it was 1996, the year hollywood took a break from making good movies.Steph2 wrote:I still don't know how a film as good and as Oscar unfriendly as Fargo fared so well.
No Country for Old Men: The Poll
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rolotomasi99
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"When it comes to the subject of torture, I trust a woman who was married to James Cameron for three years."
-- Amy Poehler in praise of Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow
-- Amy Poehler in praise of Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow
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IF YOU DON'T WANT THINGS SPOILED, YOU SHOULD AVOID THIS THREAD FROM HERE ON
I probably owe a debt of thanks to the people who had such strong reaction to the ending: it had me prepared for the movie to go completely splat on me. Things did, clearly, shift and change in the last reel, but I was able to process the move pretty quickly (moreso than, say the last half hour of Adaptation, which I could justify intellectually but with which I was never comfortable dramatically).
I do agree with Sabin that this shift will likely cost the film a shot at winning best picture -- general audiences don't like narrative subversion much (which makes you wonder how they'll take to Atonement, as well). It's possible there was an artful way to achieve the same ends that might not have lost the same portion of the audience. But I'm not sure: there are things about the ending that I think elevate the film significantly, make me love it more, and it may be the way it was done was the only way to achieve all this.
BJ casually referenced the Sopranos ending, similarly thought "controversial". I think there's actually a deep bond between the two. Bobby Baccala's "They say you don't see it when it happens" In The Sopranos -- a phrase many thought key to proving Tony was whacked in that final going-black moment -- is blood-cousin to the wheelchair guy's "You can't stop what's coming" line (which also prefigures violence, the major car crash). Beyond that, each of these two endings opens the work to multiple interpretation. The reason many of us, after a day's reflection, thought the Sopranos ending was actually perfect was it allowed us to think Tony was dead, or that it was simply an illustration of the paranoia he'd live with every day until he died -- and only that blackout could have given us both. The ending of No Country acts similarly: it makes us view the movie we've watched in a different light.
See, here's my take on what happens in that last section. The film till then has, miraculously, existed simultaneously as a gripping noir chase and as pure literature -- carrying the audience along with its lean, taut action, at the same time sprinkling in motifs and signs and symbols that repeat and echo: themes, above all, of aging and death. What happens in that last segment is, literature wins out. As BJ points out, it's not that any plot element is truly left unresolved -- we can assume Bardem got the money (from the dime on the floor), and that he killed McDonald (because he checks his boots for blood). But these points are resolved obliquely, second-hand, which is in contravention of the style employed up till then. Because the Coens -- and, I assume, McCarthy before them -- are after bigger game by then, and merely resolving plot elements wouldn't have ended it properly.
The events of the last fifteen minutes awake us to the fact that, though we've been watching an effective, mostly conventional (if superiorly styled) effort, we've been less than alert to certain odd elements. There've been unexplained narrative developments (how the hell did Harrelson find Brolin, anyway?); odd details (why in the world would Bardem lug around such a cumbersome, easily-spotted weapon?); and there've been many repeated signs and symbols -- dogs, wives, motels, on and on. Eventually, I at least started to think that this story, which seemed mostly realistically grounded, actually had the strange logic more suited to a dream.
So, let me jump off the deep end and tell you what I think the Deep Hidden Meaning of the movie is. (There will no doubt be others: this movie, in my college days, would have sparked an infinite number of late-night serious discussions -- the better the dope, the cooler the theories)
The movie opens with Tommy Lee Jones narrating; it puts us inside his head. Then the final scene is Tommy Lee talking about two dreams he's had. I submit that what's he's describing, obliquely, is the film we've just watched -- two dreams (one long, one short) that convey an aging lawman's obsession with his own mortality.
