1243 No Country for Old Men

[kaujot]

Our greatest living authors are Gore Vidal, Samuel R. Delany, Thomas Pynchon and Dennis Cooper.

With Pynchon in your list, you really should give McCarthy a try. I second Blood Meridian, and you should also try Suttree.

[jbeall]

Our greatest living authors are Gore Vidal, Samuel R. Delany, Thomas Pynchon and Dennis Cooper.

Hmmm, you don't like the Coen Bros. because "There's a kind of chilly, curdled smart-ass-ed-ness to them that I just don't like" yet consider Pynchon to be great? Seems a little inconsistent to me. Your issue with the Coens reminds me why I stopped reading Mason & Dixon after only 70 or so pages (and I liked Pynchon before that).

Just curious (and perhaps off-topic), but I wonder how many people find this characteristic you dislike in the Coens to be endemic of postmodernism generally? In other words, does how one feels about the Coens depend on how one feels about pomo?

[you gotta be kidding me]

Our greatest living authors are Gore Vidal, Samuel R. Delany, Thomas Pynchon and Dennis Cooper.

What do you think of Delany's Hogg? What do you think is his best?

[David Ehrenstein]

I find Pynchon more antic than smart-ass.

Hogg is pretty cool. Delany's masterpiece is of course Dhalgren. Perfect movie material for either Gus or Todd.

[Antoine Doinel]

McCarthy has been the subject of only one other big screen adaptation; "All the Pretty Horses" from a few years ago, directed by Billy Bob Thornton. After viewing his own movie, Thornton had the courtesy to call McCarthy and say "I think I just made a mess of your book". Most of us subsequently agreed that he did just that.

Although to be fair, the Weinsteins did a fairly great job in hacking Thorton's original three hour plus film to smithereens.

[Andre Jurieu]

... but, since I respect your opinion, I will proceed on the basis that you are correct in your analysis of the movie.

I respect the opinions of a lot of film critics, but I don't think I've ever assumed that any of their analyses are "correct."

[jbeall]

NY Times Review. This one's quite positive, and perhaps it may allay the fears that some have when they first heard the Coens were involved:

[quote="A.O. Scott"]Sometimes their appetite for pastiche overwhelms their more sober storytelling instincts, so it is something of a relief to find nothing especially showy or gimmicky in “No Country.â€

[margot]

This is about the only film so far this year that I'm actually genuinely excited for this film looks fucking badass on all fronts.

[LeeB.Sims]

Personally, I'm always amazed at how much beautiful work Roger Deakins can produce every year. The guy is clearly as much of a workaholic as he is a craftsman. 2007 may be his best yet…

[Antoine Doinel]

Saw this tonight and this is easily the Coens most accomplished and satisfying film since Fargo and easily ranks among their best work. While thematically similar to Fargo, this film is far darker in tone. For the first time, the Coens take a far more measured and controlled rhythm. The result is a film that bristles with suspense and intensity without any big moments or huge soundtrack cues. The violence is raw, but it's the emotion, particularly in Tommy Lee Jones' eyes that haunts. Javier Bardem is not surprisingly outstanding, but it's Josh Brolin that truly surprises. His amoral everyman is flawed and fascinating and it's really the first time he has really jumped out at the screen for me.

Deakins' cinematography is fine, but the Coens are the true stars. No Country For Old Men is gripping and restless. It starts out grim and doesn't end with any easy answers.

[Robert de la Cheyniest]

And since a majority of people have acclaimed it, Rosenbaum hates it:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/s ... 07/071108/

Given his general distaste for the Coens I guess it's not surprising.

[HerrSchreck]

These guys went from being my greatest Hollywood Hope (FINK and backwards, peaking with MILLERS CROSSING which was an all-cylinders turning masterpiece) to the most smarmy self-admiring pieces of shit in the cinema today. I've never seen so much apparently huge talent get flushed all the way down the outhouse pipe in my life.

The one big glaring difference between Pynchon and the Coens is Thomas is a massive genius and the uh Coens are not. He also happens to have held on to himself and his sensibility, and struggled and stressed and strained to hold on to the rock-bottom-line of why in the most deepseated sense he is creative in the first place... and the Coens, after FINK, just started spieling and twirling, worhipping their own impulses seeming without sounding boards or editorialization.. i e "It Came From Us... so it's Got To Be Good..."
THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE was such utter garbage I almost wanted to conk the fuckface nieghbor who came home jumping up and down bouncing his tits blubbering RUN DONT WALK TO THE THEATER AND SEE THIS PICTURE and caused me to go that night.

