1243 No Country for Old Men

[Steven H]

One of the boys offers him his shirt to tie up the arm. But Chigurh insists on paying for it. When the boy sees the $500 bill, he accepts, and agrees to say nothing to the police about where Chigurh went. Money corrupts everybody, even innocent boys and girls.

It's funny, but all I could think about after this film was Bresson's L'argent, and how focused on money everyone in the film was (except for a few people.) There really doesn't seem to be much "Coen bros" to this film (as in quirk), and what humor is there seems written by someone else. Were a lot of the jokes from the book?

I did really enjoy this though. The "chase film" is something I have a big interest in, and it really brought something unique to the table, making it seem like Brolin is out running a force of nature (I do agree with Drew that the office scene was over the top, but it did add to the feeling that Bardem was and could be everywhere at once, which fits.)

The connection to History of Violence is, to me, that America as suburbanized and first world as it boasts, is still wild as hell, and people walk into each other's homes to kill (whether in Texas or New England). This movie also reminded me of the Jungle episode of Planet Earth where the chimpanzees take over the fig tree territory of a neighboring chimp group, and eat one of their babies after they run them off, with no real reason other than as a symbolic gesture.

[kaujot]

There's quite a bit of humor in the novel, though it's not explicitly written out, if that makes sense.

[essrog]

Were a lot of the jokes from the book?

A lot of the dialogue, including jokes, was verbatim from the book. But a few lines, such as the deputy's about the dead guys in the suits looking "managerial" and Bell's observation about the futility of finding Chigurh ("What do we say -- we're looking for someone who just drank milk?") were invented by the Coens. And, I don't know if this was mentioned elsewhere, but the dog chase scene was invented as well. That wasn't really a joke, but it was kind of funny in a horrifying way.

[oldsheperd]

Just wanted to chime in here. I saw this this weekend. I thought it was excellent especially the ending. However, the ending caused the people in the theater to elicit a great big grown. I think we've been too used to the tightly wrapped up ending. The Fugitive comes to mind when it comes to packaged endings. My Dad, whom I wathced this with, hated the movie, but we discussed the movie in all it's facets. I believe that a film-maker, in this case, the Coens, have successfully achieved their task of creating a film despite the audiences' like or dislike, is going to be discussed for a long time. BTW, just a bit of useless trivia, most of this film was shot in New Mexico. The Desert Sands Motel is just west of Central and San Mateo. The mountains in the background are the Sandias. The Pharmacy was shot in downtown Albuquerque. The desert looks almost exactly like the Mesa where my Dad and I used to shoot guns when I was a kid.

[Grand Illusion]

The tension for the first two-thirds of the film is adequate, but the clumsy handling of the characters is what ultimately turns me off from this film.

Tommy Lee Jones mumbles and plays the "I'm too old for this shit" cop. Not too interested in being involved in the actual film itself, he just visits locations and characters to pontificate. Completely uncinematic, his character looks and sounds like a remnant of the literary source material.

Javier Bardem skulks around the film like a bored spectre of evil. Don't expect any character development. He flips a coin to decide the fate of his victims, which is as resonant as when the villainous Two Face did it in the Batman series.

He seems as if he was ripped from a cartoon, even carrying a requisite unique weapon of choice. He is neither the interesting Hannibal Lecter nor the chess-playing icon of Death.

Realizing they must tell us something about this character, the Coens assign Woody Harrelson (reprising his Larry Flynt accent in a throwaway role) to tell us that the serial killer "has his principles." The movie's strict somber tone furthers the idea that this is an original philosophic breakthrough.

The only touchstone up until this point is not the righteous Tommy Lee Jones or the evil Javier Bardem. Brolin comes in as a very human character with very human motivations, trying to do what is best for himself and his family. He has background, relations, and can be both resourceful and ignorant of the danger he's in.

It's no coincidence then that he's handled the most clumsily.

spoiler:

Spoiler

That the Coens would not only dispose of this character without a so much as a nod shows us how disinterested they are with character at all. The only human, one they felt was worthy enough to put on screen and carry their drama, is merely brushed over in a minute or two.