Consider: he says in the first dream he saw his father "younger than I am now". In dream transference terms, I think he's referring to himself rather than his father -- I think Brolin's character is the avatar of Jones' younger self. He's a man who discovers a pile of money -- an "inheritance" he senses he doesn't deserve (tieing into Tommy Lee's feelings of inadequacy in the profession he inherited). And as a result, he spends the entire movie/dream being pursued by what seems an angel of death. (Which explains Bardem's odd weapon: it may be cumbersome and silly, but it leaves no trace -- it makes him, rather than flesh-and-blood, almost literally the ghost people describe) Brolin, jumping from motel to motel (which I see as Stops Along the Way of Life), is somehow able to outwit/outrun this lethal figure time after time (though everyone else Bardem targets goes down instantly). Tommy Lee is in the dream (as we always are, in our own), but as a side figure with delusions of power. He announces himself as protecting the young man; he promises the wife he'll keep him safe (you can imagine him promising Tess Harper, many times over the years, that he'd keep himself safe). As long as this first part of the film endures, death is kept at bay.
But that segment/dream does come to an end, with that odd scene by the swimming pool. The sunbathing woman's tone is odd -- she suggests she's had her eye on Brolin for a while, and, though he resists her come-on -- and we've had no reason till now to suspect his fealty to McDonald -- there's something unsettling about the scene: some sense that a denied part of reality is forcing its way into consciousness. The slow fade that follows -- the only such fade I can recall from the film -- makes me feel it's the end of Jones' first dream.
The second dream -- which is full of echoes from the first -- is both harsher and braver. Brolin turns up dead immediately, which tells us there's no more avatar -- Tommy Lee is standing in for himself now. He's also forced to face the wife and let her know he's failed to honor his promise. So, what's the next thing he does? He seeks out an old, injured relative -- a father figure? -- for reassurance that such failures are beyond his control ("You can't stop what's coming"). This gives him strength to "return to the scene of the crime" (as Brolin did early on, as Bardem apparently has done in his ghostly way, as lawmen do in their pursuit of crime -- and as we all do in dwelling on our shortcomings).
Yet he's still not confident enough to face death (Bardem) on his own; he lets the wife stand in for him. She hasn't spend time dealing with death in the shoot 'em up, kinetically-charged way the male characters have. She's faced it in the mundane way most humans do: she's just buried her mother, and she knows the same fate is coming for her, and everyone else, in time. So when Bardem tries his sadistic "heads or tails" game, she calls him on it: she won't let him pretend there's any order to this process. (Is it coincidence that, in a film cast with what otherwise seem all Texas natives, this deeply important scene is between the two foreigners to the landscape?) The detail of the checked boots suggests Bardem does indeed kill McDonald here (death will not be denied), but in the next moment he is hit by random violence (when he had a green light!), and literally disarmed. Lee Jones' earlier monologue, about the guy who could never raise his arm after an accident, suggests that this means Bardem is now through as a killer -- and the repeated detail of offering kids money for clothing tells us Death is now no more powerful than Brolin was. Which is why, when Tommy Lee tells us about his second dream, he has a peaceful way about him. He knows death is still out there, but he no longer sees it a raging beast coming at him; it's just something he knows will catch up with him one day, as it did his father.
It's incredibly difficult for a film to contain such poetry and at the same time be dramatically gripping, but I think this movie pulls it off (though obviously not for all). For me, that makes this the finest screenplay in many a year -- I can't conceive of the Coens not being nominated for both writing and directing, and the initial success makes the film a likely best film candidate. As for the actors: I think Bardem had a nomination nailed from the scene at the gas station, and he will be the year's front-runner. I also think McDonald has a shot at mention. Though BJ is right she doesn't quite have a money scene (the last encounter comes close), she's fine throughout and it’s a role with enough heft she might make it in a lean year. Hell, I'd push for Brolin in lead, just because I like the film so much.
And then there's Tommy Lee Jones. I don't know where you'd put him -- he really is in the grey area between lead and support. But, my god, he's superb. Rollo, I can't fathom how you find his stories boring. I think literally every sentence that comes out of his mouth is gold -- and yet you never get the sense from him that he thinks he's speaking great lines. For me, it's the finest work of his career, but I'm not sure how the Oscars can honor it -- other than, as BJ rightly suggests, nominating the whiole superb cast for the SAG Ensemble prize.
In case anyone's in doubt, I think this is, to this point, the year's best film.
I probably owe a debt of thanks to the people who had such strong reaction to the ending: it had me prepared for the movie to go completely splat on me. Things did, clearly, shift and change in the last reel, but I was able to process the move pretty quickly (moreso than, say the last half hour of Adaptation, which I could justify intellectually but with which I was never comfortable dramatically).
