1243 No Country for Old Men

[Grand Illusion]

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.

So society is morally corrupt? This is the social commentary from the film?
If Chigurh actually had a character behind him, then there would be some actual social commentary. This is because society is made up of people, and Chigurh just doesn't fall into that category.

[M]

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.

So society is morally corrupt? This is the social commentary from the film?

Yes, that our society is corrupt and that the end is just ahead. Chigurh is the corruption itself, and ordinary people like Moss are drawn to become entangled in his world.

[pemmican]

Well, FWIW: I revisited the film today, since it was the last day to see it theatrically, and, on second viewing, will admit that the things that annoyed me about it, while still annoying, annoyed me less, and the things that impressed me about it impressed me more.

Don't have much else to say, but I began to wonder today - the scenes in The Road, where the son is questioning the morality of the father and asking, if we're the ones who are carrying the flame (a figure also used in No Country, of course), why do we do such questionable things... I really wonder who is being addressed there; who is McCarthy thinking of as the "flame carriers" in America today, despite their questionable actions? (Or is he undercutting his own metaphor? Because I don't think so).

I would probably find the Oprah interview fascinating, if I could bear to watch the fucking thing.

P.

[Jack Phillips]

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.

So society is morally corrupt? This is the social commentary from the film?

Yes, that our society is corrupt and that the end is just ahead. Chigurh is the corruption itself, and ordinary people like Moss are drawn to become entangled in his world.

I don't think that's what the film is saying. Chigurh isn't really human, he's a kind of preternatural killing machine. As such, he comes into human society from outside. The veneer of civilization is very thin and easily breached, so any weakening can provide entry for the forces of destruction Chigurh represents. He is the chaos-world incarnate, the ultimate threat to human society, and can't be dealt with by tired, old men.

[Mr Sausage]

Chigurh isn't really human, he's a kind of preternatural killing machine.

You're spot on saying that Chigurh isn't "human," but I would amend "preternatural killing machine" to an embodiment of natural/primal force. He is much closer to an abstraction of certain prevalent moods and forces in the world than to an fully inward character. This does not make No Country For Old Men an allegory, tho': think of Chigurh as being in the same family as Moby Dick in the titular Melville novel.

He is the chaos-world incarnate, the ultimate threat to human society, and can't be dealt with by tired, old men.

He's a really old testament-type figure, isn't he? I would extend your sentence to say that he's not a threat specific to human society so much as one of those indominable forces that ultimately grinds people down, and which has been in the world throughout history (note the story the wheelchair deputy tells Bell near the end). He's like Leviathan, which I take to be McCarthy's intention.

[M]

I don't think that's what the film is saying. Chigurh isn't really human, he's a kind of preternatural killing machine. As such, he comes into human society from outside. The veneer of civilization is very thin and easily breached, so any weakening can provide entry for the forces of destruction Chigurh represents. He is the chaos-world incarnate, the ultimate threat to human society, and can't be dealt with by tired, old men.

I didn't say Chigurh is really human. He is the moral degeneration of modern life, which consumes Moss and will soon come to replace the world of order Tommy Lee Jones' character represents.

The problem with your construction is that it ignores the social specificity of the story. Such an allegory could apply to any people anywhere. The urgency of the film is lost in favor of a more contemplative, abstract setting. I would argue Chigurh is a corrupting force coming from within humanity, not a sort of Manichaean evil force coming from without.

[Jack Phillips]

I don't think that's what the film is saying. Chigurh isn't really human, he's a kind of preternatural killing machine. As such, he comes into human society from outside. The veneer of civilization is very thin and easily breached, so any weakening can provide entry for the forces of destruction Chigurh represents. He is the chaos-world incarnate, the ultimate threat to human society, and can't be dealt with by tired, old men.

I didn't say Chigurh is really human. He is the moral degeneration of modern life, which consumes Moss and will soon come to replace the world of order Tommy Lee Jones' character represents.