Further they use angles and cinematic tricks to conceal if Brolin was actually the one who died. It's ultimately emblematic of how the Coens manipulated the audience to feel suspense or become involved in the plot without any care of character. All that is left is Tommy Lee Jones's obtuse philosophy more coherently applied by Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon series.

Follow all of this up with a literal "god out of machine," and you have the antithesis of what seemingly every other reviewer has called a masterpiece in the craft of storytelling.

And for the record, I really enjoyed Fargo, enjoy open endings, and thought that the nihilism was well-placed for the premise. Everything else just falls apart from there.

[portnoy]

fucking lol

[jbeall]

We haven't read the book, I take it?

[Grand Illusion]

No, but I expect a film to stand on its own.

[Cold Bishop]

No, but I expect a film to stand on its own.

And it does beautifully.

But if you look at the characters and see nothing but an "I'm too old for this shit" character or a super-villian, or you can't stop to question why they're characterized in this fashion, then I don't see the point in arguing and I can't help but question whether you went into the film wanting to hate it. I guess minimalism and abstracted characters isn't your thing? I'd advise you to stay away from the films of Jean-Pierre Melville.

And if you don't see the point of the offscreen handling of Brolin's character or the deus ex machina then you're simply not paying attention.

[filmnoir1]

I saw this over the weekend after months of anxiously waiting. I, too am a huge admirer of the Coens and their connection to American culture through the auspices of American filmmaking (in other words classical Hollywood). First, I would argue that this is the best film that they have made so far. It displays an intelligence, ingeniuity, maturity that none of their other films have managed to capture. Second, it illustrates to me that these two men are the heirs of classical American filmmaking and thought. They recognized that this novel is more than a lurid homage to the days of pulp fiction (books which have since become extremely chic along with film noir) it is also the story of the disintegration of all the values and themes of American society. That is why the book is entitled No Country for Old Men, it is Mccarthy's way of saying that the America of random and senseless violence, celebrity, and greed is not one in which heroes such as lawmen with connections to the mythical credo of the Old West can survive.
Furthermore the film shows how a movie can be made that does not assault the viewer and viewer expectations with wall-to-wall music, which is a cheap way of eliciting emotion and character in my opinion. Instead we see the Coen's utilize the natural sounds in an attempt to create a realistic, sober portrait of this sordid situation. The sounds of the wind when Llwelyn is hunting enhance the sense of space as do the sounds of the suticase as it bangs against the metal ductwork in the hotel sequences.
I agree that the movie is funny at times, but it is funny in ways that are apropriate and not over the top as some of the Coens earlier films have been. There are moments when I felt as if I were in fact watching some of the film noirs of the 1940s that use the limitations of working on the cheap to capture and tell a multifacted narrative without gimmicks.
My favorite part of the film was the opening montage of the landscape accompanied by Tommy Lee Jones's voiceover. The voiceover provides a sense of the thematics and it also demonstrates how Mccarthy attempts to meld the evironmental history with that of the lived history of people. The dark clouds looming over the wide open expanse point to the reality that man is merely a dot in this thing called the American west. This is why we are allowed to see the long shots of the mesas, cactus and the long winding ribbon of a road that the deputy travels when he first captures Javier Bardem's character.
The movie is stylized without question but ironically in its stylization it demonstrates a level of restraint that has not been an element of their earlier films. The Coens have matured from merely telling stories and making films without a tinge of serious philosophy to crafting storyworlds that engage in and discuss the nature of this thing called the "American experience."

[Steven H]

He seems as if he was ripped from a cartoon, even carrying a requisite unique weapon of choice. He is neither the interesting Hannibal Lecter nor the chess-playing icon of Death.

I wonder what kind of movie you were expecting. Maybe ask yourself "why does this character seem cartoonish" instead of immediately, and negatively, comparing him to the (interesting?) serial killer and angel of death in a bad way (I see those as very *good* comparisons, that would make one *think* about why they chose to portray Bardem as such.)

As for character development, I completely disagree. The three main characters all grow very well in my eyes, and you learn an awful lot about all of them (though maybe less Bardem, but, outside of any larger concerns, he might be the most interesting because of the mystery.)

Did you read the rest of the thread? There are some great points some posters have made about the film that might give you second thoughts, or at least something to bounce off of.

still... what portnoy said.

