1980. Probably just another example of artists dabbling with grim societal underbellies about which they know very little.

Nontheless, spurts of violent localized cross border wars are not the Apocalypse. (and this film is about a very unusual one man killing machine, not "cross border wars"-- what the fuck is Coen even talking about "cross border wars" for???-- another example of the lack of focus and narrative composition I see as inherent in the film ).
But this is what I mean about the beauty of art-- all kinds of different folks see all kinds of hidden messages in there owing to their own mindsets & predispositions.

[M]

...Columbian heroin, the single "white" or "brown(ish)" powdered form of the drug (meant to compete with the Turkish/Corsican, and Southeast Asian product) in its stereotypical state as portrayed in the film, didn't appear until approx 1990. SO I'd still be interested in knowing specifically what the book or movie is supposed to be portraying. Mexicans make "mud" or "tar" heroin, very cheap marketwise, especially back then... which is sticky like roofing tar or opium, and very crude. It doesn't come in powdered kilo bags as shown in the film.And again-- south america was not producing refined "powdered" heroin in 1980. Probably just another example of artists dabbling with grim societal underbellies about which they know very little.

Now you've gone from "that's not what the artist is trying to say" to "that is what that artist is trying to say but the artist doesn't know what he's talking about". I think you're leaping from sinking ship to sinking ship.

But this is what I mean about the beauty of art-- all kinds of different folks see all kinds of hidden messages in there owing to their own mindsets & predispositions.

I don't know anything about that. I've read the film as the artists intend it to be read, with substantiation from the artists' own mouth. There's no hidden messages, just straightforward textual interpretation.

I think that's mate. Time to threaten the hammer again and disappear?

[HerrSchreck]

I've read the film as the artists intend it to be read, with substantiation from the artists' own mouth. There's no hidden messages, just straightforward textual interpretation.

The reporter who wrote the '1980 seismic shift' story published in yesterday's late edition mistakenly read the allegorical film literally, and took one viewer's interpretation of said allegorical film as said viewer's literal personal opinion. The reporter has been moved back to obits where we don't foresee allegory or symbolism affecting the quality of his work.

Ah, so what was a page ago an allegorical film, that I made the mistake of interpreting literally, is now a straight up literal film with one possible interpretation. This is even more fun than ping pong with a hard boiled egg!

When you're ready to commit to a single statement that you so cocksurely have been making about the film, brushing aside those of everyone else-- without the continuous "I don't knows" and floor-shifts (even those who politely make room not only for your "interpretations" of the film but the possibility that they themselves could be wrong)-- you will advance to standard Richard Cranium Territory. Right now you're just the most impossible new member in the nabe.

But this is to be expected, after I asked--

But this is what I mean about the beauty of art-- all kinds of different folks see all kinds of hidden messages in there owing to their own mindsets & predispositions.

you answered:

I don't know anything about that.

[M]

Ah, so what was a page ago an allegorical film, that I made the mistake of interpreting literally, is now a straight up literal film with one possible interpretation.

No, it is still an allegorical film. I never wrote that the film is 'a straight up literal film with one possible interpretation'. I wrote that the film is an allegorical film with one interpretation. It is an allegory of the coming of end times and not an allegory of the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. The latter interpretation would be nearly the opposite of the former, so the meaning system of the film precludes this interpretation. I'm sorry you can't come to grips with this, but after several days of going over it, having been provided with references to two prominent reviews of the novel and an interview with the filmmakers to back up this interpretation of the film, you continue on, now apparently poring over my every word desperately searching for contradiction of some kind. I don't think there's any further to press this aspect of the film, do you? You and I can continue bickering through next week about your misunderstanding of things, but that doesn't serve anyone else's interests here, or ours.

[GringoTex]

Are you speaking specifically in terms of Texas? Because in national terms, this is just a perplexing statement.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. By 1985, inner cities had reached a meltdown crisis state due to drug addiction and violence.

The mass drug-related cross border violence in Texas began in the 1980s and continues to this day.

I think you're arguing that the specific year 1980 has no special significance in and of itself in regards to drug trafficking, and you may be right, but the year also serves as a symbolic numeral, signaling the beginning of the Reagan coalition in which family farmers and ranchers began struggling and rural residents in general began voting against their own self interests.