The problem with your construction is that it ignores the social specificity of the story. Such an allegory could apply to any people anywhere. The urgency of the film is lost in favor of a more contemplative, abstract setting. I would argue Chigurh is a corrupting force coming from within humanity, not a sort of Manichaean evil force coming from without.

I can go with you part-way with the idea that the evil is within human beings to begin with, insofar as the conflict between the civilizing principle and the impulse to barbarity is a constant in every human soul. But what is to be made of the "social specificity" you speak of? As I recall, 1980 did not herald the apocalypse. Twenty eight years later, and we're still living in the best of times, the worst of times. The one thing the 80s setting does do, imho, is remove the action from our time, just as the West Texas locations takes us out of our familiar landscapes. No, I prefer a more abstract reading: let the archetypes play.

[M]

I can go with you part-way with the idea that the evil is within human beings to begin with, insofar as the conflict between the civilizing principle and the impulse to barbarity is a constant in every human soul. But what is to be made of the "social specificity" you speak of? As I recall, 1980 did not herald the apocalypse. Twenty eight years later, and we're still living in the best of times, the worst of times. The one thing the 80s setting does do, imho, is remove the action from our time, just as the West Texas locations takes us out of our familiar landscapes. No, I prefer a more abstract reading: let the archetypes play.

That's like saying Blade Runner isn't applicable as a critique of contemporary life because it's 25 years later and we still don't have flying police cars. That would be to read the elements in the film that are critical of our world in a superficial way. I agree there is a feeling of remoteness in No Country for Old Men, but I don't see this as a remoteness from the kind of world we live in now, but like man remote from himself, drifting away from what he used to have and away from what used to be a happier, more hospitable way of life. I think the story is telling us that these are the consequences of the moral choices we as a society are making today. The novel is set in the 80s, but the Coens produced the film in 2007.

[Jack Phillips]

Well, I'm baffled. First you tell me that the 80s setting is important for reasons of "social specificity," then you say the movie is really about contemporary America. If the latter, why didn't the Coens update the material (they could have done so easily)? If the former, what exactly was significant about the year 1980? I don't doubt something can be suggested, but as far as I'm concerned, it's unnecessary. The issues the film deals with are timeless, and the under-developed West Texas locations, appropriately, evoke the same primordial arena present in our literature from the beginning, from the plains of Troy up to and including the American West, Conan's Hyperborea, and John Carter's Mars.

[M]

Well, I'm baffled. First you tell me that the 80s setting is important for reasons of "social specificity," then you say the movie is really about contemporary America. If the latter, why didn't the Coens update the material (they could have done so easily)? If the former, what exactly was significant about the year 1980?

I would gather that the early 80s reflect the beginning of the end, when people stopped saying 'sir' and 'maam'. But the 80s are close enough to us in time also that we can see many of the same features of the society at that time present in full force today. Of course the struggle of man with himself at the heart of the story is true for all times, but it would be a mistake to conclude that this is a philosophical exercise. The point is not that this struggle occurs, but that we as latter-day Americans are in the midst of losing this struggle right now at this moment because of the sort of world we have chosen to construct for ourselves. Or from the point of view of the Tommy Lee Jones character, because of the sort of world we have chosen to throw away. That insight depends of the social context of the spectator viewing the film and the context in which the film is set. I suppose the story could have been set in 2007 or 2005, but it may have lost some of that sense of the overlapping of two worlds, one dying out and one coming into being. People talk about how areas of the American Southwest don't look at all the same today as they did 30 years ago, route 66 is gone, etc.

[GringoTex]

But what is to be made of the "social specificity" you speak of? As I recall, 1980 did not herald the apocalypse. Twenty eight years later, and we're still living in the best of times, the worst of times.

1980 marked the beginning of mass drug-associated violence and the infrastructure collapse caused by drug addiction in our lower-class communities. McCarthy did not arbitrarily pick 1980 as the setting of his novel.