[GoldenPilgrim]

Spoiler

I loved the way the death of Brolin's character was handled. We don't see him beg for his life, or suffer, or go down in a rain of bullets, and it was really effective. In real life we never get to know all of the details of a person's death, we very rarely get to be there with them, because of this I found myself almost grieving over his character's death. I really couldn't get this movie out of my head for at least a week after I saw it.

[Grand Illusion]

I guess minimalism and abstracted characters isn't your thing? I'd advise you to stay away from the films of Jean-Pierre Melville.

Actually, Le Samourai is everything this film is not, in my eyes. But a lot of that has to do with the perspective from which the story is told.

I wonder what kind of movie you were expecting. Maybe ask yourself "why does this character seem cartoonish" instead of immediately, and negatively, comparing him to the (interesting?) serial killer and angel of death in a bad way (I see those as very *good* comparisons, that would make one *think* about why they chose to portray Bardem as such.)

Not having read the book, I wasn't expecting anything.

And it's pretty arrogant of you to assume that I didn't ask any of those questions. I searched for answers, and I came up with either adherence to poor source material or just trite characterization.

The best analogy I could make of how a director did this right was Seventh Seal. That movie, too, is somewhat of a chase flick with a force of nature. But nobody can tell me that the resolution of the Knight and his Squire with Death, the final confrontation, would have been better if they had been completely ignored offscreen. It's a beautiful scene.

But Javier Bardem is not Death. They either didn't go far enough to make him an icon or didn't go far enough to make him an actual living, breathing character. Instead, he's stuck in a mushy grey area. Neither character nor allegory.

Take another movie that

Spoiler

killed its main character. Was Psycho any worse for showing the death scene? No, it became one of the most memorable scenes in all of cinema. What about Rules of the Game? It certainly underplayed the main character's death, but no less effective for it. Rather moreso.

I'm not saying every movie has to be done the same way, but if you're going to pull some Brechtian shit that should make me step out of the film and question what I've just seen, then there are ways to do it without (1) stringing along empathy throughout the pic for the only well-developed character or (2) pulling cheap camera tricks to obscure what even happened in the first place. At least tell me, if you're not going to show me, what happened so I can think about it, instead of trying to piece it together.

As for Tommy Lee Jones, his character seemed like something Paul Haggis would write. And that's about as mean as I'll get on that subject.

[GoldenPilgrim]

Grand Illusion,

Not sure if any of your last post was in response to my post or not, BUT,

Spoiler

I don't think you can rightfully compare the way Brolin's character's death is treated with something like death in The Seventh Seal, sure I see how you can draw parallels between the two films as a whole but, I saw his death as a way of shifting the main character. It's at that point that the story really becomes Jones', like I said earlier, he wasn't able to be there during Brolin's death so we can't either, just like it would happen in real life, it puts us in his head, it's that much more troubling and you grieve that much more, two things that ultimately consume Jones' character and drive his story. This is what made the movie powerful for me, and I think justifies the really disturbing violence.

But hey, I think you make a convincing argument, it's just that it seems like most of the things I loved about No Country are exactly what you disliked.

[Titus]

Spoiler

I loved the way the death of Brolin's character was handled. We don't see him beg for his life, or suffer, or go down in a rain of bullets, and it was really effective. In real life we never get to know all of the details of a person's death, we very rarely get to be there with them, because of this I found myself almost grieving over his character's death. I really couldn't get this movie out of my head for at least a week after I saw it.

Spoiler

I also thought part of the point of eliding his death was to refocus the audience's attention on Sheriff Bell. It seems to me that the film is more about him and his worldview (it's his worldview that informs that film's, or vice versa) than it is about Moss. Rather Moss's story seems to be the McGuffin that finally drives Bell's growing feeling of helplessness over the brink. The Coens and McCarthy build this genre exercise up, even having Moss promise Chigurh that he'd kill him, which is a common cliche, only to pull the rug out from under the audience, both by having Moss be murdered and also not even bothering to show us the details. There's a shocking resignation to his death that's gained by not showing it.

And Bell's recounting of the final dream was beautiful, I thought. A really haunting final line.

[Shrew]

I really can't express how off this you seem. It's odd, because you fly by and touch a lot of points I feel are almost self-evident, but then take the opposite interpretation.