[pemmican]

This film is crap - exactly the sort of crap I expected from the Coens. I do not understand how people get suckered in.

Through most of the film - not including the final minutes - Tommy Lee Jones, playing the character whose voice surely is meant to most closely approximate that of McCarthy's in the novel, comes across not as an intelligent, sensitive, slightly sentimental man of principle unable to come to terms with the violence around him (as he is in the book) but as a cutesy oldtimey rural buffoon with a quaint manner of speaking, blank face, and doe eyes. As with Frances McDormand in FARGO, I see the Coens playing him for comedy, feeling utterly superior to him and inviting the audience to snigger along. They certainly don't seem to have the maturity or moral gravity to understand him or make him credible (tho' as I say, they do a better job in Jones' last scenes. If only they could have captured that tone throughout!).

Tho' my copy of the book is on loan, I think it's safe to say the dialogue is in no way "verbatim." There's quite a bit that's pure Coen - having Jones talk about slaughtering cattle, without him being intelligent enough to put together what this implies, for instance (though we do). The Coens absolutely love to be smarter than their characters... One of their signature shots is to frame a (usually rural, lower-class) character in such a way as to make them look contemptible and comical (a fat female trailer park clerk, as I recall, gets the worst of it in this film); there's a sniggering misanthropy that gets branded as cute, but is actually really unpleasant to be exposed to. Tho' McCarthy has his own dark humour - CHILD OF GOD is his funniest book, about a halfwit necrophiliac hillbilly - I don't think he's ever this smug; there's always a deep, considered compassion for human beings in his writing, hillbilly necrophiliacs included.

The Coen's handle Brolin and Bardem's characters fairly well - they're within their ken there - but screw up just enough of Bardem's lines that, I think, the ending of the film makes little sense. To my recollection, Chigurh (Bardem in the film) has quite an odd but compelling metaphysic worked out (much like Blood Meridian's Judge Holden) to rationalize his approach to life, which is only partially sketched out in the coin-tossing scenes in the film...

MAJOR SPOILER - don't proceed unless you've read the novel or seen the film, or are convinced you will do neither:

Chigurh's explanations for shooting the wife at the end are considerably richer in the book, and - while I can't replicate them here - they become immediately applicable to the car accident he is in just afterwards, since his philosophy has everything to do with chance and determinism. If you accept his worldview, his being nearly killed almost seems a divine punishment - or at the very least, a very dark joke at his expense, courtesy of the forces he believes he has learned to coexist with.

None of that works in the film. If it did, I'd probably be able to forgive some of the Coen misanthropo-cutesiness and a lot else. I don't think the Coens are subtle enough readers to really tease out such implications from the text, though. Or maybe they expect that film audiences will arrive at these conclusions even without a clear explication of Chigurh's philosophy. I don't think so, myself: I think the meaning of the ending of the film will just mystify people, since the Coens haven't provided certain necessary clues. I mean, what do people who HAVEN'T read the book make of the final episodes involving Chigurh?

The moments that work in the film - the joking in the hotel court about beer and what it leads to, the shoot outs, and the one terrific shot of the wounded dog looking back - the best moment in the film, and probably the only great one - only serve to make me sad about how much the Coens screw up, by being too smug, too cutesy, and by simply not being deep enough human beings to handle a story told on this scale. Boo, hiss. It's not a worthy film.

Schreck: don't worry, I won't change my mind anytime soon.

P.

[Antoine Doinel]

I don't think Tommy Lee Jones' character is played for comedy at all. There is great sadness about this character - who comes from a lineage of law enforcement in his family - who is simply unable to understand how someone like Bardem's character could exist. How violence could be random and unforgiving, striking down the good and the wicked without any reason or impunity. The slaughterhouse story isn't an example of him unable to put together what he means, so much as being unable to voice his own fears. And I have no idea how you arrive at the fact that Jones' character is a buffoon when it's clear that he is a man deeply paralyzed by fear as the opening voice over clearly indicates.

As for the end, I think it's wonderful the Coens leave it open. Jesus, I can only imagine the outrage on this board if they had attempted anything even resembling a closed, fully explained finish to this film. This is a film that requires an open ending, and a chilling, sad one at that.