I do agree with Sabin that this shift will likely cost the film a shot at winning best picture -- general audiences don't like narrative subversion much (which makes you wonder how they'll take to Atonement, as well). It's possible there was an artful way to achieve the same ends that might not have lost the same portion of the audience. But I'm not sure: there are things about the ending that I think elevate the film significantly, make me love it more, and it may be the way it was done was the only way to achieve all this.
BJ casually referenced the Sopranos ending, similarly thought "controversial". I think there's actually a deep bond between the two. Bobby Baccala's "They say you don't see it when it happens" In The Sopranos -- a phrase many thought key to proving Tony was whacked in that final going-black moment -- is blood-cousin to the wheelchair guy's "You can't stop what's coming" line (which also prefigures violence, the major car crash). Beyond that, each of these two endings opens the work to multiple interpretation. The reason many of us, after a day's reflection, thought the Sopranos ending was actually perfect was it allowed us to think Tony was dead, or that it was simply an illustration of the paranoia he'd live with every day until he died -- and only that blackout could have given us both. The ending of No Country acts similarly: it makes us view the movie we've watched in a different light.
See, here's my take on what happens in that last section. The film till then has, miraculously, existed simultaneously as a gripping noir chase and as pure literature -- carrying the audience along with its lean, taut action, at the same time sprinkling in motifs and signs and symbols that repeat and echo: themes, above all, of aging and death. What happens in that last segment is, literature wins out. As BJ points out, it's not that any plot element is truly left unresolved -- we can assume Bardem got the money (from the dime on the floor), and that he killed McDonald (because he checks his boots for blood). But these points are resolved obliquely, second-hand, which is in contravention of the style employed up till then. Because the Coens -- and, I assume, McCarthy before them -- are after bigger game by then, and merely resolving plot elements wouldn't have ended it properly.
The events of the last fifteen minutes awake us to the fact that, though we've been watching an effective, mostly conventional (if superiorly styled) effort, we've been less than alert to certain odd elements. There've been unexplained narrative developments (how the hell did Harrelson find Brolin, anyway?); odd details (why in the world would Bardem lug around such a cumbersome, easily-spotted weapon?); and there've been many repeated signs and symbols -- dogs, wives, motels, on and on. Eventually, I at least started to think that this story, which seemed mostly realistically grounded, actually had the strange logic more suited to a dream.
So, let me jump off the deep end and tell you what I think the Deep Hidden Meaning of the movie is. (There will no doubt be others: this movie, in my college days, would have sparked an infinite number of late-night serious discussions -- the better the dope, the cooler the theories)
The movie opens with Tommy Lee Jones narrating; it puts us inside his head. Then the final scene is Tommy Lee talking about two dreams he's had. I submit that what's he's describing, obliquely, is the film we've just watched -- two dreams (one long, one short) that convey an aging lawman's obsession with his own mortality.
Consider: he says in the first dream he saw his father "younger than I am now". In dream transference terms, I think he's referring to himself rather than his father -- I think Brolin's character is the avatar of Jones' younger self. He's a man who discovers a pile of money -- an "inheritance" he senses he doesn't deserve (tieing into Tommy Lee's feelings of inadequacy in the profession he inherited). And as a result, he spends the entire movie/dream being pursued by what seems an angel of death. (Which explains Bardem's odd weapon: it may be cumbersome and silly, but it leaves no trace -- it makes him, rather than flesh-and-blood, almost literally the ghost people describe) Brolin, jumping from motel to motel (which I see as Stops Along the Way of Life), is somehow able to outwit/outrun this lethal figure time after time (though everyone else Bardem targets goes down instantly). Tommy Lee is in the dream (as we always are, in our own), but as a side figure with delusions of power. He announces himself as protecting the young man; he promises the wife he'll keep him safe (you can imagine him promising Tess Harper, many times over the years, that he'd keep himself safe). As long as this first part of the film endures, death is kept at bay.