I'll try to explain what I think, though it's going to frustrate everyone.

1) As you've said, killing a major character midfilm has been done before. You might even argue that thanks to the horror genre, it's old hat.

But killing off the protagonist off-screen isn't quite so common, and its a hell of a lot ballsier. Plus, it's absolutely necessary to show how mad the world of the film has become. It's a world where people can simply be ruthlessly murdered. No drama, no reasoning, just cold hard insane death. And that's a lot more frightening than anything they could have shown on screen.

It's not even Bardem who kills Brolin, despite the cat/mouse game--it's the renegade Mexicans. Bardem isn't the personification of death, because death is freaking everything!

But while Bardem isn't death incarnate, I imagine he wants to be. His coin-flipping isn't just a gimmick, but a prayer to fate. Through it, he can become an arbiter of fate, dealing death as it sees fit, and becoming more than the sociopath he is. That's what makes the ending of the film, when this is forcefully pointed out as incorrect, so jarring. It destroys our image and his own image of Bardem as death.

As for Tommy Lee Jones, he's stands alongside the audience. He sees all this, and he can't comprehend it. He's not an idiot, but he isn't equipped to deal with the modern world. And he's also afraid of it, but unlike a Paul Haggis character, he can't quite articulate the depth of this.

[Grand Illusion]

Grand Illusion,

Not sure if any of your last post was in response to my post or not, BUT,

Spoiler

I don't think you can rightfully compare the way Brolin's character's death is treated with something like death in The Seventh Seal, sure I see how you can draw parallels between the two films as a whole but, I saw his death as a way of shifting the main character. It's at that point that the story really becomes Jones', like I said earlier, he wasn't able to be there during Brolin's death so we can't either, just like it would happen in real life, it puts us in his head, it's that much more troubling and you grieve that much more, two things that ultimately consume Jones' character and drive his story. This is what made the movie powerful for me, and I think justifies the really disturbing violence.

But hey, I think you make a convincing argument, it's just that it seems like most of the things I loved about No Country are exactly what you disliked.

Spoiler

Thanks for the courteous reply. I do see your point about how it shifts the main character. That is a good way to read the device, but it doesn't work for me within the context of the film as a whole. True, in real life, we do not get to know the intimate details of a person's death.

We don't, however, get to know the intimate details of their life either. We don't truly ever know the loneliness of someone waiting on their bed, holding a shotgun, waiting for death to knock on that door. We don't travel with a lone Texan while he makes the moral or pragmatic decision to pick up that suitcase of money.

We do in the movies, however, and we do in this movie. I have traveled with that character. The Coens have made that decision to put me with that character where I normally would not be, and I am willing to give them that conceit. Thus, when they yank the narrative rug out from under my feet and hide the evidence, I feel slighted because I've already been where I would not normally have gone.

The film seems to care more about the wife's death scene, where she refuses to give in to the killer's games. But that's a place that Tommy Lee Jones couldn't go either. The omission of deaths is arbitrary to the Coens's will. It's more manipulative editing than natural to the story being told.

Then when the narrative shows that, oh, this was Tommy Lee Jones's story all along, I can't help but feel that's a poor decision for a POV. Much more interesting to me is the POV presented in Le Samourai, for instance. Tommy Lee Jones is so far removed that the film pushes out my own disillusionment, rather than drawing me in.

By the time his final monologue comes, I don't feel that's enough for me to empathize with his character. I'm already trying to piece together what happened before because of the deceptive editing and narrative tricks. With all that, I'm left wondering about the development of this old man, who, to me, already seemed quite jaded. Now he's just more jaded? Personally, I just don't see him being pushed, as Titus said, "over the brink."

Anyway, that's what discussion is for, and your points are certainly worth addressing.

[Grand Illusion]

Spoiler

But killing off the protagonist off-screen isn't quite so common, and its a hell of a lot ballsier. Plus, it's absolutely necessary to show how mad the world of the film has become. It's a world where people can simply be ruthlessly murdered. No drama, no reasoning, just cold hard insane death.

If that's the thesis of the film, then that's a major problem I have with it. Especially the "no reasoning" part.