From your review you accuse the Coens of mocking their characters but on the other hand don't give the audience credit to figure out the film for themselves. In the packed house I saw it in, there was great satisfaction with the film and a small smattering of applause and lots of chatter on the way out.

Schreck, I too think Miller's Crossing is the Coens finest achievement and like you (though maybe not as deeply ) have been disappointed by much of their recent work. But I encourage you to see No Country For Old Men because it is the Coens at the most mature and unreferential as I've seen them ever.

[jorencain]

As with Frances McDormand in FARGO, I see the Coens playing him for comedy, feeling utterly superior to him and inviting the audience to snigger along.

I don't want to derail this thread, but that statement about Fargo is completely wrong, in my opinion. Marge and Norm are the "heroes" of the film, and it's their simple-but-happy life that provides a counterpoint to the violence and murder, which are "all for a little bit of money". Sure, there's humor in the film, and the Coens laugh at the accent, but I don't think Frances McDormand's character is being made fun of at all.

And...I can't wait to see "No Country for Old Men".

[exte]

As with Frances McDormand in FARGO, I see the Coens playing him for comedy, feeling utterly superior to him and inviting the audience to snigger along.

I don't want to derail this thread, but that statement about Fargo is completely wrong, in my opinion. Marge and Norm are the "heroes" of the film, and it's their simple-but-happy life that provides a counterpoint to the violence and murder, which are "all for a little bit of money". Sure, there's humor in the film, and the Coens laugh at the accent, but I don't think Frances McDormand's character is being made fun of at all.

And...I can't wait to see "No Country for Old Men".

Wasn't it Ebert who said she's the 'center' of the film? I quite agree...

[Antoine Doinel]

Thirded on Frances McDormand's character in Fargo. It's her speech to Steve Buscemi at the end of the film that really captures the film and her character thematically. Much like Jones' character in No Country For Old Men, she is trying to grasp the seemingly random, cruel and greedy nature of the crimes when what has been sacrificied in the process has not been worth it. This made all the more poignant as she is pregnant and about to bring another life into the world.

[souvenir]

Not to be inflammatory, but I think pemmican sounds incredibly bitter about how the novel was adapted and it sounds like he saw a completely different film than I did. I saw none of the things he's complaining about when I watched the movie and I agree with Antoine that Jones' character is far from a buffoon. He's the film's worn-out conscience, someone tired of trying to reconcile unforgiving violence.

Chigurh represents evil, fate, chance, and the inability to escape what's "coming to us." I doubt anyone watching the film who's paying attention will be mystified by the character. His motivations are spelled out pretty clearly. And the overweight lady at the trailer park, to me, is not being laughed at by the Coens at all. She's the only one in the film that Chigurh kind of backs down to.

This is always the problem with great books turned into movies. People love the novel and get pissed off when it's adapted differently than what they would prefer. This film is not smug or smarmy Coen brothers. Though it fits nicely in their filmography, it could easily have been made, unchanged, by someone else.

[Nothing]

Our greatest living authors are Gore Vidal, Samuel R. Delany, Thomas Pynchon and Dennis Cooper.

and Cormac McCarthy.

This Coens knock-off looks pretty uninteresting.

[Andre Jurieu]

I think I share souvenir's sentiments and generally agree with Antoine (though I'm not so sold on that entire "the audience seemed to really enjoy it" line of reasoning) and jorencain. I'm absolutely perplexed by how anyone could assume that the Coens are implying that Sheriff Bell is a “cutesy, old-timey, rural buffoon.â€

[pauling]

Agreed, souvenir, Chigurh backs down from her because she has a set of rules that she lives by and no one will persuade her otherwise. In fact, I would say that he grudgingly respects her for her stand.

[Andre Jurieu]

Agreed, souvenir, Chigurh backs down from her because she has a set of rules that she lives by and no one will persuade her otherwise. In fact, I would say that he grudgingly respects her for her stand.

I actually think that the same could be said about Chigurd's hesitation to confront Sheriff Bell (and vice versa).

[pauling]

They were like two sides of the same coin, weren't they? (not to use a bad pun, for those who've seen the film)

[kaujot]

Again, agreed with souvenir. Very well said.

I can't think of any other movie, save for There Will Be Blood, that has a chance of bettering No Country for Old Men this year.

[LeeB.Sims]

I think there is a danger in simply always assuming that the Coens are being smug, smarmy, and egotistical and that they always snigger and feel superior to their characters.

This is the Ray Carney school of thought I think... a school I would not attend even if offered a full scholarship...