[Belmondo]

But what is to be made of the "social specificity" you speak of? As I recall, 1980 did not herald the apocalypse. Twenty eight years later, and we're still living in the best of times, the worst of times.

1980 marked the beginning of mass drug-associated violence and the infrastructure collapse caused by drug addiction in our lower-class communities. McCarthy did not arbitrarily pick 1980 as the setting of his novel.

True, and the movie does a nice job of letting the date sneak up on you in a way similar to some of the novels. For example, as I read "All the Pretty Horses", I felt sure I was in the old west until the characters cross into Mexico and see a truck pass by on the horizon. I'm sure it is part of the timeless themes on display, and since one of the critical studies of this author is titled "Sacred Violence", I think we know what at least one of the themes is.

[Jack Phillips]

People talk about how areas of the American Southwest don't look at all the same today as they did 30 years ago, route 66 is gone, etc.

Yet the Coens were able to find locations for their 2007 movie that could play themselves in 1980. Of course, the Coens had things built, but the land is still there, it hasn't been sub-divided and paved over.

We'll have to agree to disagree. This movie is Sheriff Bell's story, and it's the same story many an old man has lived. The specifics change, but it generally goes something like this: one day a man looks about him and sees a world he no longer recognizes, where there is no place he can rest easy. If he is a thoughtful man he may come to view things in apocalyptic terms, to project his own personal Eschaton onto the cosmos. But his story in not unique. The world ends for every generation. This is an ancient theme, and one frequently treated in our literature and films (especially Westerns). But the idea that somehow our civilization is in particular crisis at this point in time (civilization is always in crisis)? I don't see the evidence, either in the movie or in life.

[GringoTex]

Yet the Coens were able to find locations for their 2007 movie that could play themselves in 1980. Of course, the Coens had things built, but the land is still there, it hasn't been sub-divided and paved over.

Speaking of the land, 1980 also marked the beginning of the collapse of the system whereby single family-owned farms and ranches could turn a decent profit. I'm not disputing the universal nature of the story, but the 1980 setting has many specific connotations.

[M]

The world ends for every generation. This is an ancient theme, and one frequently treated in our literature and films (especially Westerns). But the idea that somehow our civilization is in particular crisis at this point in time (civilization is always in crisis)? I don't see the evidence, either in the movie or in life.

This sounds like something you should take up with Cormac McCarthy. The jury's still out on our place in the grand scheme of history, but at least it's fairly clear as to the author's vision of our place in history. He's not singling out the older man's perspective as a kind of perpetual sunset. In No Country for Old Men, we're all in the position of the old man. The sun is setting on us and darkness is ahead. And so as you rightly point out, the spectator is meant to sympathize with the Tommy Lee Jones character. You can debate whether that is the actual state of affairs for us in our society, but I think that is plainly the meaning we are to derive from the story. Yes, our civilization in particular is in decline and the end is coming very soon. Not like how every generation dies off and a new one is born. But that Western civilization is dying and an age of darkness is taking its place. This is why there is no one in the story who inherits Sheriff Bell's legacy. One might suggest Moss, but he is killed.

[Jack Phillips]

The world ends for every generation. This is an ancient theme, and one frequently treated in our literature and films (especially Westerns). But the idea that somehow our civilization is in particular crisis at this point in time (civilization is always in crisis)? I don't see the evidence, either in the movie or in life.

This sounds like something you should take up with Cormac McCarthy.

I don't know from McCarthy. I'm responding to a film, which was authored by the Coen brothers, not Cormac McCarthy. The Coens may have appropriated elements from McCarthy, but the process of adaptation is transformative, and the Coens have their own vision, one distinct from McCarthy's. I do not see the things you attribute to McCarthy in the Coens' film. Sorry.

[Mr Sausage]

The Coens may have appropriated elements from McCarthy,

May? Elements?

