'No Country for Old Men' - The anticipation thread

I saw it - it's not good. It's probably their best since "The Man Who Wasn't There", but that just means that it was better than "Intolerable Cruelty" and "The Ladykillers". And actually, I'd say "The Ladykillers" might have been better.

i liked intolerable cruelty! more than the man who wasn't there, definitely.

the general reviews at Cannes are not so good

Good novel, mostly because of the quality of the writing itself, more than the storytelling. It's hard to imagine telling this story without falling into the cliches of 1990s hitman violence.

the book was pretty awful, I thought.

Enjoyed the book but can't remember more of it than the shootout at the hotel.

The book started out with a lot of promise - it read like "notes towards a mid-90's indie thriller starring Bill Pullman and J.T. Walsh" - but went absolutely nowhere

"If it ain't a mess, it'll do 'til the mess gits hyar."

(squints)

The trailer looks pretty great: http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/nocountryforoldmen/trailer/

best coen bros movie in over a decade.

really good.

hmmm my expectations are low and I hate Tommy Lee Jones this may be a renter

noted

can't wait

trailer looks dope

javier bardem is the best actor

in the world

he's awesome in it

his hair looks awesome

in it

s lushness

LOL HELMET

http://us.movies1.yimg.com/movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/miramax_films/no_country_for_old_men/javier_bardem/country1.jpg

I HAS A AIR TANK^^

hair and voice

i was hopping up and down in my seat when i saw this preview

were you able to watch it?

i meant the trailer. i saw the trailer, yes.

This looks really good! I just saw the trailer on tv. Coen bros seem at their best when at their most violent; and Javier Bardem, omg. I think it comes out Friday here!!!

I'm skeptical

Okay.

I'm tall.

let's go see it, nicka

oh yeah, he is tall! he ain't lyin'!

best coen bros movie since the early 90s. i thought it was great.

i've been pretty 'eh' on everything they've done since barton fink but this looks awesome.

Even if it's an adaptation of a below average novel?

(xpost)

i dont understand the question

cf a number of great noir flicks

cf a number of great movies, period, and vice-versa

i thought it was a good book, alfred, maybe you should re-skim it

i actually think they improve on the book in some ways... as an adaptation it's really faithful but at the same time they bring their own coen bros thing to it in a really good way. and im not really a fan of theirs.

the book was not even close to good. it was too heavy handed with the sheriff and the morality stuff at the end, it really fell apart in the last 50 pages.

that said, i think it might make for a great movie

OTM

they fuckin nail the ending too i thought.

I think I need to have the book's ending spoonfed to me a little, which I'm guessing the movie will do.

it's still a little elliptical but to see tommy lee jones actually saying that stuff goes a long way.

is it only ny & la this friday or what?

it's opening here so i guess not

Sure, plenty of great films were made of shitty novels, but this novel has pretensions, and I'm worried about a collision of sensibilities here; everything about the Coens suggests that they'll freeze them in amber.

i thought it was a good book, alfred, maybe you should re-skim it

I read it for the first time last week! Say what you want, but a couple of heavy-breathing sentences scattered hither and thither do not illuminate the souls of characters who stepped out of airport fiction. In this case minimalism = zero content.

I loved the confrontation between Chigurh and the wife. Well done. Although I haven't seen the movie, this'll probably be the clip shown to the Academy when Javier Bardem's name is read.

its opening on ilx?!!! xp

I loved the confrontation between Chigurh and the wife. Well done. Although I haven't seen the movie, this'll probably be the clip shown to the Academy when Javier Bardem's name is read.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, November 6, 2007 1:07 AM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

could just as easy be him with the gas station guy or woody harrelson.

Conversation between the Coens and McCarthy in TIME. Appropriately enough, he's a Malick fan:
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1673269,00.html

and then cormac hates on magic realism. :(

wow i just heard about this.

is there any humor in it?

If this does not have The Fall doing the title track to the tune of "No Xmas for J.Quays", um, I'll sing it now.

I checked.

"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN!!"
"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN!!"
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a aaaaa aaaaaa"

wow i just heard about this.

is there any humor in it?

-- gr8080, Wednesday, November 7, 2007 9:09 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

yes. tommy lee jones's character is played by neil hamburger.

No, there's no humor at all.

What about the Woody Harrelson scenes? The ones with his character in the book (especially with the CEO dude) were pretty fucking funny.

characters who stepped out of airport fiction

Yeah, that's kinda what I enjoyed about it. Alfred is right, though, the book would have worked better without the morality lessons. Just pulp, plz.

Loved the air tank.

there is defly humour in this movie.

Anthony Lane:

If I want wry lawmen and smart, calculating fugitives, I’ll get them from Elmore Leonard; and, if I want Leonard, I’ll take him neat, rather than slow-filtered, drop by drop, through a layer of Faulkner, then laced with the Book of Jeremiah.

Har!

Meanwhile, most everyone else loves it.

"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN!!"
"NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN!!"
"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a aaaaa aaaaaa"

-- Mark G, Wednesday, 7 November 2007 09:41

lololol

i just want to hear tommy lee jones says "nose RANG"

just kidding, i am not going to see this movie in a million years

however i did like the three burials of melquiades estrada, at least until i realized it wasn't going to have an ending

Dear sweet Jesus is this good. I just saw it this morning and I'm resisting the urge to run back to the theater right now.

The one thing about this film that's been pissing people off is the ending, in which all the building tension dissipates (rather than climaxing). The more I think about it, the more I really love the Coen's desicison to keep a pivotal death offscreen. It allows us to judge their fate more objectively, and to be shocked by the matter-of-factness of their demise.

And the lack of music. One Mariachi joke and like two stings in the whole film. I can't believe how fucking awesome this is.

I am looking forward to this crazy.

Shit man I tried to watch this last night but the line was halfway around the block!

Dr. Zhivago was an adaptation of a below-average novel.

liked this a lot

And the lack of music.

Is this for real? Coen bros movies rely on music almost as much as QT or uh that Royal Tenenbaums guy. You know. This is offputting but also exciting.

no dude it's pretty awes.

I always need to see Coen brothers movies at least twice, but my kneejerk reaction is this is one of their best.

It's hard to imagine telling this story without falling into the cliches of 1990s hitman violence.

(from way upthread, lol)

They did such an awesome job of avoiding this!

iuvd it - unsurprisingly mccarthy's dialog is perfect for the screen.

strange i was totally at the mercy of suspense for the whole thing, then after i realized the pace and style was calming - a seeming contradiction that somehow totally made sense - quite unique!

and javier bardem is is the a++++++ dog as usual.

good and all, pretty technically virtuoso, and suspenseful as hell (felt like i needed a vise to prise my shoulders from my ears) but all in all didn't really come together for me... a lot of the literary tropes played out as too lackadaisical on screen, and the first twenty minutes were marred by proximity to that stupid fucking 'funny games' remake trailer than ran right before.

slocki otm over and over
great amazing incredible movie
also, funny in parts

the first twenty minutes were marred by proximity to that stupid fucking 'funny games' remake trailer than ran right before.

Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of No Country in the Chicago Reader talks at length about the appeal of the game-playing serial killer, from Hannibal Lector to this guy (same archetype in the jazz club in Collateral and Funny Games).

I found the ending of both the novel and the film unsatisfying. Shifting between several characters' points of view sets up certain conventions, and that convention is broken in an important moment but not for any apparent thematic/aesthetic reason. It just didn't work for me.

But the rest of the movie is satisfying, and definitely beautiful frame by frame. (Saw The Darjeerling Limited last night as well, and with that one too the cinematography was just stunning.)

I think the reason for the sudden shift in perspective (at least in the film, didn't read the story) is to further explore the nature of gun violence. The whole time we're with Llewelen we're surrounded by the suddenness of the violence. At the end when we're riding with Tommy Lee Jones we get to see the effect from an omniscient perspective and this time it's the chaos (and confusion) that makes an impression. It takes a few minutes to even realize what happened, which was the whole point of filming it that way.

See I thought they were intentionally setting up a parallel between that scene and Llewelyn's happening upon the first shootout.

gonna get pretty SPOILERy if we start talking about this stuff

SPOILERS SPOILERS

and that convention is broken in an important moment but not for any apparent thematic/aesthetic reason.

I thought that by not showing the key scene it says that despite the audience's investment in Llewelyn he's not some special superhero and what happens is the kind of thing that happens all the time if you try to fuck with these guys (i.e. the sherriff's perspective, like Cosmo said ... he knew it was inevitable)

yeah tommy was just all awwww fuck no the whole time - everyone else was invested

anyway no one should read a thread on a released movie if the dont like spoilers

it's called wondering if anyone who's seen it liked it!

Well at least he put up the "spoiler" for y'all.

As for Jonathan Rosenbaum's review, I've rarely seen him more off-base. He's always been my favorite critic, although that has nothing to do with the films deems worthy.

This time out he seems to pin some of the faults of NCFOM on it's guilt-by-association with Silence Of The Lambs. He sadly shakes his head at the volume of serial killers on the screen that outmatch reality (Why not vampires? Why not superheros? Why not Tom Cruise?) when this film isn't even about a serial killer. He then talks about the links to Abu Ghraib (???), wastes time berating Lars and the Real Girl (more guilt-by-association), and finally gives the film one star while admitting to its technical merits. Rosenbaum's always been more about ideology than critical analysis, but maybe it's time for that Palm Beach condo.

maybe an anticipation thread should be separate from a spoiler thread, after all, one does come here to anticipate a flick! although, i think just doing this to spoilers is more than enough, i find it easy to skip over stricken text, and easy to read it too!