Inner-city drug violence in major US cities (especially coast cities like NYC, Los Angeles, Miami, etc)...neighborhoods like the South Bx were completely destroyed and gutted due to the wave of ilegal narcotics...turning Hunts Point into the infamous "Fort Apache", street upon street of vacant lots filled with rubble, leaning shells of prewar tenements & brownstones...The infamous NYC ("Fun City") of the 1970's. ... I can recall riding the #6 train (my home line) thru the south bronx around SOundview & Elder avenue, the doors would open on those stops and that "burnt tire" smell of base would literally be hanging over the hood like a haze....wasn't until it exploded in NYC around 85 that the "80's drug hell" materialized, and a whole new breed of "drug monster"

I'm not sure why you're reeling off a bunch of NYC antecdotal evidence to argue against a Texas movie. "It hasn't happened until it happens in NYC!"

In fact, since the only guy who comments on the times is an old man-- and old men are the one group disqualified in the title of the film-- his judgements could be, from a certain absolutist perspective, rendered moot.

I agree completely. Bell is the traditional "unreliable" narrator.

[HerrSchreck]

What happened in 1985-- the meltdown crisis-- happened specifically because of crack, an epidemic which appeared in the year prior, had nothing to do with 1980. Nothing. At all. There was no crack in 1980. (nor was there powdered heroin coming out of mexico).


As for the Texas stuff-- dude, that's why I asked the question as a question-- I acknowledged there may be stuff that happened during those times that I wasn't aware of. Though in terms of drugs, I'm not entirely sure Macarthy even fully researched this thing. The kilos of powdered heroin in 1980 coming from Mexico-- why not make it crack? Stuff simply wasn't coming from there at that time.

[GringoTex]

As for the Texas stuff-- dude, that's why I asked the question as a question-- I acknowledged there may be stuff that happened during those times that I wasn't aware of. Though in terms of drugs, I'm not entirely sure Macarthy even fully researched this thing. The kilos of powdered heroin in 1980 coming from Mexico-- why not make it crack? Stuff simply wasn't coming from there at that time.

McCarthy is famous for the research he pours into his novels. I can't even remember if the book specifies the drugs as powdered heroin or if that's what the Coens ran with. Regardless, the setting of 1980 is extremely important to the film, whether or not someone got some drug details wrong. Specifically in regards to how shocked the law enforcement officials are by the descending violence. Nobody would bat an eye today.

[HerrSchreck]

Tell that to the folks during prohibition or the world of the old west Texas. Or the Bronx or LA in the 1970's. The "hip hop" violence of Little Inner City Kids With Guns Committing "Yo you dissin me?" murders are probably the most shocking of all for this generation. Watch the first 48.

So turning your above statement around-- conversely.. "if it didn't happen it Texas, it didn't happen at all?"

Rosenbaum's review of this film, which reads extremely confused & unfocused to this viewer, pretty much sum up my own feelings for it. Though I didnt actively dislike it, I found it extremely scrambled and fractured in it's intention.

[Antoine Doinel]

Regardless, the setting of 1980 is extremely important to the film.

For such an important setting to the film, the Coens surely go out of their way to keep it as secretive as possible. Moreover, we don't really get much insight into Bell's experience as a Sheriff or the level of violence he has seen (or not). Or his experience (or not) with the drug trade. Or anything of that sort. Bell cannot understand senseless violence, but really, who can?

I loved the film, and though I haven't read the book, it seems the Coens took the material and arranged it thematically to suit their interests rather than any overall attempt to stay true to whatever intentions McCarthy may or may not have had. Trying to deduce what meaning the drug trade in 1980s Texas has on the film is like trying to figure out what effect car sales in North Dakota had on the plot of Fargo. It's missing the point entirely.

[GringoTex]

For such an important setting to the film, the Coens surely go out of their way to keep it as secretive as possible.

Having previously read the book and grown up in rural West Texas, I'm sure I have no sense of what is or is not obvious to a fresh viewer of the film. For me, the 1980 setting was obvious and pertinent.