Your post would be more successful were you talking about There Will Be Blood as it relates to Upton Sinclair's Oil. It falters here because it's obvious the Coen's are maintaining a high level of fidelity to the book. It is not given that the Coen's vision for the film is distinct from McCarthy's; that's something you have to argue using examples from the book and the movie. In fact most of what you've said is an a priori assumption that doesn't once consider something rather obvious: that an adaptation can, if the adaptors wish, express the same themes and moods as the source.

[Jack Phillips]

The Coens may have appropriated elements from McCarthy,

May? Elements?

Your post would be more successful were you talking about There Will Be Blood as it relates to Upton Sinclair's Oil. It falters here because it's obvious the Coen's are maintaining a high level of fidelity to the book. It is not given that the Coen's vision for the film is distinct from McCarthy's; that's something you have to argue using examples from the book and the movie. In fact most of what you've said is an a priori assumption that doesn't once consider something rather obvious: that an adaptation can, if the adaptors wish, express the same themes and moods as the source.

The burden of proof is on those wishing to show identity between McCarthy and the Coens. I am content to treat the film without reference to the source novel.

[M]

The burden of proof is on those wishing to show identity between McCarthy and the Coens.

I would like to present to the court Exhibit A: read the book first.

Either way, the meaning above I attribute to the film, and the examples I've used are taken from the film. I refer to the author as Cormac McCarthy simply because he authored the story itself and because the story, the tone, the style, and the import of the book are maintained to a high degree in the film. The Coens are not 'using' his material to do what they want with it. I think you're implying that so McCarthy means what I say and the Coens mean what you say, and since we're talking about the film, you must win!

But if you like, I'll rephrase what I wrote earlier and say 'this sounds like something you should take up with Joel and Ethan Coen'.

[Jack Phillips]

The world ends for every generation. This is an ancient theme, and one frequently treated in our literature and films (especially Westerns). But the idea that somehow our civilization is in particular crisis at this point in time (civilization is always in crisis)? I don't see the evidence, either in the movie or in life.

The jury's still out on our place in the grand scheme of history, but at least it's fairly clear as to the author's vision of our place in history. He's not singling out the older man's perspective as a kind of perpetual sunset. In No Country for Old Men, we're all in the position of the old man. The sun is setting on us and darkness is ahead.

I will now read, per your instruction, "the author's vision" to mean "the Coen brothers' vision." Still, what you're stating is an interpretation. You're certainly entitled to it, but please don't tell me that is what's in the film.

[HerrSchreck]

But what is to be made of the "social specificity" you speak of? As I recall, 1980 did not herald the apocalypse. Twenty eight years later, and we're still living in the best of times, the worst of times.

1980 marked the beginning of mass drug-associated violence and the infrastructure collapse caused by drug addiction in our lower-class communities. McCarthy did not arbitrarily pick 1980 as the setting of his novel.

Are you speaking specifically in terms of Texas? Because in national terms, this is just a perplexing statement. Inner-city drug violence in major US cities (especially coast cities like NYC, Los Angeles, Miami, etc) goes back quite a way, with the "blatantly" worst years for hard narcotics like heroin and cocaine (and associated police corruption, and gigantic cooperation between a much larger La Cosa Nostra, Corsican groups, working notoriously hand in glove with global intelligence agencies viz narco-states like Burma, Laos, Thailand Turkey-- not to mention south America), and where we are talking about tha days of weed where the whole industry ran on gigantic trailerload imports from south america & the near east... there was no "hydroponic" super-highpower shit grown under halide & pressure sodium lamps in the US & Canada, no medical permits ---> diversion, etc. Just huge quantities of every substance underr the sun coming into this country, and with such rampant corruption in the police depts that patrolmen stood around a corner from open-air drug bazaars, where competing dealers called out names (stamps) of heroin at the top of their lungs, neighborhoods like the South Bx were completely destroyed and gutted due to the wave of ilegal narcotics completely devaluing real estate prompting landlords to turn to arson-- 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. Murder rates up in the thousands (we get a mere couple hundred here in our Gentrified Nowadays).