OK, thanks for those explanations, the parallel makes sense. I can also see something like Malick's films, where basically the people and the animals and the landscape are all equal characters and all fade in and own. But for me, I guess Llel was a standard crime-story protagonist, same kind of rube as the main guy in A Simple Plan, compared to the group-protagonist of a film like The Thin Red Line.

yeah i really disagree with rosenbaum about the vacuousness of the serial killer in this one--he's fleshed out so well in the gas station scene as a flattener of time who believes in fate as the endpoint (+ bardem's performance so good not because he's a remorseless killer but because he's this remorseless, physicalized reason), and when he finally runs into kelly macdonald's character and has a similar conversation w/ the tables turned, it's pretty affecting.

that being said, i didn't totally love this! something about it didn't quite fall into place for me. pretty tempted to go see it again tonight though...

slate review of this could not be more terrible

In the past, the Coens have gotten a lot of mileage out of ridiculing most country folk for their stupidity while singling out a chosen few for admiration.

also, from rosenbaum ... wtf???

ehh, I've seen that criticism before

e.g. the Coens are looking down on dumbass Minnesotans who talk funny, Raising Arizona and O Brother are poking fun at dumb rednecks etc

I don't agree really but that critique has def. been batted around before

i dont know how anyone can really suggest they are condescending to any of these characters ... thats like when pye poudre or whatever his name was said that idiocracy&king of the hill were racist

culture snobs see themselves in everything

something to do with being narcissistic and elitist and having your head up your own ass most of the time, admiring the scenery

"I imagine if I knew some Minnesotans, they'd be pretty ticked off to see their accent accurately replicated on the big screen!"

haha yeah and yet every scorsese movie about how italians and irish people have no class and only date trashy women is OK

well, come on, its about parody, not accuracy, but the criticism & esp that entire review are completely ridiculous. ive honestly never read anything more idiotic from rosenbaum, who's a guy i respect though i havent read a whole lot of him.

(havent seen the movie btw, but the review is transparently stupid anyway)

the idea that they were making a reference to iraqi torture was pretty o_O

actually it was funny, i was out in philly with some family when Fargo came out and we all went to see it. the midwesterners fucking loved it, the east coasters didn't get it. the parody aspect didn't connect, they just assumed that's exactly what it's like irl!

Fargo has led to a decade of Minnesota minstrelsy, but I guess Goodfellas did the same for Italians.

And Sean Penn did the same for Californians

In the past, the Coens have gotten a lot of mileage out of ridiculing most country folk people for their stupidity while singling out a chosen few for admiration.

I watched Raising Arizona again recently for the first time in years and it is pretty meanspirited with its characters.

the whole movie is "lolz, white trash"

faulkner got a really bad rap in barton fink thanks to these fucking elitists

Yeah the only characters they admire are the tacticians (Marge Gunderson, Tom Reagan) although they were noticably more kind to the po' common folk in No Country For Old Men.

Shakey making my point for me for the umpteenth time

the one stereotypically Coen-y character in that vein would be the fat receptionist at the trailer park

but she was hilarious b/c she tells off Bardem and gets away with it

Yup. There's others that you could tell are on the verge of diving into Coen parody (the border guard, bald guy in the clothing store), but for once the Coens reign them in, favoring the gravity of the situation. I'm not sure if they're deferring to Cormac McCarthy or if this is an actual turning point in their careers.

Yeah the only characters they admire are the tacticians (Marge Gunderson, Tom Reagan) although they were noticably more kind to the po' common folk in No Country For Old Men.

-- Cosmo Vitelli, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 8:05 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

this is kind of a weird way to enjoy films, proxy politics.

lolz @ tom calling me a "culture snob"

A lot of Faulkner is pretty much "LOL WHITE TRASH" and I don't really think it matters

ok this thread has gone too far - toooo faaaaaar

Yup. There's others that you could tell are on the verge of diving into Coen parody (the border guard, bald guy in the clothing store), but for once the Coens reign them in, favoring the gravity of the situation. I'm not sure if they're deferring to Cormac McCarthy or if this is an actual turning point in their careers.

-- Cosmo Vitelli, Tuesday, November 13, 2007 2:16 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

dude they've always done this, at least in their best work ... think of all the extras in Fargo

Everyone I can think of in Fargo (except Marge) was played for laughs or terror.

yeah. it's a movie. they're supposed to be funny and suspenseful.

in what way was marge not played for laughs??? (and who wasn't, incl those played for 'terror'?)(and why is this a bad thing?)

Yeah and if the characters don't ring true I usually don't give a shit about them or the movie.
xpost

to me the bit parts in fargo were 'reined in' considering how 'wacky' any of those characters COULD have been, they were restrained and realistic.

and yes, very funny as well

he was kinda funny-lookin'. funny how? I don't know. just ... funny-lookin'.

cosmo, the characters ring true because their primary motivations do - their personalities & affectations are secondary to this & provide the comic relief to an otherwise pretty depressing tale

I guess their personalites and affectations have always felt primary to me. And yeah if this were an all-out comedy I woudn't need characters to resonate. Since Marge does, it's enough to pull me through the film (which I love, btw).

are you from/have you ever lived in the midwest?

to me most of the humor comes from the fact that it does ring true ... like if they were meanspirited or condescending caricatures it wouldn't be funny.

I don't get the midwest.

its flat

you could hardly write more ridiculous caricatures than the cast of Big Lebowski but nobody whines about them because they're ostensibly city folks and have no discernible flyover-country accents

I really cannot possibly understand how you can think that nick cage & holly hunter's roles in RA are condescending unless you have some built-in contempt for "those people"

can we just talk about how good gas station guy is in that scene

yes, sorry

i cant, slocki, sorry - but tombot & deej are otm, all the coen brothers movies are rife with caricatures; i think the dividing line here shouldn't be about offensiveness but whether or not they work, & i think more often than not they do

I really cannot possibly understand how you can think that nick cage & holly hunter's roles in RA are condescending unless you have some built-in contempt for "those people"

when was the last time you saw the movie? there's all these jokes based around their mispronunciation of words ("my fiance left me" etc), the opening gag is how H.I. is a criminal because he's too stupid to be anything else, their family and friends are obnoxious boors whose shortcomings and cultural markers are played for laughs (John Goodman and the other guy using handfuls of pomade at a time, the "wife-swapping" bro-in-law with monstrous, biblically-named children, etc.) It is totally mean-spirited. Every character is either a monster or an idiot, even Holly Hunter.

Tom, Big Lebowski is different. The caracatures aren't stupid simple folk, so it doesn't feel like the Coens are beating up on the powerless. These are iconic roles that film geeks worship (in recent years Walter even more than the Jesus).

the final scene w/the wife when hes all theres nothing u can do yr husband sealed yr fate then she says some stuff hes like ok i can can offer you a coin flip - she kinda got to to him there eh.

U GUYS MAKING FUN OF PEOPLE IS AWESOME AND HILARIOUS OK STFU

walter's love for sandy koufax notwithstanding, he's a complete dumbass. what are you talking about?

xp

if they were meanspirited or condescending caricatures it wouldn't be funny

Ok, but I do think they traffic in caricatures. I mean, of course they do. But all that means is that they take stereotypes and bring them to the level of surreal, not that they harbor or condone those stereotypes. Take Bernie Bernbaum in Miller's Crossing... not only Jewish, but greedy, venal, sniveling, conniving, cowardly, you name it. And in a movie where everyone is referred to by their ethnicity, and hardly ever approvingly, that's getting at something. That they hate Jews? I... really doubt that.

SUPER COEN BROS trafficking in stereotypes and caricatures yes no maybe good bad who cares thread

ty

I think it comes down to their best films being about MORE than just the caricatures (which, its true, are in every movie) - you know, Lebowski is a goof on the Big Sleep, Miller's Crossing is Hammett, Hudsucker is Hepburn-style screwball comedy, etc. But the reason I singled out Raising Arizona is because it doesn't have any subtext or even any real external reference points - its just wall-to-wall "laugh at the yokels" gags.

x-post

TAKE TO OTHER THREAD ^^^ FOR BORING STUFF SHAKEY TY

the cast of leibowski... hmm, let's see... includes a burnout, a vietnam vet, a slut, a yes-man, a wealthy self-important gas-bag, a pretentious feminist, bumblimg nihilists... etc ad nauseam. YES THOSE ARE ALL INTELLIGENT, SOPHISTICATED PEOPLE, NOT STUPID AT ALL, NOPE.

xpost

And none of them feel real, either. I don't have a problem with a comedy populated by so many colorful caricatures, none of which is going to alter or harm the public's perception of a group of people. I'm sure all the nihilists of the world shed a tear the day that movie came to town.

No Country For Old Men, meanwhile, has 6 characters I actually cared about, the gas station attendant being one of them. That whole scene (especially Anton's speech about the coin) is already classic.

That's one thing the Coen Brothers are champs of: creating insta-classic scenes. They probably have a quota for every film.

CORMAC MCCARTHY What would you guys like to do that's just too outrageous, and you don't think you'll ever get to do it?

JOEL COEN Well, I don't know about outrageous, but there was a movie we tried to make that was another adaptation. It was a novel that James Dickey wrote called To the White Sea, and it was about a tail gunner in a B-29 shot down over Tokyo.

C.M. That was the last thing he wrote.

J.C. Last thing he wrote. So this guy's in Tokyo during the firebombing, but the story isn't really about that. He walks from Honshu to Hokkaido, because he grew up in Alaska and he's trying to get to a cold climate, where he figures he can survive, and he speaks no Japanese, so after the first five or 10 minutes of the movie, there's no dialogue at all.

C.M. Yeah. That'd be tough.

J.C. It was interesting. We tried to make that, but no one was interested in financing this expensive movie about the firebombing of Tokyo in which there's no dialogue.

ETHAN COEN And it's a survival story, and the guy dies at the end.

C.M. Everybody dies. It's like Hamlet.

E.C. Brad Pitt wanted to do it, and he has this sort of remorse or regret about it. But he's too old now.

J.C. But you know, there's something about it--there were echoes of it in No Country for Old Men that were quite interesting for us, because it was the idea of the physical work that somebody does that helps reveal who they are and is part of the fiber of the story. Because you only saw this person in this movie making things and doing things in order to survive and to make this journey, and the fact that you were thrown back on that, as opposed to any dialogue, was interesting to us.

C.M. David Mamet has a collection of essays called Writing in Cafés, or something like that. He says that the ideal venue for a playwright is to write radio plays, because then you have nothing, just--this is what somebody said. That's it. You have nothing to fall back on. That's quite interesting. Plays are hard, and I suspect that a lot of people who write plays don't really know how it's going to play. I mean, how do you know? Like some years ago, my wife and I went to see Ralph Fiennes do Hamlet. And I'd seen movies of Hamlet, I'd seen kind of amateurish productions, and I'd read the play. But we walked out of that theater, and we stood there, and we went, "Holy s---." Now how did Will know that was going to happen? [Everybody laughs.] So my question is, At what point do you have some sense of whether a film is going to work or not, as you're working on it?