[Antoine Doinel]

If the setting were so important to the Coens - and it is their film after all -I'm sure they would've made a note of it for both viewers well read with McCarthy's material or otherwise in more obvious terms than a math problem involving a quarter. Hell, why not just a "Texas, 1980" subtitle at the beginning?

[GringoTex]

If the setting were so important to the Coens - and it is their film after all -I'm sure they would've made a note of it for both viewers well read with McCarthy's material or otherwise in more obvious terms than a math problem involving a quarter. Hell, why not just a "Texas, 1980" subtitle at the beginning?

I would have thought all the 30-year-old cars, 70s western wear and lax border security would have been dead give-aways, but you have a point. I'm not claiming the setting was important to the Cohens, but it's definitely important to the film's narrative.

[chaddoli]

No one who is not from rural Texas has any idea what it looks like, or what it looked like in 1980 or what the difference is.

[domino harvey]

If anything, the recurring mentions of Vietnam vets should have been a big tip-off that this was a period piece

[M]

I don't see why the setting is such a sticking point in the story for some. In Moby Dick I don't believe Melville ever writes, 'this is the year 1842' or whenever precisely the story is set (maybe he does, I don't recall for certain, but the precise moment in time is incidental narratively) , because the historical setting is only the point of departure. It is the material used to spin the allegory. But at the same time the setting is essential, as part of the point of Moby Dick is to suggest the failure of human striving for God or perfection or happiness. The setting being the onset of the age of American expansionism and also the beginning of the decline of the whaling industry. So it is with No Country for Old Men. The setting is there, but it comes across obliquely, because the story isn't a literal crime drama or a period film but an allegory. The setting is grounded in reality, but in the end the setting is an existential space. So, it is essential that it is set in the place and time in which it is set, but it is as essential that the storyteller not underline the reality of the setting too unambiguously.

[Antoine Doinel]

Yes, it was obvious this was a "period" film, however, a few people are making claims that 1980 in particular marked some kind of cultural/political/societal shift that is deeply felt within the narrative of the film.

Aside from the casual/cryptic mention of the specific year, and judging by the visual cues, it otherwise could've just as easily have been 1976 or 1982.

[kaujot]

If anything, the recurring mentions of Vietnam vets should have been a big tip-off that this was a period piece

True, as well as the fact that the vets looked relatively young.

[GringoTex]

Yes, it was obvious this was a "period" film, however, a few people are making claims that 1980 in particular marked some kind of cultural/political/societal shift that is deeply felt within the narrative of the film.

Aside from the casual/cryptic mention of the specific year, and judging by the visual cues, it otherwise could've just as easily have been 1976 or 1982.

Yes but 1980 is the symbolic beginning of lower class meltdown. From post World War 2 to the late 1970s, the position of lower classes improved. The 1980s is when it all went to hell in a handbasket. This bears out statistically, and it was fueled by drug addiction and violence. This is the setting of NCFOM, and the film specifically deals with the introduction of this new "terror."

[Antoine Doinel]

Yes, it was obvious this was a "period" film, however, a few people are making claims that 1980 in particular marked some kind of cultural/political/societal shift that is deeply felt within the narrative of the film.

Aside from the casual/cryptic mention of the specific year, and judging by the visual cues, it otherwise could've just as easily have been 1976 or 1982.

Yes but 1980 is the symbolic beginning of lower class meltdown. From post World War 2 to the late 1970s, the position of lower classes improved. The 1980s is when it all went to hell in a handbasket.

That's a pretty generalized statement. Any cursory Google search brings up the statistic that poverty overall has actually decreased steadily post-WWII right through to the 2000s. So are you speaking about Texas? African Americans? Children? Hispanics? And again, none of this is present in the film -- I don't think the Coens, nor Bell (at least in the film) are making any kind of statement about drugs, poverty or the lower classes. The Coens, as is usual in their ouevre, are looking at more existential themes.

And again, if 1980 is so symbolic in the film, why mention it so subliminally?

[souvenir]

My view is admittedly simplistic, but I think the 1980 setting was used to separate what we see from present day while still retaining a certain level of recognition. By placing the events in 1980, the viewer sees that the evil existing then didn't cause an immediate apocalyptic reaction. This force of nature has persisted in the past 25+ years just as it had previously and will in the future. That fits perfectly with my reading of the entire film and is wholly consistent.