If it's crack you're talking about, this first devastating wave hit in the years, say, 1984/5- thru about 1990. 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. The doors would open and the smell would come wafting in believe it or not. That's how pervasive it was in the late 80's.

The first reports of crack hitting anywhere I believe were in Los Angeles in 1981/2. Even at this point the idea of packing up freebase was considered a "local thing" to LA. It wasn't until it exploded in NYC around 85 that the "80's drug hell" materialized, and a whole new breed of "drug monster"-- the spindly, unsleeping-zombified bug eyed, pastyfaced "crackhead"-- was born and duly planted in the mind of a terrified public consciousness, and turf wars suddenly sprang up to levels previously unseen since the days of prohibition. As alcohol was to Prohibition, as heroin & powdered C was to the 60's-70's urban USA landscape, so crack was to the mid-80's and forward.

But again, Gringo, you may be talking something specific to Texas at the time. I'd be greatly interested in the drug and region of Texas in question. The moving of large quantities of illicit drugs in the zones 1946-80 interests me, owing to the shady overlapping of elements forced into contact with one another--organized crime, intelligence agencies, narco-states, corrupt & racist local police-- due to the limited availability in a very specific zone of global real estate: the shadowy underground deep cover networks used by these groups to move people, materiel (drugs and weaponry not at all the sole commodities), money, plans, and ideas (intellectual property, formulas, other corporate espionage, plus war plans, etc) in and out of heavily surveilled ports and soveriegn borders. The limited availability of this kind of space forced so many formerly mutually-disinterested parties into bed with each other. Some of the most fascinating history (rarely) written. And in the global economy, the size of the white (or above-board, or "reported") economy is equalled and often surpassed by the underground, hidden economy. SO much cash, so many tanks, grenades, asassins, white slavery rackets, etc... and so little space.

Back OT, my feeling re the time setting (which is hugely underemphasized in the film) was always a simple sense that this may have been a time of some sentiment or nostalgia to the author, i e these were the years he came up in. Obviously know nothing about the man, haven't read the book, but since there is little to no reflexivity in the flick regarding the time itself, something say even minutely along the lines of, say, Ray Liotta's comments in Goodfellas about the day & age that he grew up in ("it was a glorious time") detailing & contextualizing the era with legitimate historical detail contrasting it with years before and after (i e at the end of the film Goodfellas the sense of rampant collapse of the mob glory days and huge snitching and drug use), I agree with Jack Phillips... I walked out of the cinema thinking the whole 80's thing was entirely incidental. Some authors just a have a feeling for a certain era, a time they know well and recall with a depth of feeling-- regardless of the accompanying vice or vileness (I feel the same way about 1970's/80's NYC, I miss the old Times Sq, I miss the thoroughly bombed NYC subways, the big afros, the sense of the rusting, leaning collapsing past in shambles all around me, the thriving low-rent nabes bursting with brilliant impversihed art & music etc)-- and enjoy the process of visitation thru their work. As for actual comment (basically an old man saying "These crazy violent kids today-- world/hell-in-handbasket"), it's so nonspecific to any time. It's the same statement Maria makes at the end of West Side Story. Each generations elders sees the violence committed by the new youth as a sign of Collapse. I came out not knowing or feeling anything "historical" at all about Texas 1980. It was just a story about These Guys Doing This-This&That, In A Time That Happened To Be Then.

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. He could be seen as too weak, old and reactionary to contend square on with the Underbelly anymore. Whereas a younger man will see the violence for what it is, the old man's age and weakness will cloud his perspective, cause him to think its the end of the world as we know it. And precisely for this reason he must be excluded from this "country".