J.C. I can almost set my watch by how I'm going to feel at different stages of the process. It's always identical, whether the movie ends up working or not. I think when you watch the dailies, the film that you shoot every day, you're very excited by it and very optimistic about how it's going to work. And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

C.M. See, I don't see how you could feel that. I would think that when you see the damn frames go by for the 45th time, it just doesn't mean anything anymore. Obviously that can't be true, but ...

E.C. Well, you're problem-solving at that point. You're working on it. It's only painful when the movie's done.

C.M. So tell me about this horrible dog. Was Josh [Brolin, who plays Moss] just terrified of this animal? You pushed a button, and it leapt for your jugular?

J.C. It was a scary dog. It wasn't a movie dog.

C.M. It was basically trained to kill people.

J.C. It was basically trained to kill people.

E.C. The trainer had this little neon-orange toy that he would show to the dog, and the dog would start slavering and get unbelievably agitated and would do anything to get the toy. So the dog would be restrained, and Josh, before each take, would show the dog that he had the toy, he'd put it in his pants and jump into the river ...

J.C. ... without having any idea of how fast this dog could swim. So the dog was then coming after him ...

E.C. ... so Josh came out of the river sopping wet and pulled the thing out of his crotch and said--he was talking to himself--he said, "What do you do?" "Oh, I'm an actor." [Everybody laughs.]

C.M. There are a lot of good American movies, you know. I'm not that big a fan of exotic foreign films. I think Five Easy Pieces is just a really good movie.

J.C. It's fantastic.

C.M. Days of Heaven is an awfully good movie.

J.C. Yeah. Well, he is great, Terry Malick. Really interesting.

C.M. It's so strange; I never knew what happened to him. I saw Richard Gere in New Orleans one time, and I said, "What ever happened to Terry Malick?" And he said, "Everybody asks me that." He said, "I have no idea." But later on I met Terry. And he just--he just decided that he didn't want to live that life. Or so he told me. He just didn't want to live the life. It wasn't that he didn't like the films. It's just, if you could do it without living in Hollywood ...

J.C. One of the great American moviemakers.

C.M. But Miller's Crossing is in that category. I don't want to embarrass you, but that's just a very, very fine movie.

J.C. Eh, it's just a damn rip-off.

C.M. No, I didn't say it wasn't a rip-off. I understand it's a rip-off. I'm just saying it's good. [Everybody laughs.]

E.C. Do you ever get, in terms of novel writing, stuff that's too outrageous? One wouldn't guess that you reject stuff as being too outrageous.

C.M. I don't know, you're somewhat constrained in writing a novel, I think. Like, I'm not a fan of some of the Latin American writers, magical realism. You know, it's hard enough to get people to believe what you're telling them without making it impossible. It has to be vaguely plausible.

E.C. So it's not an impulse that you even have.

C.M. No, not really. Because I think that's misdirected. In films you can do outrageous stuff, because hey, you can't argue with it; there it is. But I don't know. There's lots of stuff that you would like to do, you know. As your future gets shorter, you have to ...

J.C. Prioritize?

C.M. Yeah. Somewhat. A friend of mine, who's slightly older than me, told me, "I don't even buy green bananas anymore." [He laughs.] I'm not quite there yet, but I understood what he was saying.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1673269-2,00.html

http://img.timeinc.net/time/daily/2007/0710/acormac_1029.jpg

this picture lol

cohen brother dress like junior stock brokers out on the weekend

cormac mcarthy - not weathered enough

To The White Sea is probably the best film of the last decade or so that never got made. Not that I was ever really surprised. Just crushed that Hollywood won again.

worst moustache ever?

wtf kind of photo is that??

one thing ive been wondering abt: does he call the gas station guy "friend-o" for any particular reason, or is it just a super sweet thing to call a guy?

I guess I thought it was some weird reverse spanglish (friend + amigo)

yeah def - the gas station guy did say something that he took as maybe racist - like gettin any rain down south or something right

he said around dallas i think... i think that was chigurh realizing that the gas station dude had noticed details about him that he didn't want noticed.

yah thats prb a good read - anyway i love "friendo"

Can I share an anecdote about Cormac McCarthy?

I was in a used bookstore at here in Chicago about a year and a half ago, when his play The Sunset Limited (worth reading, really good) was in previews at Steppenwolf. I'm in the back of the store, browsing. The store is empty except me and an older guy, as you see him above, in a golf shirt and khakis looking at a multivolume set of books on the Civil War (maybe Shelby Steele's).

Anyway, I'm not really registering that it's him, but there's a kind of Coen Bros. version of a hippie used-bookstore owner behind the counter, and I hear this older man's gentle voice:

"Do you ship books?"

Hippie guy: "Whaa?"

Stern, focused: "Do. You. Ship. Books."

Then we all talked for a few minutes and he offered to sign one book of his in the store for the owner (copy of The Orchard Keeper), which would fetch a ton because he's so reclusive.

Anyway, very friendly polite guy, but I still think of that books line.

(maybe Shelby Steele's).

Foote?

Foote, yes!

another thing I liked about this movie was all the silent scenes of Llewelyn and Chigurh doing stuff with their hands .... hiding the satchel, cleaning a bullet wound, cutting up tent poles ..... reminded me of those Hemingway stories that are all guy builds a fire and ties fly-fishing lures (not exactly a huge revelation since McCarthy gets the Hemingway thing all the time)

he said around dallas i think... i think that was chigurh realizing that the gas station dude had noticed details about him that he didn't want noticed.

He asks about dallas because chigurh has a vehicle (stolen, obv) that says Dallas on it (on the license plate guard I guess?).

Probably the only drawback to Javier Bardem (who is incredible) is that his swarthiness and Spanish accent slightly obscure the fact that his character is clearly not supposed to be Mexican, but more likely of indeterminate ethnicity. Although I haven't read the book - maybe it's explained more clearly in the book? If you know a little Spanish you can recognize that Anton Chigurh can't possibly be a Mexican name. But if you don't, like the person I saw the film with, you might wonder.

im not sure what you mean, you think it would have been more effective if they'd cast someone of vaguer ethnicity? what would that mean?

Well fuck, I can't really imagine anyone being more effective. I just left slightly bothered by the fact that someone more conservative could watch this movie and think it was really about evil coming from Mexico.

(more conservative and fairly stupid, I guess)

I am so angry at you people for having seen this, it doesn't come out here until Wednesday. :(

theres those of spanish decent in mexico

jordan if it makes you feel any better i did have to take the subway like 3 stops just to get to it

Haha, the perfect family movie for Thanksgiving.

No joke Eazy, it's happening!

in the book his past is not explained at all, i pictured him as some kind of italian/navajo dude with a texas accent

but you know, the coen brothers are like the wes anderson of violence

'anton' sounds eastern euro or german russian or something.

i dont think the movie should have been changed for hurtings dumb friend

Part of the reason I disliked the book is the villain's goddamn name. I disliked it even more when Richard Roeper and A.O. Scott pronounced it two different ways ("sugar" and "chigger").

In his defense, he's not dumb, and I didn't mean my anonymous friend = stupid conservative dude who thought the movie was about evil from Mexico. I just meant that at the end of the film my friend said he wasn't sure if the guy was supposed to be Mexican or not, and that led me to conjure up an imaginary stupid conservative viewer.

i like the name!

and it's pretty clearly pronounced in the movie. what's the problem here

so hurting let me get this straight--you're annoyed at the movie because of the imaginary reactions of an imaginary person you made up?

I just saw it. I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially since the person I saw it with quite audibly said "oh, fuck you, Coen brothers!" when the ending came around.

(I liked the ending myself.)

ban hurting's imaginary friend

Russian/Mexican (Trotsky descendant).

I'm insulted that you guys think I'd actually be friends with this imaginary conservative

I enjoyed this. But sometimes I hate going to the theatres during prime time. During the movie I had to endure four separate instances of cell phone rings/alerts, a lady making orgasmic noises to herself during every scene of violence (what did you expect lady, it's the Coen brothers), and one dumb southerner shouts "peace of sheeeiit" at the end of it, which is repeated by another idiot...

*not really a spoiler but kinda says in what manner the movie ends*

apparently they wanted it to end in an extreme shootout and apparently ignored the title of the movie or the opening monologue.

crap--the spaces I put in didn't take--I forgot that's how it worked here! well I didn't really reveal anything....

i don't understand what you're saying

he meant to put a big space between his spoiler alert and the spoiler itself, but nu ilx compressed his post together

slocki posts sometimes riding that line between 'lol zing' and 'slockuomas'

it was too heavy handed with the sheriff and the morality stuff at the end

the film was the same way I thought. javier bardem is awesome though

deej i actually don't know what he meant by they "apparently ignored the title of the movie or the opening monologue"

oh wait, he's talking about the wacky ppl in the theatre... i thought he meant the coen bros

no tuomo

I really liked the way they handled the polemical first person stuff from the book by placing it all within conversations Ed Tom is having with other sheriffs. The ending was jarring but superb. The way they handled Moss was awesome, too.

Quite fantastic. Nothing much to add to what's already been said but have to praise Kelly MacDonald's performance, and not just for the pitch perfect (to my ears anyway) accent.

<i>and one dumb southerner shouts "peace of sheeeiit" at the end of it, which is repeated by another idiot...</i>

My sister said someone shouted "Garbage!" at the end after she saw it, and the whole audience cheered.

loved this unreservedly

loved this unreservedly

-- get bent, Tuesday, November 20, 2007 1:20 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

yes

no idiots in this audience, and southern california has no shortage of idiot moviegoers, even in film-savvy hollywood.

the movie >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> this thread

Even with a dozen other more important things to do, I'm going to this tomorrow.

wait the movie was better than the thread HOW DARE U !!!!!!

God DAMMIT two days ago Cinemark's website said it was showing in Tupelo and now they say WE'RE NEVER GOING TO SHOW THIS MOVIE NEAR YOU FUCK YOU FUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHA

So I'm not going to see this tonight after all.

Expert of its kind; Tommy Lee Jones' well-delivered attempts at profundity were the only real drag. In the end it's all rather so-what, like most Bros Coen films, and about as complex as the novel.

I quite enjoyed his, though I didn't find it satisfying.

his what?