I believe that when people kill, for the most part, they do have a reason. I don't believe that people walk around as pure evil caricatures, which Bardem borders on. I believe in reasoning. Most criminals, most killers, are not insane wackjobs eating their feces and doing things without motive.

So if the world in the movie is, as you say, one without reason, then it's a fantasy world.

Spoiler

It's not even Bardem who kills Brolin, despite the cat/mouse game--it's the renegade Mexicans. Bardem isn't the personification of death, because death is freaking everything!

Spoiler

This is the truly interesting part of that sequence that you touch on. Especially the implications it has. But wouldn't this be even more interesting if shown? We can see that the renegades bring the same terror, the same greed, and the same end result that the supposed Death (capital D) brings.

You don't have to show the actual death. Look at Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Amazing final scene. It doesn't have to be on-screen to be acknowledged.

As for Tommy Lee Jones, he's stands alongside the audience.

I think my problem is exactly that he stands alongside the audience. He's not my surrogate within the story because he's not in the story. Instead, he's in the audience, not a character, but a narrator, existing to tell me how wicked this world has become. He's like the buddy that elbows you in the theater to tell you that the movie is starting to get bleak. Thanks, Tommy.

The Haggis comment still might've been a low blow.

[Steven H]

spoilers, etc etc

I wonder what kind of movie you were expecting. Maybe ask yourself "why does this character seem cartoonish" instead of immediately, and negatively, comparing him to the (interesting?) serial killer and angel of death in a bad way (I see those as very *good* comparisons, that would make one *think* about why they chose to portray Bardem as such.)

And it's pretty arrogant of you to assume that I didn't ask any of those questions. I searched for answers, and I came up with either adherence to poor source material or just trite characterization.

The best analogy I could make of how a director did this right was Seventh Seal. That movie, too, is somewhat of a chase flick with a force of nature. But nobody can tell me that the resolution of the Knight and his Squire with Death, the final confrontation, would have been better if they had been completely ignored offscreen. It's a beautiful scene.

(There's a straw man argument hiding within the Seventh Seal comment. No one here has said anything negative about the ending of that film.)

I made the arrogant comment because it seems as though every choice the filmmakers made (and even the writer of the novel) you seem to disagree with, and I don't see any evidence of an attempt to find out "why" just, again what appears to me, an immediate reaction of dislike. If you feel that strongly, there's no reason for rational discussion, but that second post did give me a better sense of what you're getting at.

I think the offscreen death made it *more* powerful, and isn't there a long line of filmmakers who thought that showing the same things over and over (like this film would have if it had anything resembling what you were wanting, apparently)? Did we really need another "death scene" when the film had been filled the brim already? Actually, I can't think of anything that would have been WORSE (and the scene with Brolin's girlfriend also falls into this category.)

But Javier Bardem is not Death. They either didn't go far enough to make him an icon or didn't go far enough to make him an actual living, breathing character. Instead, he's stuck in a mushy grey area. Neither character nor allegory.

Mushy grey areas can be character and allegory, which is why so many directors choose to use it. Who ever said that they can't? If we're going to criticize directors for making characters that you're supposed to feel uncomfortable with, and have a tough time "getting" then let's just go around to almost every modern filmmaker's thread and start.

Bardem's character has a strange moral compass, complete disregard for human life, and an almost supernatural ability of omnipotence and immortality. These aren't made clear, but Tommy Lee Jones senses it, and Brolin doesn't. This makes him very interesting to me but not to you, obviously. One man's trash is another man's dinner (though it seems to me you are throwing out perfectly edible food).

I'm not saying every movie has to be done the same way, but if you're going to pull some Brechtian shit that should make me step out of the film and question what I've just seen, then there are ways to do it without (1) stringing along empathy throughout the pic for the only well-developed character or (2) pulling cheap camera tricks to obscure what even happened in the first place. At least tell me, if you're not going to show me, what happened so I can think about it, instead of trying to piece it together.

This seemed like the Coen's most straightforward film, I have no idea how Brecht or cheap camera tricks even come into the equation. As for the last sentence, they showed you plenty in No Country. It seems greedy to want more.

[jorencain]

I haven't read the book, but isn't that offscreen death handled the same way there? That's what I've heard, anyway (probably somewhere earlier in this thread).