But that segment/dream does come to an end, with that odd scene by the swimming pool. The sunbathing woman's tone is odd -- she suggests she's had her eye on Brolin for a while, and, though he resists her come-on -- and we've had no reason till now to suspect his fealty to McDonald -- there's something unsettling about the scene: some sense that a denied part of reality is forcing its way into consciousness. The slow fade that follows -- the only such fade I can recall from the film -- makes me feel it's the end of Jones' first dream.
The second dream -- which is full of echoes from the first -- is both harsher and braver. Brolin turns up dead immediately, which tells us there's no more avatar -- Tommy Lee is standing in for himself now. He's also forced to face the wife and let her know he's failed to honor his promise. So, what's the next thing he does? He seeks out an old, injured relative -- a father figure? -- for reassurance that such failures are beyond his control ("You can't stop what's coming"). This gives him strength to "return to the scene of the crime" (as Brolin did early on, as Bardem apparently has done in his ghostly way, as lawmen do in their pursuit of crime -- and as we all do in dwelling on our shortcomings).
Yet he's still not confident enough to face death (Bardem) on his own; he lets the wife stand in for him. She hasn't spend time dealing with death in the shoot 'em up, kinetically-charged way the male characters have. She's faced it in the mundane way most humans do: she's just buried her mother, and she knows the same fate is coming for her, and everyone else, in time. So when Bardem tries his sadistic "heads or tails" game, she calls him on it: she won't let him pretend there's any order to this process. (Is it coincidence that, in a film cast with what otherwise seem all Texas natives, this deeply important scene is between the two foreigners to the landscape?) The detail of the checked boots suggests Bardem does indeed kill McDonald here (death will not be denied), but in the next moment he is hit by random violence (when he had a green light!), and literally disarmed. Lee Jones' earlier monologue, about the guy who could never raise his arm after an accident, suggests that this means Bardem is now through as a killer -- and the repeated detail of offering kids money for clothing tells us Death is now no more powerful than Brolin was. Which is why, when Tommy Lee tells us about his second dream, he has a peaceful way about him. He knows death is still out there, but he no longer sees it a raging beast coming at him; it's just something he knows will catch up with him one day, as it did his father.
It's incredibly difficult for a film to contain such poetry and at the same time be dramatically gripping, but I think this movie pulls it off (though obviously not for all). For me, that makes this the finest screenplay in many a year -- I can't conceive of the Coens not being nominated for both writing and directing, and the initial success makes the film a likely best film candidate. As for the actors: I think Bardem had a nomination nailed from the scene at the gas station, and he will be the year's front-runner. I also think McDonald has a shot at mention. Though BJ is right she doesn't quite have a money scene (the last encounter comes close), she's fine throughout and it’s a role with enough heft she might make it in a lean year. Hell, I'd push for Brolin in lead, just because I like the film so much.
And then there's Tommy Lee Jones. I don't know where you'd put him -- he really is in the grey area between lead and support. But, my god, he's superb. Rollo, I can't fathom how you find his stories boring. I think literally every sentence that comes out of his mouth is gold -- and yet you never get the sense from him that he thinks he's speaking great lines. For me, it's the finest work of his career, but I'm not sure how the Oscars can honor it -- other than, as BJ rightly suggests, nominating the whiole superb cast for the SAG Ensemble prize.
In case anyone's in doubt, I think this is, to this point, the year's best film.
Really? I enjoyed it. It wasn't a great film--very predictable--but surprisingly well-done and I liked its gentle spirit. And the cast was very good (especially Paul Schneider, who was both very funny and deeply moving as Lars' concerned older brother).Akash wrote:Lars and the Real Girl is shit, just shit, despite having Ryan Gosling in it.
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
Having seen it two days ago at the ArcLight, I was impressed. It didn't feel like a Coen Brothers film, having only one cast regular included (that being, Stephen Root as the businessman). I especially love the sound design of the film, wherein the motel scenes and out of nowhere puffs of sound coming from Bardem's silencer.
It was truly one of the few films that let me really unsettled by the end; few films have that ability. In that right, I believe the Coen Brother deserve to become the second directing duo to win the Best Directing Oscar.