Saw on Tsgiving, it made me feel extremely fragile and sad and like my own problems were as unsolveable as the characters', ie there is no hope or redemption, just death and fear of death. Basically for me, that means it sucked.

oops, THIS. my mistake.

SPOILERS BELOW JERKS:::

wow, i didn't think it was depressing at all, and i'm always first in line to get bummed out by stuff. I felt that certain elements were extraneous and simply served to complicate things for the viewer, Woody Harrelson's character being the best example. Having not read it, I don't know if said character had a larger role to play in the original text. I was also a bit frustrated at the time that Llewlyn's death was off-screen, though in retrospect i think it was for the best.

I saw it this afternoon. So much of it was exactly as I had pictured it in my head when I read the book in January. Lots of it felt very Coen brothers even though the film as a whole didn't feel a whole lot like their others to me.

I thought that Sheriff Bell eating the exact same breakfast in two different scenes did a lot for the character - he's the same dude, doing the same stuff, while all this other craziness happens around him. I thought it was a nice touch.

It's a very faithful adaptation

(xpost)

Saw on Tsgiving, it made me feel extremely fragile and sad and like my own problems were as unsolveable as the characters', ie there is no hope or redemption, just death and fear of death. Basically for me, that means it sucked.

-- Laurel, Saturday, 24 November 2007 02:02 (4 hours ago) Link

That's a pretty good description of how I felt for a few days after seeing the film, except I still thought it was really good. Also I kept hearing Chigurh's voice in my head. "You don't have any idea what you're talking about, do you?"

Was Woody Harrelson the Colonel (popped by Chigurh) the El Paso cop mentioned to Tommy Lee?

I assume so - there's the part where he was in the hospital in Mexico and mentioned to Llewelyn that he had been in Vietnam too.

i just started reading the book ... holy crap 'very faithful' is no joke, it reads like a novelization of the film

...

im aware that the book came first dude! im just saying the film was extremely faithful

after seeing this movie, The Mist, and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead within the last week, I find myself very depressed with humanity...

Joel Coen on adapting a book: "How we adapt a book is, one of us sits at the 'word prcessor' while the other one holds the spine of the book open."

Definitely the best movie I saw this year.

Definitely the most misunderstood ending I saw this year.

'sactly

wow, i didn't think it was depressing at all, and i'm always first in line to get bummed out by stuff.

u mad, it was pretty depressing. I still liked it a lot though.

I felt that certain elements were extraneous and simply served to complicate things for the viewer, Woody Harrelson's character being the best example.

but woody's monologue about chigurh provides the blueprint for how we're supposed to understand the killer, so I thought it was a useful character

he was kind of the opposite of complicating, he just up and says Here's what Chigurh is All About

Kelly McDonald = the film's best performance.

dmr otm, also he was cool just because it allowed a different kind of tension in a murder scene w/ cigurh - here's a guy who can conceive of what it is they actually face, and nothing really can save him either

Soto you crazy, splitting hairs. They were all pitch-perfect. She's been undervalued in light of Javier Bardem, but so have the others. Josh Brolin nails every scene, and he's in a lot of them. Tommy Lee Jones has played the weary cowboy before, but never this spot-on. Awesome distribution of wealth.

it was good, a little slow, the uncle with cats scene dragggged. agree on Kelly McDonald being tops.

I saw this last week and somewhat ashamed to admit I didn't even notice Llewellyn got killed until the end - I thought it was his mom-in-law! Oops. It was a great movie but I suppose I wasn't paying enough attention. I thought TLJ's closing scene was a bit lame and kind of zoned out and then the credits came up so it was a shock finish. Oops again.

thankfully i had the novel already (never read it) so when i got home i could go to the last few pages....because i totally zoned out during that last TLJ scene too.

frankly, I think i'd prefer a audio version of the novel read by TLJ....but the movie was pretty fantastic.

what are we to infer about Bardem's character? he suffers, feels pain...can fall prey to random fate and accidents too...he can't be metaphysical Evil, then, can he? doesn't it make it scarier that he's obviously human, despite the Coen's camping up his character a bit? (and in contrast perhaps to the Judge in Blood Meridian)

also interesting that the woody harrelson character is all telling everyone that they dont know what they're getting into and he is pretty easily discarded. what was HE thinking getting involved if he knew what he was up against?

the judge must be played by richard griffiths in an alopecia costume

terrence malick will direct

anton yelchin will play the kid

for everyone's general reference:

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

The ending is almost like a premonition of McCarthy's The Road, with the dream of the father and son "carrying fire in a horn," and the father riding ahead of the son into the darkness. In that context, Chigurh can be seen as an herald of the apocalypse.

Josh Brolin nails every scene, and he's in a lot of them.

oh man I thought he was great. Somebody had to tell me he was the older bro in The Goonies.

That's twice. Still fucking brilliant.

apparently the coens first thought of casting him because they had envisioned the movie as a sort of grown-up, much bleaker goonies.

with Slob as Chigurh.

what are we to infer about Bardem's character? he suffers, feels pain...can fall prey to random fate and accidents too...he can't be metaphysical Evil, then, can he?

Not evil, but death. He can be slowed but not stopped, even by fate and accidents.

You guys are perhaps missing the significance of the flipped coin, and Carla-Jean's conversation to him about it.

That's what I got too. He works a lot more logically as a personification of death than as a literal serial killer, who's already taking the life of a local sheriff even before the plot gets rolling. Don't know if this was clarified in the book.
xpost

It's crystal-clear. The Woody Harrelson character remarks on Chigurh's perverse sense of honor. Unlike a psychopath, he's predictable.

I thought the flipped coin was like a simplification of the chess game in the seventh seal - a chance to postpone the inevitable a little further

I think I'd fare better with a coin toss than a chess match against death.

http://content.ytmnd.com/content/4/d/b/4db407da97583084393cc9a8d97a8ed9.jpg

^^^ no one did this, though

i saw the significance of the flipped coin seen but this movie wasn't as great as The Mist which also came out recently (imo).

with Slob as Chigurh.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Sunday, November 25, 2007 11:09 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

sloth, you philistine

SLOTH LUV S1OCKI

finally saw this this weekend - one thing i liked about the theater i saw it at was that the lights went all the way up the instant the coen brothers names appeared after the black screen. or maybe all movies do that & i just don't notice, but it seemed particularly effective here.

very well-populated showing & lots of old people there, which was surprising but felt right. possible problem was that i entered thinking this was going to be very uncomfortable & a big downer, & i ended up really enjoying it, in a way not much removed from the way i might any well-crafted thriller (and it really IS pretty funny, which i also didnt expect). im still not sure how much of this is because of overblown expectations & whether or not its a bad thing.

biggest laugh for me & everyone else (after moss finds out chigurh is coming for karla jean, who's staying with her mother):

llewellyn moss: i want you to leave right now for el paso & meet me at the desert sands motel. you need to be headin far away on a plane, it'll be much safer that way.

karla jean: but what about momma?

moss: ah, she'll be alright.

I just read the book, and really am not sure I need to be bled on that much in the dark.

What did you think of the book, Morbs?

Loved the tautness and stuff, but I thought making Chigurh more Boogeyman than human was close to a cop-out. Also, while Sheriff Bell's voice (particularly in the first-person chapter lead-ins) sounds authentic, the "boy, civilization has gone to hell since people stopped being polite" angle smelled of authorial horseshit.

also, the book is set around 1980 (Bell was in WW2, Moss in Vietnam), I take it the film is not?

pretty sure it was supposed to be 1980, but I can't remember what led me to assume that.

"Morning in America" TV ad?

Also, while Sheriff Bell's voice (particularly in the first-person chapter lead-ins) sounds authentic, the "boy, civilization has gone to hell since people stopped being polite" angle smelled of authorial horseshit.

RING A DING DING

film is very clearly set in 1980 - moss is a vietnam vet, quarter dated 1958 "has been traveling 22 years to get here", all the cars are old.

xp as far is i can recall that only played a role in the movie in bell's very brief conversation with the other old officer (?) towards the end, & came from the other guy's mouth - bell seemed more friendly-agreeable than committed to the idea, which seemed like it was there for comic effect as much as anything ('if you'd have told me 20 years ago we'd have kids walkin the streets with green hair & bones in their noses, i wouldnt have believed it').

but I think that green hair line is Bell's in the book.

It's not like humans have been hyperviolent til the drug trade got goin, or anything. (And if they thought folx were generally uncivil in 1980, man, they should be glad they're dead now.)

If you think Bell's monologues are distracting horseshit in the novel, wait till you see how they're filmed.

yes, they're much better in the film.

Nope -- that scene with the disabled man was loooooong.

they're better in the film (feel like i'm beating a dead horse in this thread here)because they're filtered through someone else and not first person polemical bullshit.

wasn't the "disabled man" an ex-sheriff?

s1ocki's right, but, like in the book, those ruminations just don't resonate beyond the creator(s)' desire to pump up their pulp.

Would the film have made sense if Tom Cruise played Chigurh? It seems like Chigurh could only be played by big mental lumberjacks with moppy hair. What about an average Joe playing that role? Average height, average build, average face...

I don't think Bell's ramblings are authorial POV at all. I thought the whole point was that the idea that things are somehow "getting worse" is an illusion, that evil and greed have always existed, that death has always been around, etc.

I don't think Bell's ramblings are authorial POV at all.

Huh?? Whuh?

well there has to be something to the fact that the book is set like 25 years before.

I haven't read the book. But there's a difference between a narrator and an author.

yeah, so what are you trying to say? so confused.

Wait, I'm confused too - I think I might have been taking a couple of people's points here and conflating them, and also misunderstanding what Morbs was trying to say.

yeah maybe you should read the book

And I think Morbs was trying to suggest that hyperviolence is a modern invention, and he's wrong.

i think morbs point was exactly the opposite?

and i agree that is the point, hurting - i havent read the book either, but i thought que was saying that bell's monologues occasionally smack not of authorial POV but of the author trying to mold them to fit into the construct of the story; ie bell, previously sedate & thoughtful, makes a too-typical declaration about youth of today & society gone mad & is then enlightened by his wheelchair-bound relative, who relates a story to explain that inexplicable evil has always been & will always be an inextricable part of society. if that is how it went down in the book, i think the coen bros handled it better; retaining the core message without the bullshit charecterization. but this is all really minor so im not sure why i typed all that.

