This movie season has seen some pleasant surprises (Into the Wild, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead) and disappointments (Eastern Promises, American Gangster), but no film had yet exactly met my expectations until now. I went into No Country For Old Men expecting to see one of the most amazing American films of the past decade, and that's exactly what I got. It's cool when things work out like that.
The Coens have been astoundingly prolific and varied in style over their twenty year careers. With No Country, they revisit the terrain of their first film, Blood Simple. Both films could be considered "Texas noir:" gritty crime films featuring regular people confronting embodiments of pure evil, against a backdrop of scrub brush and big block Detroit sedans. What sets No Country For Old Men apart from Blood Simple, indeed, from the entire Coen brothers canon, is its commitment to emotional impact. The film creates a hermetic seal around its characters and universe, drawing the viewer in to a palable reality. In the past, the Coen's have been content to create immersive film realities for the purpose of riffing on genres and film tropes: shits n' giggles, funsies...you know, for kids? With this film, the Coen's have entered uncharted territory: gone are the comic grotesques, hyper-stylized dialogue and deadpan absurdism that have largely defined their output. Instead of reminding the viewer at regular intervals that they're watching a movie, they let their craft and characters speak in the soft but textured voices of a recognizable reality. The virtuoso technique on display does not reflexively celebrate the magic of film, but is rather put to service instilling existential dread in the viewer. It's a feat of cinematic ledgermain with few equals: the movie practically places you into an hypnotic trance designed to show you a cold and merciless universe where death is inevitable and meted out randomly. You leave the theater acutely aware of your personal vulnerability, pondering the terrifying vastness and cruel capriciousness of the world. You feel like a plucked chicken set in the middle of a wind-swept prairie, waiting for the wolves to come.
This effect is achieved through a constellation of techniques, including a canny lack of any musical accompaniment. The catalyst of it all is certainly Cormac McCarthy's source material. I intentionally avoided reading the book before seeing the film in order to go in fresh. It was the right decision, but it leaves me feeling unable to fully engage with the film's achievements. As such, I expect to read the book this week, and post a fuller write-up of the film at that point. For now, sufficit to say that this flick is a pisser.
Score: 10
6 comments:
Can't stop what's comin'....that's vanity.
"Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket, it's your lucky quarter."
"Where do you want me to put it?"
"Anywhere not in your pocket, where it'll get mixed up with the others and become just a coin. Which it is."
For me, that's the most important piece of dialogue in the film.
Yeah, it's a telling moment in the movie, for sure. And one that much of the bloggers out there seem to overlook.
As you prepare your more formal review, I can't imagine how you are making your way through the unbelievable chatter surrounding this thing. Everyone has something to say about this movie, at least it seems. I have some links I could post here, but only if you want--everyone is talking about the ending and most of it is crap (can Americans even pay attention anymore?) but some of it is really poignant.
I absolutely adore the ending, by the way. When I first saw it, I felt so uncomfortable I actually got sick to my stomach and can't remember walking to the train. Dramatic, yes, but nothing compared to what happened to my father. He was totally dumbfounded with the ending in a way that ultimately made me deeply sad. He literally couldn't talk, and was quiet for the rest of the day, which made me feel both sad and guilty--it seemed to hit him on some subconscious level, and I could see it written on his face.
I should have recognized the potential whallop a father/son viewing could have. It has me thinking about men, fathers, our nation, and the lessons feel incredibly dark. But all is still abstract, as this movie has captured my thinking in profound ways. I look forward to talking with you more about this because it seems like you have keyed in on a crucial point in the film.
What a movie.
ssI absolutely love the ending, and anyone who doesn't like it is, quite simply, a dumb fuck. The Coen's construct a perfect thriller in the first hour of the film: a synergy of plot mechanics, cinematography, performances, and then...they destroy it. They take a plot that has hurtled inexorably towards what the viewer imagines will be an epic confrontation between Moss and Chigurh and obliterates the whole thing. Moss wants to have a showdown with Chigurh, Chigurh wants a showdown with Moss and the viewer wants desperately to see a showdown between the two, but one of the most important points of the film is that WHAT WE WANT DOESN'T MEAN A GOOD GODDAMN. The universe is cruel and mindless, spinning on an axis that is unmindful of our pitiful hopes and dreams. The reason that crime films aren't usually considered "real" art is because their plot elements aren't determined by the film's themes or the motivations of the characters, but by the demands of the genre. By avoiding the climax that the entire film has been building towards the Coens create a deep sense of unease in the viewer, a reminder that there is no governing rationality to the fates of humans. For a lot of people, this sense of unease becomes a stupid, knee jerk rejection of the film. When that sucker punch is followed up by the haunting musings of Sheriff Bell, as he wrestles with the darkness he has witnessed and the darkness that he knows will one day claim him as it already has claimed his father, you're left breathless and terrified, utterly disarmed in the face of a dumb and brutal reality that you know is waiting outside the theater doors.
As for the bit with the store owner, what makes the line so powerful for me is the double implication that our lives are essentially anonymous, "just a coin," but also that those lives contain all of the meaning we are likely to find in this world, and as such, it is our individual responsibility to hold them dear and define them as special, to keep them out of our pocket, as it were.
Continuing...
The three main characters are all, to varying degrees, aware of their vulnerable and absurd condition, and all three deal with it in different ways. Moss embraces a weary fatalism: he knows that he's probably doomed the second he opens that case, but he'll be damned if he doesn't give it a shot. Sheriff Bell finds comfort in reflecting on a mythic, illusionary past in which the world was saner and more humane: I think the big difference really is that, in the "old days", Bell was young, virile, and capable to defending himself against anything, as he grows older, less powerful, the world takes on an alien and threatening cast. Chigurh has embraced the darkness most completely: he knows that no code of behavior devised by his fellow citizens has any meaning, so he has self-consciously created his own code, an operating principle, in the absence of any persuasive outside force.
Cush-bomb:
Have you read The Road? You might want to.
The father and son in The Road talk about keeping the "fire" alive as they wander a United States destroyed in some kind of cataclysmic disaster.
Sheriff Bell's dream is about a fire out there, "in all that darkness" that the son makes his way toward. An obvious and probably unhelpful connection, but it might spur you on further. I really enjoyed what you said above--much better than most of the crap mainstream reviewers have said.
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