And what camera tricks are there? It's clear who is dead when he's lying there in the morgue. I don't think anything "tricky" or "clever" is going on there.

[Oedipax]

But Javier Bardem is not Death. They either didn't go far enough to make him an icon or didn't go far enough to make him an actual living, breathing character. Instead, he's stuck in a mushy grey area. Neither character nor allegory.

I think they went exactly as far as they needed to in order to straddle this line while at the same time, ultimately making it clear on which side Chigurh falls on.

Spoiler

Take for instance Brolin's question to Woody's character in the hospital: "Who's this guy supposed to be, the ultimate badass?" Woody responds that he isn't. There's also the scene in the office where Woody seems somewhat dismissive, saying he's a psychopathic murderer but that there are plenty of those around.

In a way, the first two-thirds of the film are set up the way a more traditional film would be - Chigurh the ultimate badass, Llewelyn our protagonist who must flee him and ultimately defeat him in a climactic showdown. Later, we are denied this climactic moment, seeing instead only its immediate aftermath. At this point, we should start to realize the film itself is driving at something else - life isn't a movie, and it's ridiculous to have expected Llewelyn to have come out on top. So is Chigurh death-incarnate after all?

The car crash scene near the end tells us he isn't. He may be a terrifyingly efficient, cold-blooded killer, but he's just as susceptible to the whims of fate as anyone else. He'll die like everyone else - whether of "natural causes" ("natural to his line of work") or otherwise. And there will be others to replace him.

[Jun-Dai]

What kind of ATM lets you withdraw $1400?

[Andre Jurieu]

What kind of ATM lets you withdraw $1400?

Not sure if that's a serious question Jun-Dai, but a friend once accidentally made a withdrawal of $2000 from an ATM in my neighborhood, so I'm assuming many kinds of ATM's allow you to withdraw $1400.

[Grand Illusion]

(There's a straw man argument hiding within the Seventh Seal comment. No one here has said anything negative about the ending of that film.)

don't think you know what that phrase means. Making an analogy to something outside the argument does not equal a straw man.

I think the offscreen death made it *more* powerful, and isn't there a long line of filmmakers who thought that showing the same things over and over (like this film would have if it had anything resembling what you were wanting, apparently)? Did we really need another "death scene" when the film had been filled the brim already? Actually, I can't think of anything that would have been WORSE (and the scene with Brolin's girlfriend also falls into this category.)

I already described why this didn't work for me, but I pointed out that I'm merely asking for acknowledgement of the death. Butch Cassidy didn't show it. There is innovation left to be had. But completely dropping the character that they did, the way they did, felt like more of a gimmick than artistry.

If we're going to criticize directors for making characters that you're supposed to feel uncomfortable with, and have a tough time "getting" then let's just go around to almost every modern filmmaker's thread and start.

No. There's a difference between poor characterization and feeling uncomfortable with a character. Bardem's treatment didn't make me uneasy, just bored.

Bardem's character has a strange moral compass, complete disregard for human life, and an almost supernatural ability of omnipotence and immortality. These aren't made clear, but Tommy Lee Jones senses it, and Brolin doesn't.

What? Those aren't made clear? Those are the only things made clear about him.

You could substitute anyone for Bardem in your statement, and the character would be equally as banal.

Lex Luthor's character has a strange moral compass, complete disregard for human life, and an almost supernatural ability of omnipotence and immortality.

And what camera tricks are there? It's clear who is dead when he's lying there in the morgue. I don't think anything "tricky" or "clever" is going on there.

Oedipax posted an article last page posing the exact confusion about the way the death was handled. Odd angles never show the man's face. The fact that the scene is entirely omitted.

[Shrew]

Can you define what is in an acknowledgment for you? Because I saw blood, a body, even snippets of a funeral. Do you just want a shot of the man's face? I think the film seeks to portray the life/death split as a stark contrast between presence and absence rather than a living thing transforming into a dead object. In fact, I don't believe any of those killed in this film are examined closely, with the exception of the massacred men at the beginning, but my memory could be off.

It seems to me like you disagree with this scene because you don't like the worldview it entails. That's fine, you don't have to like the movie. But calling a scene gimmicky because you don't like what it suggests isn't a valid argument.