Ed Tom's chapters in the book are first person POV. The rest of the book is third person POV. This gives Ed Tom's chapters a weight and an importance that the rest of the chapters don't have.

Finally saw this tonight. I was surprised they let the scene with the sheriff & his dad go on so long but didn't get into any of his wartime guilt stuff, which was pretty key to his whole character.

-The no music thing was kind of awesome

-It's kind of important that Llewellyn's death is offscreen. The movie (and book) sets him up as a classic protagonist, this super-capable individualist type, but the whole point is that the times are a-changin' and that fate (or maybe just people) is a bitch, etc.

Well, also, doesn't he go into the other woman's room? The weird white screen in between scenes and his presence half in the doorway suggests that he does, which might have very simply been his flaw/undoing. Maybe it's the human condition that's a bitch.

True, I guess the movie does imply that. In the book, he picks up a young girl who's a hitchhiker and has a more developed & completely chaste relationship with her before being blown away by (I think?) the Mexicans in a hotel room.

no soundtrack for old men

I think Morbs was trying to suggest that hyperviolence is a modern invention

No. It's Bell's view, tho, and since he is the Good Man Trying to Do His Job his view has weight, as Que says.

(Americans have gotten hideously more uncivil since our grandparents' generation, but then their hyperviolence was more the embedded, daily kind, e.g. segregation.)

Well, also, doesn't he go into the other woman's room?

isnt she lying dead in her same spot by the pool? not that she couldnt have just come back. any sense as to how long it was in between her and llewelyn talking by the pool and their deaths?

also gotta think keeping llewelyn's murder off screen is saying something abt our appetites for entertainment violence.

i have to see this again.

you know what i loved about that hotel scene is coming up on it from a distance, basically through Ed Tom's eyes at first, the truck skidding out of the parking lot, etc.

I thought she was floating dead in the pool

the shift at that moment to his pov was pretty exciting and disorienting. kinda funny considering his whole section turned out to be a designed let down.

when to the award screeners start leaking alreeeeaaaaady!

Anton Chigurh = http://sketchplease.com/wp-content/sketches/John-Two-Face.jpg

when to the award screeners start leaking alreeeeaaaaady!

-- jhøshea, Tuesday, November 27, 2007 4:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

you will enjoy this movie way, way more in the theatre

I sure will, if it ever comes to my town. :-((((

I was really happy to see Stephen Root as the executive dude, even when he was choking on his own blood.

very well-populated showing & lots of old people there

lol

i really think old men should be banned from seeing this movie. otherwise the title is totally hypocritical.

this was SO SO SO SO SO good...

there were a lot of slightly opened curtains in this movie

i really think old men should be banned from seeing this movie. otherwise the title is totally hypocritical.

-- s1ocki, Wednesday, 5 December 2007 04:57 (1 hour ago) Link

they should've called it No Admission For Old Men

anyway...great movie! too bad i had to go the bathroom 4 times due to having 5 or 6 refills of a large diet coke in me (I also re-watched The Mist right before this) .

I just saw this last night, after eagerly anticipating it from the first trailers I saw before (I think) The Departed.

I think that, overall, this movie really captured McCormack's tone and mood - I was especially impressed by the way in which they nailed the landscape of the opening scenes so well. The silhouetted images of the hunters coming upon Llewellyn's truck and slashing the tires was just great - faceless threats. The subsequent chase was alright, but could have gone on a bit longer. Still, they had more pressing matters...

If Bardem doesn't get nominated for an Academy Award for this, I will be so disappointed. Chigur was just so over-the-top awesome, but also full of little touches that drove home that, if you've met this guy, you're probably dead - the one that really springs to mind is the crazed look he gives Woody Harrelson during their scene in the hotel room; A sort of ecstatic glee in the way things are unfolding.

Tommy Lee Jones gets into this role like few others that I've seen - and it could have been BAD. When you read the book, both his interactions with other people - his deputy and his wife, most notably, and Mrs. Moss - and his monologues, you get this sense that, if read with one type of accents or emphasis, these parts could be horribly hackneyed and cliched. But, upon thinking about it, that's kind of the point - Jones IS a cliche. And his time, at least from his standpoint, is over. Given that understanding, I enjoyed Jones' performance as a pretty nuanced and subdued one. He makes all the right judgment calls and does all the things his job requires him to do - but you never lose this going-through-the-motions feeling. Just kind of tired of doing the right thing, but unwilling to stop.

And Josh Brolin was just great. A plain-spoken guy who gets caught in an undercurrent of life that he has no place being in, and no way of getting out of, but will be damned if he gives up. Despite having a rapidly-widening understanding of what was going down, he's still fighting this great fight, and attempting to get to the end point where he's rich with his wife. But, and this is my one major beef with the movie version, once he steps off the straight and narrow and accepts the invitation of the girl to "have a few beers," his end is sealed. I liked the way that the book dealt with it more - entirely chaste, and ultimately not really affecting the outcome of the story. Once he threw his hat in the ring, there was no way he was getting out alive.

Overall, the photography was great - really muted, sun-bleached landscapes that were still so very vibrant.

And the lack of music was very, very key to their capturing McCormack on film - sparse and focused on EXACTLY what was happening. This was not a movie that allowed its viewers to be lulled into a "NOW, you should pay attention" response, keyed to crescendo and change of key. It was all there on the screen and in the dialogue.

I may not go see it in the theaters again, but I will certainly buy a copy once it comes out.

Favorite Crowd Response: At the end, which was pretty faithful to the book, the guy sitting next to me goes "What?!?! That's IT!?!?!"

Ha, ha. On rolls the world, sucker.

i love the ending the more and more i think about it

A plain-spoken guy who gets caught in an undercurrent of life that he has no place being in, and no way of getting out of,

Um, he stole the money and could've saved his wife. How is he "caught in an undercurrent"?

if you're arguing that he underestimated how bad the situation would get, that's another point.

Saved his wife by almost certainly getting killed himself?

the money was in the middle of the river dogg

when to the award screeners start leaking alreeeeaaaaady!

-- jhøshea, Tuesday, November 27, 2007 4:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

you will enjoy this movie way, way more in the theatre

-- s1ocki, Tuesday, November 27, 2007 12:59 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

duuuude i sawr it in the theater already

what screws moss in the end isnt taking the money, its going back to give the guy some water

maybe - the briefcase still had the transponder in there tho

your mom still had the transponder

yr moms "got caught in an undercurrent"

i thought moss went back to make sure that guy wasn't left alive, not to give him some water! is that dumb?

i believe max was joking

no he went back to give him water

it was to give him water for sure

he went back to adopt one of the dogs

one thing i really like in the book is the moment when he sees the dudes on the horizon and realizes just how screwed he is.

he brought the water and everything

oh wait i guess he did fill that jug up and tell the wife that he was off to do something stupid

the shot of the wounded dog limping away at the v beginning is excellently foreboding

Yeah, I don't like how the movie implies that Moss was maybe going to get it on with the girl at the end, even though I don't think that's how it went down (she's dead in the pool, he's in his own room).

i don't think the movie implies that at all

the girl comes on to him but he doesn't seem that interested

Maybe imply is the wrong word, but a lot of people seem to have that impression (like blam upthread).

LOL mustache

http://blogs.enotes.com/book-blog/files/2007/12/mccarthy.thumbnail.jpg

Wow!

http://movies.beloblog.com/country1.jpg

it's pretty ambiguous... girl flirts, Brolin politely declines. Girl modulates 'offer', Brolin strokes 'stache (i think?); cross-cut to TLJ; Brolin and chick are dead, he in the room and she in the pool.

I wasn't really sure what to think.

alls I can say is Brolin was 10x more enjoyable in this than American Gangster. Probably not entirely his fault, though.

I think that the "caught in an undercurrent" can be explained thusly:

He's a welder from West Texas who lives in a trailer. All in all, not a terrible life, but it certainly leaves something to aspire to. When he sees this opportunity, he is overcome by this aspiration - he would have been fine if he hadn't so thoroughly hunted the money. But he finds the money, and makes what appears to be a clean getaway.

Point of potential divergance #1 - He goes back to give the guy water. As pointed out earlier, there was still the transponder. We're made to focus on the "I'm fixing to do something dumber than hell." But he'd already done something dumber than hell - he took the money.

So, now - he's on the run AND they've got his identification via the pickup. It comes down to the "Give me the money and I'll let you live." And here is where, in trying to back up his amibition, he falls back on his instincts as a hunter.

Point of Divergeance #2 - He attempts to draw Chigur out and dispose of him by ignoring the threats against his wife. EVEN if this gambit - the proper word, I think - had worked, the fact that he didn't fully factor in the fact that there are ALSO this huge, un-personified TIDE of Mexican drug-hands who are ALSO trying to kill him and recover the money got him killed.

So, basically - once he succumbed to his ambition, and took the money, he was PRETTY MUCH fucked. Hence, caught in an "undercurrent," or, to put a less pretentious name on it, the crime world. Which he had no place in and no way to get out of alive.

"Give me the money and I'll let you live."

Should read "her live."

Finally starting in Tupelo tomorrow! I'm going to see this while the wife and kid go see Golden Compass.

So good.

This movie was incredible, for the first 5 mins or so I thought "omg can I handle the no music ness"? but holy crap it was integral to the starkness of the story. I loved the scene with the mariachis all trailing off when they see dude has a gunshot wound.

guy right down front shouted "WHATQ!?!?" at the end haha. I LOVED the ending...you know that feeling you get when you know you are at the brilliant coda of a brilliant movie and are aware of it happening while it's happening but are still totally in awe? I had that.

I enjoyed it but I'm surprised people got so involved in it, are so gushing with praise. Practically everything and everyone in it reminded me of various coen bros movies, and the constant deja vu kept me from getting too emotionally involved. I'm glad they're doing this instead of the Ladykillers but I'm not THAT grateful.

Does the merciless bounty hunter on the hunt for a well-meaning husband who did a dumb crime to make his wife's life better kill a small animal on the side of the road in the book too?

Also does McCormack include the lead characters' every interaction with a goober store/motel clerk?

McCarthy, sorry.

yes

i only wished the scene w/ moss's wife was a little longer

saw this tonight in a theatre with ~15 other people...When the credits came up, someone said "What?"

Everyone roffled but me 'cause film buffz don't roll that way.

when i walked out of the theatre i bumped into KHALED HOSSEINI. how about that?

whatever, friendo

When were ATMs invented (probably by 1980 but were they in wide use)?