[Jack Phillips]

I walked out of the cinema thinking the whole 80's thing was entirely incidental. Some authors just a have a feeling for a certain era, a time they know well and recall with a depth of feeling-- regardless of the accompanying vice or vileness (I feel the same way about 1970's/80's NYC, I miss the old Times Sq, I miss the thoroughly bombed NYC subways, the big afros, the sense of the rusting, leaning collapsing past in shambles all around me, the thriving low-rent nabes bursting with brilliant impversihed art & music etc)-- and enjoy the process of visitation thru their work. As for actual comment (basically an old man saying "These crazy violent kids today-- world/hell-in-handbasket"), it's so nonspecific to any time. It's the same statement Maria makes at the end of West Side Story. Each generations elders sees the violence committed by the new youth as a sign of Collapse. I came out not knowing or feeling anything "historical" at all about Texas 1980. It was just a story about These Guys Doing This-This&That, In A Time That Happened To Be Then.

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. He could be seen as too weak, old and reactionary to contend square on with the Underbelly anymore. Whereas a younger man will see the violence for what it is, the old man's age and weakness will cloud his perspective, cause him to think its the end of the world as we know it. And precisely for this reason he must be excluded from this "country".

Amen.

The 80s setting may, nonetheless, have bearing on plot mechanics. Characters are more easily isolated if they don't have access to the internet, cell phones and text messaging.

[Antoine Doinel]

I'm going to step gingerly into this conversation, and say that I really don't believe the film is any kind of statement on "contemporary America". As HerrSchreck points out, the date is presented in the most offhanded and hidden way possible. For me, the film more directly addresses the nature of man, of violence and perceptions of evil. Sheriff Bell doesn't understand or can't face Chigurgh simply because he hasn't dealt with violence of that nature before. Moss, a Vietnam veteran, is better equipped simply because he lived through this kind of horror before. Bell - like most of us would be - is paralyzed by fear and I think, ultimately disappointed in himself because he can't summon the courage he thinks he has. He is dwarfed by both Moss and Chirgugh - two men who have better accepted their flaws and their fates.

[Jack Phillips]

I'm going to step gingerly into this conversation, and say that I really don't believe the film is any kind of statement on "contemporary America". As HerrSchreck points out, the date is presented in the most offhanded and hidden way possible. For me, the film more directly addresses the nature of man, of violence and perceptions of evil. Sheriff Bell doesn't understand or can't face Chigurgh simply because he hasn't dealt with violence of that nature before. Moss, a Vietnam veteran, is better equipped simply because he lived through this kind of horror before.

And . . . he's not yet old.

[M]

But Moss isn't equipped to deal with the world of violence he's entered into. He is killed. That's the difference between the age-old circle of life story and a story of apocalypse. Moss is the young, contemporary man, and yet he dies. Again, it remains to be seen whether the effects of the decline of Western civilization will be felt in our lifetime. They are of course, but I mean in a substantial way that would radically change the world we knew before. It is enough to conclude that the story is one of apocalypse and not one extolling the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. At the end, there is only a dream of a tiny fire remaining ahead in the darkness, which it is important to note is only a dream at that.

The film is set in the 80s because the novel is set in the 80s. The novel is set in the 80s because the author seems to perceive some sort of breaking point separating the past and the present. Drugs are a part of it, the proliferation of extreme violent crime too, loss of the natural environment is a part of it, so is the rise of corporate multinationalism, the death of urban infrastructure and the decline of the American middle class, greed, materialism and acquisitiveness, etc. The use of the internet and cell phones and other techno-accoutrements I would say are several of the emblems of the apocalypse of the West themselves, which are not in the story in literal form but are subsumed allegorically in the violence, greed, and alienation we do find literally in the story. But all that is well and good. We're talking about what the artist is intending to say, not whether what the artist is trying to say is a likely prediction of the future to come or whether he/they rightly pinpoint a period of time in the past as the point at which times changed for the worse. I think the latter issue is irrelevant, as a discussion of the truth or falsity of the claims of Christianity would be in a topic devoted to The Passion of the Christ.