I agree with da croupier - pretty good, but a lot of familiar territory, just covered in an even more bleakly nihilistic way than before

moonship, i wanted the scene with moss's wife to be longer in the book, too - it was the only part of the book where the dialogue really crackled with life and reality.

i'm surprised nickalicious liked the ending. i haven't seen the movie but i hated the "ending" in the book.

I find myself impressed by the movie's formal triumphs and disappointed that the source material is so blah.

new band name: Chigurh Moss

lol

LOOKIT THE EMO HAIR

http://www.movie-list.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/nocountry.jpg

saw this yesterday. i won't add too much to what's already been said, but i thought it was fantastic. really enjoyed it. actors seriously did a great job, too. bardem obviously was great, kelly macdonald too.

For some reason, before I saw the movie I thought the Chigurh character was played by the brother from Everybody Loves Raymond

Apparently I've seen Kelly McDonald in movies before yet never noticed her until now. She was great here.

I think what I really loved about the ending was that it wasn't an obvious resolution of loose ends or anything of that nature, it was a clear cut and when it played out on screen it just FELT like an ending. FWIW though I kind of consider Chigurgh's scene with the kids part of the ending as well.

I kept begging for that haircut to go away while watching and it never did.

scene w/ chigurh is the ending and the scene w/ TLJ is the epilogue

it's the ending because it completes a circle: moss goes back to give the mexican water, chigurh goes back to kill moss's wife. two bad decisions.

in the book do they explicitly say that chigurh worked in a slaughterhouse or anything like that?

or is he a soldier, too?

guys, this movie

i don't think anything is said about chigurh's past in the book. the one thing i am kind of looking forward to in the movie is chigurh's opening scene, where he does a little matter-of-fact move on the floor to get his handcuffs in a better position to kill whatever flunky deputy it is who bites it.

as i said upthread i enjoyed this movie, and thought the ending was fine (and fwiw there is plenty of resolution: moss fails in his little quest and chigurh succeeds in his but with messy brutality) but i do not understand why people who do not come away loudly enthusing are accused of not getting / appreciating the last act. most of the reservations i have heard expressed cogently re. n.c.f.o.m. relate to the fact that it feels a little too chilly, dusty, and emotionally underdrawn. while i don't agree, i can't wholly dismiss these charges as groundless, either, and think that they are a perfectly valid reason to dislike the flick. plus, they're better than this canard about a lack of resolution.

the coens? emotionally underdrawn??

and while i'm at it, snuffleupagus is two dudes in a giant fuzzy suit

"too chilly, dust" <- that's been my problem w/ cormac mccarthy like, forever

and while i'm at it, snuffleupagus is two dudes in a giant fuzzy suit

-- remy bean, Sunday, December 9, 2007 8:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo!!!

When were ATMs invented (probably by 1980 but were they in wide use)?

-- Steve Shasta, Sunday, 9 December 2007 15:37 (6 hours ago) Link

Beats me.

I was wondering about the FREE HBO sign on the hotel. HBO wasn't even a 24-hour network until two years later!

why is chigurh in the room next door when sheriff bell shows up at the del rios motel?

i heard on NPR that when harrelson goes "i have an ATM" and chigurh goes "ATM?" it's meant to signify that chigurh isn't familiar w/ ATMs

I would have liked a soundtrack, btw.

I imagined Low, Puerto Muerto, Jack Rose, Tim Hecker, Axolotl and Birchville Cat Motel.

i thought maybe because moss had been killed in the girl's room, which was next door to his. chigurh shows up, checks behind the A/C grate in the room brolin got killed in, goes next door to check brolin's actual room (which was also roped off by the cops), stays hidden in that room when bell shows up, and quietly slips out while sherriff bell is checking out the girl's room.

the only thing that doesn't add up about that is that the coin was still on the floor, which seems like an extremely un-chigurh-like thing to do. the other explanation is that chigurh was hiding behind the door, which seems extremely implausible - chigurh would have just shot TLJ through the door while he was standing outside. and he's not a magic ninja anyway - the door would have bumped into him while chigurh was there.

xpost CALEXICO

on the other hand, brooding soundtrack + odd characters + local yokels + extreme violence might have just turned it into a texan version of twin peaks

the other thing about the scene is that it would have neatly paralleled the earlier scene where bell + his deputy show up moments too late ("what are we putting out the call for? a man who recently drank milk?". here he showed up just a few seconds too early to catch chigurh on his way out, gives him a chance to hide and then slip out on his way out of the bathroom.

maybe the coens will do a version of "dog soldiers" some day

yeah it is not at all clear to me what happened at the el rio but maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention (who has the money/why is chigurh in the room next door/why is the coin on the floor/why doesn't chigurh kill TLJ/etc)

chigurh used the coin to open the air vent just like in the other hotel room because he guessed correctly that moss hid it in the same place as before

the shot of the coin tells you that chigurh got the money before tommy lee got there

oops, moonship kind of already said all that right upthread :/

ms f0zi suggested to me that this is one of those places where the movie veers from internal logic to external logic - the coin is there so that *we* know that chigurh is there, chigurh is somewhere around the room only to set up the anticlimax - he doesn't even care so much about tommy lee jones, he's too old and principled to be a threat to chigurh

I'm looking fwd to craze over haircut called The Chigurh.

he left a coin for the cops the same way he left a coin for the dude at the gas station. dude is a so far above the law the cops don't even figure in his world.

huh okay that all makes sense

When were ATMs invented (probably by 1980 but were they in wide use)?

Would a dirt-cheap motel in Texas have offered free HBO in 1980? Wikipedia says that the station wasn't even 24/7 until 1981.

Ah never mind, Whiney beat me to it. The only other thing I noticed was a decidedly recent Wendy's logo.

I think the first thing I really said about the movie was when I got in the car and said, "Well, that ended about as cleanly as everything else in my life."

There was a group of people sitting toward the front of the theater who immediately started debating "OK, so the good guy died, right? And his wife, or not?" I was more amused by the fact they thought there was a good guy (other than the sheriff) more than anything. Moss struck me more as just a guy.

i agree, but compared to chigurh, everyone else = the good guy

wasn't chigurh kind of the good guy since the movie points out that he's the only one who doesn't abandon his values?

his fucked-up, evil values, yes.

Except for the asshole who asked for money for the already-opened beer when his buddy got $500 for his coat. One would assume that THAT guy is the BAD guy. Douche.

the best coen movie i think,the best movie of the year.period.

yes and yes

Maurice Minnifield / General Jack Beringer ("I'd piss on a spark plug plug if I thought it'd do any good!") as the old man who drinks old coffee. I wracked my brain over that one for a full five minutes.

Maurice rules

Loved this movie. Best movie I've seen all year - and saying that during the last week of December is saying something!

A few things -

Major film flub when Anton shoots the three Mexicans in room 138 - did anyone notice that in the background (but not background enough to be out of focus) the guy who's dead by the sink is CLEARLY blinking and looking around? Not just once, either. He must have thought he was going to be out of focus.

Dumb questions, for those who read the book:

The drug dealers - not Anton - killed Moss - why didn't they find the suitcase?

If thw 'gun' Anton is using sends a bolt out 6 inches and then retracts it, how did he kill the guy in the office from a distance of what looked like at least six feet?

Does Anton actually kill the wife, definitely? I mean, I figured he did, but...

Anyway, I'm gonna buy this book. I was on the fence because I wasn't as ga ga over The Road as everyone else I know, but now I'm gonna give it a shot for sure.

"If thw 'gun' Anton is using sends a bolt out 6 inches and then retracts it, how did he kill the guy in the office from a distance of what looked like at least six feet? "

Two different guns. The first is a cattle killing implement. Jones is actually describing what it is and does to Moss' wife. The second is a silenced shotgun of some sort.

I think it's pretty clear that he kills the wife.

I don't think the films makes it clear if Anton actually finds the money, but I'm curious about the book too.

Did anyone think this movie had any kind of moral or didacticism at all? I sure didn't! I went to see it with my inlaws yesterday and they were all trying to read all these morals out of it and I'm like 'wtf it is just about two insane and insanely tenacious sociopaths and what happens between them and in their wake.'

I kept waiting for some character to say the title. I hate when that happens in movies, but I kept WAITING. Did not happen. Ok.

This was all filmed in my area, too – El Paso, southern New Mexico, all within an 80 mile radius of me. And fuck, I've thought my entire life that open nothing boiling in heat is just the perfect place to melt into psychosis.

he checks his boots when he walks out of the wife's house. every other time in the movie he did something with his boots was when he killed someone. i think the implication is that he was checking his boots for blood - he was always very touchy about not getting blood on his stuff. (getting the guy away from the car before he killed him, washing the back of the chicken truck, etc ... there's a lot of playing on that theme of anton chigurh washing up / not dirtying himself)

in the book the whole climactic "motel" sequence of events is very different. i'm not sure if you want someone to tell you what happens? unlike the movie the book is very clear about what happens to the money, and where chigurh is during the whole sequence.

I kept waiting for some character to say the title. I hate when that happens in movies, but I kept WAITING.

Me too!! LOL, wouldn't that have been a bummer?

i think your inlaws might be having some trouble separating the POV of the main characters vs the POV of the writer. i think the writer's POV falls closest to the uncle ellis. speaking of which, doesn't uncle ellis say something very close to the title?

I think the film is pretty clear about Anton not getting the money; he clearly opened the air duct to hunt for it and discovered it wasn't large enough to stash it there. The amount of time it would've taken to do that suggests it was a last resort... i guess? Anyway, by that point the mcguffin's long since had its cover blown.

the title is from yeats's "sailing to byzantium"--

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees--
Those dying generations -- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

Interesting. So who DOES get the money? The drug dealers who kill Moss? Didn't notice if they were carrying it when they leapt onto the moiving truck...

xpost Thanks moonship - I'm totally buying the book.

As far as McCarthy = Uncle Ellis - interesting. There's a 1-star Amazon review of the book that really lays into Cormac as writing only for macho, George W supporting assholes - WTF??? Isn't dude a Democrat??? and WTF Oprah? I don't see it. I'd say Cormac is more Tommy Lee Jones actually. No?

'this truly is no country for old men'

i'd say uncle ellis because his speech about senseless, manly violence being this pervasive thing throughout the whole history of the american west = mccarthy's whole schtick!

I love Maurice Minnefield!

moss stashed the money in the first hotel far back in the duct so it would be more accessible from the adjoining room. anton figured that out when he was at that hotel after moss fled. we can assume moss stashed the money at the hotel where he was killed in the same manner, so anton was hiding in the next room because he was getting the money. plus, he gave the kid at the end a $100 bill, same denomination as the money from the bag.

who would win in a fight: anton chigurh or jason bourne?

CHIGURH

That guy's insurmountable.

Conan could take 'em both

I loved the confrontation between Chigurh and the wife. Well done. Although I haven't seen the movie, this'll probably be the clip shown to the Academy when Javier Bardem's name is read

that would suck. they should use the part where he's talking to the gas station attendant - "ees yo lucky coin! don LOOSE eet!!" *boggles eyes and makes bonkers grin*

his smiles, or attempts at smiles, are awesome

i think this might be their best film. it's definitely much better than fargo, which is dull as fuck imo.

Yeah I didn't think so on first viewing, but on second viewing I'm beginning to think it's the best thing they've done.

Wish I could have a second viewing. It's not playing where I live. Oh well, should be a great DVD...

Oh well, should be a great DVD...

Hopefully it will be, they're not best served on DVD as far as extras, commentary etc goes. If they can coax 'Kenneth Loring' out of retirement to do the commentary that would be quite something.

jaymc heads up ILX Gaffe Squad.

anyone hear the Coens on that Elvis Mitchell radio show? One of em said they explained to Tommy Lee Jones that his role was essentially Don Knotts' Shakiest Gun in the West.

holiday fun = arguing about this movie with my dad + other members of his generation who think that it's pointless, dumb, etc.

i havent seen this yet because i wanted to read the book first. so i read the book last night and this morning, and finished it thinking it was ok, the action-thriller plot was well done, but the overlay of social commentary was largely reactionary horseshit. (which, granted, it's a little hard to tell exactly how serious cormac's being with the whole overblown thing, and how much he's being ironic. although i don't count him as an ironist in general.) since the coens aren't reactionaries by nature the way mccarthy is, i'm curious to see how much of that made it into the movie.

One character has to deliver a bunch of gaseous platitudes in the last third; otherwise, Tommy Lee Jones' face says more about How Terrible Things Are.

Tommy Lee Jones' face says more about How Terrible Things Are

Seriously. A font called "Tommy Lee Jones' Face" would only be properly used for grave and terrible news.

Just saw this. One thing that struck me was all the things that kept getting left behind. In the beginning of the film it was little stuff like Moss placing the water on the ground before approaching the car. But then he started putting the briefcase in places (like the duct) only to return to it later that I assume that leaving things behind and coming back for them are thematically significant.

Also, I was really frightened that I'd hate this movie (as a big Blood Meridian fan) but I thought it was quite faithful to McCarthy's themes and style. Loved it.

this was really good, great even - a return to form for the Coens. but all told I am put off by its total nihilism (not surprisingly my favorite Coen stuff is the comedies).

dunno if anyone's noted yet that the opening sequence is remarkably similar to the opening sequence of Blood Simple.

Really really good. Nothing pans out the least way you'd expect it too, so rare in a film. I read a review that said it was as much a shaggy dog story in its own way as Lebowski, and I think whoever wrote it may have been right. Am I correct in thinking there was absolutely no incidental music?

there's no music at all in it, except for the brief performance by the Mariachi band when Moss wakes up in Mexico after being shot

and yet, there is a music credit! I lolled

way you'd expect it too

Arggh I am plagued by demons of poor grammar today.

There was definitely music. Soft strings. I noticed it a couple times.

Really? I didn't hear any either. Although there is a closing theme, I believe.

there is very minimal music in a couple scenes

good article about No Country's sound design from the NYT oscar section this weekend

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/movies/awardsseason/06lim.html?ref=todayspaper

Carter Burwell says he entered his "score" (like five minutes of music) for oscar consideration. lol

sorry, 16 minutes (including end credits)

I finally saw this last night. I thought it started well, but it was really underwhelming. What does it all amount to? For me this is one of the only Coen brothers movies that really does commit all those sins that the Coens are always accused of. I know I'm probably in the minority, but anyway.

It seems to avoid most of their mistakes, actually for which I give McCarthy's dullish novel credit.

Oh you do?

I don't know if there were mistakes. Only that it was so expertly crafted and (mostly) well acted and yet didn't make any impact on me as a story. It made me want to see The Getaway.

well i'll be in the minority too. some of the complaints i'll happily defend there will be blood against -- hollow formalism, cliches, vapidity -- are things i sort of feel about no country. i don't think it's a bad movie, exactly, but (like the book) it adds up to lot of 'so what?' for me. and the coens can't decide how seriously to take the story's morality -- i think mccarthy never decided either, really -- which leaves it suspended somewhere between irony and apocalypse.

did anyone have any real reaction to any of the characters' deaths? to me it felt like just ticking names off a checklist. also i was underimpressed by javier bardem. he should have been either funnier or scarier, or both. he wasn't really enough of either.

(i did enjoy tommy lee jones' crinkly aphorisms, because the man can sell a crinkly aphorism. he was pretty by-the-book, though. grizzled sheriff too old for this shit, etc.)

Kelly McDonald's...disappearance was an improvement on the novel's protracted scene, but for the most part you're right. The guy at the filling station who narrowly escapes Chigurh's wrath gave a nice rounded little perf. I missed him.

ok now i really wish i liked mccarthy more

ps if u guyz dunno that is my skool

A haircut for all time.

Saw this last night and really enjoyed it, although I'm not sure why. Didn't 'feel' that much like a Coen brothers movie, to me. Perhaps. Not sure it's as great as some are saying.

It was very ambiguous I think, but surely given the issues "morality, what the world is coming to etc" it shouldn't be anything but ambiguous. I mean, does anyone have a firm moral position on where human morality is at right now, or in the world depicted in the movie?

It seemed to be say "who knows" and attempt to examine how to cope with that question, how someone would approaching the end of a life in which they are constantly confronted by that question might make sense of it.

I think that's why it was sort of airy and vague. There aren't really any answers. I guess you could say that makes it just a bunch of scenes or whatever, but there was a great feeling of pointlessness to it all (the same feeling is there in Fargo to me, but I found the humour distracting)

I was a bit surprised the car crash didn't kill Chigurh. It seemed like that would fit his determinist philosophy or something. I guess though him surviving just showed there wasn't any pattern or natural justice or whatever to things.

It was the kind of film that suggests profundity without ever being that specific, I've read a lot of reviews where I think "but why, why did you think it was great or life affirming or whatever", yet I do think the ambiguity is part of the allure.

I mean, isn't the very idea that we can't really form conclusions about morality and "progress" worthy of exploiting or provoking in itself. That's the idea I'm left with afterwards anyway. Not sure how others feel.

i think the crazy frenchman represents the what bobby fischer would call the jews

it's about as pointless as the world but it's not that far reaching.

legalize drugs is the moral

which is weak. coen brothers are old. the hero is the american girl, huh. sounds like an old maureen dowd ass post world war two show

except indie

maybe it's more about psychology. the pressure shot to the head as a lobotomy

reminds me of a damn morality painting. the main guy is the naive american type, hunting deer-- then a wounded dog leads him to heroin and they reverse the image showing him natural. he doesn't realize the crazed frenchman has him tapped, get's raged and he puts his girl on the line to kill the necrofag
anyways, that's sort of clear?

good film but not THAT good. when will people understand that understatedness does not automatically a great film make? and there wasnt much depth beneath it all either.

tommy lee outstayed his welcome too - i hate those typical 'quirky/slightly bumbling southern guy' characters.

hey now

I guess you could say that makes it just a bunch of scenes or whatever, but there was a great feeling of pointlessness to it all (the same feeling is there in Fargo to me, but I found the humour distracting)

The big difference between the two films is that Fargo concedes to some level of decentness in the world, as exemplified in Marge and Norm. On the other hand, the only character in No Country who isn't utterly self-serving (Tommy Lee Jones) is ineffectual and, by the end, rather pathetic. It is by far the more nihilistic film of the two.

Definitely. I'm not sure Kelly MacDonald is "utterly self-serving", though. Or Javier Bardem for that matter.

I'm afraid that when Chigurh got out of the car smash and limped down the street and out of the picture the words "Michael Myers" and "sequels" came instantly to my mind.

Rarely do I see a film which starts so promisingly and then totally falls apart in its last hour.

Ultimately - as indicated by TLJ's "climactic speech" about kids with green hair etc. and the equally predictable Wise Old Man/That's Just The Fucking Way It Is soliloquy - it comes across as a rather reactionary picture which doesn't even begin to grasp the ramifications and consequences of the situation that it sets up and noticeably ducks from any proper examination of the relationship between morality and violence, as witness its final cowardly and patronising turning away from the killings of Moss and his wife. Its widescreen landscapes seem simply to serve as prettification of unspeakable, and probably unwatchable, ugliness. I found its metaphors crassly simplistic - is Anton the Devil, or Fate, or just a bad photocopy of Louis Cypher from Angel Heart? But of course he'll live forever because he's SO DAMN HARD and the throwaway dialogue between the kids at the end as to who gets how much of the money is beyond simplistic in its would-be parable, as is the initial premise of Moss not leaving the briefcase alone and walking back to his perfectly decent life, because you see MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL! No shit, Adam Smith! Whereas smarter films like Chinatown or Who Framed Roger Rabbit? are more acutely relatable in their stories (and the latter is of course the hidden sequel to the former) and real blood (even cartoon blood) seems to pulsate through their characters.

Essentially, when Woody Harrelson wandered into the picture, I knew its days were numbered.

Oh yes, and of course Moss seals his doom when he agrees to join the lady at the poolside for beers SEE WHAT ADULTERY DOES?

that's a load of shit to be honest...the film was totally conscious that those ideas were reactionary/clichéd.

If that was the case then the Coens made a poor job of communicating it.

Even if that was what they were doing, then what was the point? Lolz at wrinkly old sheriff who just doesn't get it? What does that tell us about the human condition? What does that add to our understanding of human beings? As Louis Cypher Anton says to Woody H, what good was the path you took if this is where it led you? Why not watch Final Destination, which is essentially the same story but at least it's aware of its own trashy absurdity?

Or Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, if you want to see the same story done by someone who understands something about cinema?

The point was that it can't actually tell us that much about the human condition, that we don't have a good explanation for it.

Then why write a novel or make a film about it?

In addition, Pacino/De Niro (in Heat) and Eastwood/Malkovich (in In The Line Of Fire) did the cat/mouse gig an awful lot better. Bardem doesn't really have the charisma to make us want to investigate why he is how he is.

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia

love this movie so much

i keep putting off seeing "no country" because the book basically did what marcello (i assume this is him) says happens in the movie - it just falls apart, peters out. i guess you could say this is braver, in some raymond carver way, but all it did was leave me irritated.

x-post Because it documents that feeling of nihilism.

none of the films you're naming are particularly similar

Oh yes, and of course Moss seals his doom when he agrees to join the lady at the poolside for beers SEE WHAT ADULTERY DOES?

But he didn't!

And obviously, every time something happens to a character in a movie as result of an action, that is the director making a direct moral statement about that action.

Chirgour survives at the end, SEE WHAT MURDER DOES, you survive a car crash and get a big suitcase of money!

An amoeba wouldn't be so clouded by prejudice as to follow that logic.

Again, that merely provokes the thought: no shit, Sherlock.

This is another thing that irritated me hugely when I watched it - they seem to skip the key scene altogether; thus we fade with Moss' nudge nudge wink winks and then suddenly it's the scene of the carnage, as though (as I suspect) the Coens didn't have the guts to shoot that scene, or shot it and then took it out. Just like Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, it ALWAYS turns away/cops out when the going gets seriously tough and thus it's easy to say nihilism etc. but that's more often than not a crutch for bad film making (and novel writing).

That's the way it is in the book, for one thing.

Hence the parenthesis.

it takes guts to shoot a violent scene now?

In a sense, I don't see how you could shoot a violent scene without guts.

As frequently mentioned above, it's about having the courage to face up to the consequences of the story you start telling and the Coens do not have that courage or, worse, are treating it all as another of their extended anti-jokes. At least Miller's Crossing's failings were compensated for in part by the strength of its actors, but none of the actors here - least of all Tommy Lee "Rowley Birkin QC But With A Stetson" Jones seems to want to seize the film by its smug horns and twist it around.

^^^ kinda agree with this crazy dude

the book isn't meant to "seize" though – it's pure pulp, and I don't expect the Coens to transcend it.

the cohens are really quite overrated. annoying 'quirkiness' and understatement are fine in small doses but for a film like this where the pieces didnt add up to anything particularly greater, it just throws their limitations into sharp focus. it has good things going for it but not as many as the critics are making out. people need to stop being so sheep like.

they're only overrated on ILX.

and every college campus in america, dude

you're looking at every college campus!

If the book was pure pulp, it would have had the big on-page confrontation between Chigurh/Llewellyn/sheriff dude that the reader wants & expects. It's not really that kind of story, though!

it was more countrystyle than grovestand

ba-doom oh just kill me

Anyway:

Llewellyn = Charles Bronson
Chigurh = Henry Fonda
Sheriff dude = Jason Robards
Llewellyn's missus = Claudia Cardinale

That's that sorted, then.

In a sense, I don't see how you could shoot a violent scene without guts.

The film has its share of gore, but in any case, I don't agree really that it takes guts to shoot a violent scene. Countless films that say nothing worthwhile (or brave) about violence have bloody scenes.

it's about having the courage to face up to the consequences of the story you start telling and the Coens do not have that courage or, worse, are treating it all as another of their extended anti-jokes

How have they failed to do this by not showing every violent scene in full detail?

I didn't note any sense of humour in the film, but I'd be interested to hear what you think are "the consequences of the story" that should have been faced up to?

Do you mean purely the violence? Or that they neglected to take a moral stance?

As far as I see it they didn't take a moral stance in the film, it was ambiguous, and I enjoyed that. I don't think that equates to cowardice though. There are plenty useless moral stances in the media, few of which I consider braver than this.

I'd be interested to hear what unambiguous moral stance one should take on the issue of violence in society, and how this could have been done in the film.

Bardem doesn't really have the charisma to make us want to investigate why he is how he is.

Most preposterous claim in a thread of preposterous claims

and no one's expected to care either way why Bardem Is The Way He Is.

Maybe like Randall "Tex" Cobb he's part bloodhound

I mean they both like shooting animals on the highway

Ok so the car crash scene at the end, that was sooooo telegraphed.

Aside from that, pretty great.

Coens win Directors Guild award.

I am finally seeing this in a couple hours. Excited!

the green hair thing was obviously a joke. i don't think this was a 'reactionary' film. i just think it wasn't that good. it's an ok thriller that's a lot more nasty than it needs to be.

the car crash thing was probably the only real 'total bullshit' moment, and it's a lot better than 'there will be blood', but still.

the book isn't meant to "seize" though – it's pure pulp, and I don't expect the Coens to transcend it.

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, January 22, 2008 4:14 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

snobbish dick surprise.

I was half-expecting this to be another boring, mannered, "serious" Coens film, like "The Man Who Wasn't There", so I didn't rush out to see it, but when an opportunity came up, I'm glad I took it, because this was a great film.

snobbish dick surprise.

Ignoramus who knows shit about the Coens and McCarthy surprise.

SPOILER ALERT

Having now allowed myself to read through this thread (I was worried about spoilers before), I have one main argument with the thread consensus: people seem to be assuming that going back to bring the Mexican guy the water was a mistake for Llewellyn - but isn't that kind of what saves him (or at least gives him a fighting chance)? Because, think about it, if he didn't go back to bring the water, he would have been a sitting duck when they came for him (and they would have found him very quickly because the transponder was in the suitcase under his trailer). It's the fact that he goes back that allows him to learn that people are after him and he had better get his wife and himself out of town in a hurry - although for a different reason than he thinks (he thinks it's because they took the VIN from his truck, not knowing about the transponder at that point).

I think not.

Remember that Anton only discovers the transponder by chance by driving back and forth in an area where he thinks Llewellyn will be. I think it would be safe to assume that, the next day, he would have opened the money, counted it and found the transponder, destroyed it and then he would have been in the clear.

Finally saw this.

Quite good.

Like it more the more I sit with it.

regardless of whether going back "saves" him (not that it actually does anyway), it's a basically really dumb and frankly unbelievable thing for that character to do. not much that he does really makes much sense.

i asked on another thread whether anyone has read much about the racial angle of this movie. i think it's interesting in the context of immigration panic (the great brown scare), but i haven't seen anyone really take it apart. you can make an easy case for its racism and xenophobia. even at the end, the counterargument from the old coot about how things have always been this bad revolves around injun savages. the case for it possibly being a critique of xenophobia -- or xenophobia simply not mattering to it -- is harder to make, but probably make-able (because what case isn't?). i'm just sort of surprised that hasn't shown up more in commentary about it.

also, a dollar to whoever spots the first mccain-related "no country for old men" reference.

never mind, i found one. (with bonus there will be blood pun too.)

i've stood by the coens against idiots who think they lack heart; now those crumbs are on-side, the coens have lost their heart. the main bad dude was basically the ridic biker from 'raising arizona' made into a Serious Emblem of something-or-other, and it's being taken that way. nonsense.

alfred i know my coens; what i object to or find laughable is how you'll dismiss such-and-such a book as 'trash' before lining up to praise some old-person judi dench movie or (even crazier) gainsborough melodrama. i guess it's a us/uk thing.

uh I'm not sure what Judi Dench film you're talking about (Iris maybe? which I do like), and anyway, apples and oranges, friend.

is it a UK thing to lie about terrible books?

Are you of the opinion that 'pulp' plot is irredeemable as a matter of course?

Depends.

Ppl are treating this as a "cohen" issue as opposed to a "mccarthy" issue which is what confuses me. The movie seemed like it nailed cormac perfectly, so whatever themes it did and didn't have weren't the cohen's issue so much: Violent strong terrible men rule the world. Other men aren't as violent and strong, and if they think that maybe they can be, terrible things come to them. Other men know better than them, and survive to tell their stories.

Seriously. That's just the extent of mccarthy's shtick. Agreed on alfredo garcia, and peckinpah in general (i mean, heck, The Killer frikin Elite still tromps 90% of the cohens' work not to mention 95% of everything else). But peckinpah's themes have always been deeper and more complicated. The way that the shootout with Chigurh was shot seemed very much a homage to him, although perhaps closer to The Getaway...

The tent scene was lolz, btw. I laughed a whole bunch at this movie actually.

Did you laugh because it was funny or because it was wrong?

OTM xpost

When I laughed, it was because it was funny (same for the book).

I agree that "the Coens lost their heart" doesn't really apply here, all they did is take a McCarthy book and painstakingly translate it to film. They could've Coen-ized it more, but they didn't (except for the mother-in-law, that scene in the cab stuck out to me).

the killer elite is pretty awful

except for gig young and bo hopkins

I laughed because there was plenty of understated humor. Which, by the way, was one of the strong points of The Killer Elite, which is about as understated and dry as 70s cinema ever got.

the best things in this were where the coens showed they could do badass action sequences, like when brolin goes back to the site of the massacre and what ensues.

i'll take people's word for it being pure mccarthy -- if could also be pure whoever-wrote-a-simple-plan. it's kinda generic material. that isn't a problem. the problem is pretty much what rosenbaum says about serial killers in the movies.

also TLJ just doing his shtick -- really didn't seem different from his usual thing.

the coens were always going to find going legit in this way hard after 'barton fink'; doing a film about the Human Condition and so forth.

I feel compelled to step in and defend McCarthy's themes, but nobody's really attacking them, they're being tagged as bad moves for the Cohens. They're not they're moves.

They're not they're their moves.

oh, didn't see s clover had pretty much already said as much. disregard.

yeah but rosenbaum's fundamentally wrong in that this isn't about a serial killer, it's about people being stalked by death. And even if that's not overtly clear, the audience for a film like this isn't gonna be kids that beat off to murder.

xxxp

no, it's about people being stalked by a serial killer. if he represents, in the abstract, 'death', then you've already got a shitty movie on your hands, but he doesn't.

i don't know of any kids that 'beat off to murder', but art-house/faux-indie audiences do seem to be pretty keen on the red gloopy stuff at the moment.