Oscar potential:
Best Picture (a given nomination, maybe not the win)
Best Actor (Javier Bardem, the co-lead, not supporting)
Best Director (possibly the win at this moment)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Film Editing
Best Sound
It was truly one of the few films that let me really unsettled by the end; few films have that ability. In that right, I believe the Coen Brother deserve to become the second directing duo to win the Best Directing Oscar.
Oscar potential:
Best Picture (a given nomination, maybe not the win)
Best Actor (Javier Bardem, the co-lead, not supporting)
Best Director (possibly the win at this moment)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Best Film Editing
Best Sound
I'm seeing it this weekend, but the film is getting good enough reviews and the requisite "Oscar hype" to secure some nominations I think. Maybe not Best Picture (I still don't know how a film as good and as Oscar unfriendly as Fargo fared so well) but a lot of times, the films that are nominated in other top categories and fall just shy of Best Picture are often the better ones.Sabin wrote:Beyond that, I hate to say it but the ending will cost them the Oscar. The win, certainly, but maybe also the nod. Bardem is the lead. he's not though. it's Brolin, but by the same token, it's really Bardem that they care about and place the onus on.
I will say this is an amazing film, one that deserves a bevy of nominations.
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Sonic Youth
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rolotomasi99 wrote:do you work at a movie theatre? i have not snuck into a movie since i was thirteen.
No, I don't work at a movie theater, but if I'm already at the movies and a showing of No Country happens to be starting, I might duck in and try to catch the first few minutes.
Edited By flipp525 on 1195073124
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
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rolotomasi99
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*S*P*O*I*L*E*R*A*L*E*R*T*flipp525 wrote:I was late to my showing of this film last Friday. Were there scenes before Josh Brolin stumbled upon the drug deal gone bad in the desert?
tommy lee jones tells the first of many boring stories, this one about a young teenager in prison who says he is perfectly happy with killing people and would do it again if given the chance.
next, possibly the most tense brutal scene in the movie. chigurh has been arrested by a police officer. the officer is in the station alone with chigurh. the officer is speaking on the phone with his back to chigurh who is sneaking up on the officer with his arms cuffed. he then chokes the officer to death. we then see the intense cuts in chigurh cuffs, setting up how tough and insane he is.
the scene with the gas attendant is made all the more intense after seeing this moment of brutality. you will probably want to see it for yourself. do you work at a movie theatre? i have not snuck into a movie since i was thirteen.
"When it comes to the subject of torture, I trust a woman who was married to James Cameron for three years."
-- Amy Poehler in praise of Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow
-- Amy Poehler in praise of Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow
Armond White weighs in...
COEN BROS. COUNTRY
A crime movie for a world at war
By Armond White
No Country for Old Men
Written & Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
“It’s just all out war. I can’t figure it out,” remarks a deputy sheriff on instances of violence—carnage—that disrupt the Texas setting of the Coen Brothers’ new film, No Country for Old Men. This is the Coens’ first crime movie since they began to master the medium, and the way No Country morphs from noir into contemporary-western moral struggle makes it deeper, funnier and even stranger than Fargo, their 1996 hit.
You know what national cataclysm happened since then, so it should be no surprise that the Coens have made a crime movie that seems quietly aghast at the likelihood of death and menace occurring on American soil. Unlike American Gangster’s sensationalized crap, this is a crime movie/western exercise that contemporizes the miasma of a world at war.
Following the novel by Cormac McCarthy, a mysterious psychopath named Chigurh (Javier Bardem) collects underworld lucre and destroys souls at random. A Texas war vet, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), trades good luck for bad when he stumbles upon a cash-pile leftover from a disastrous drug deal and becomes Chigurh’s particular target. The drug deal and Moss and Chigurh’s fates are tracked by worn-down local lawman Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The entire movie becomes a stakeout, but with parts of the story deliberately dropped-out—acknowledging what is unpredictable and unknowable in life. The Coens test audience perception through entertaining details of local color and concentrated sequences that tease tension (Moss hiding the loot while being stalked by Chigurh).
These characterizations are pungent and vivid: Brolin’s Moss has a square, half-Mexican chin like a Rolando Merida drawing, Bardem’s Chigurh wears Richard III bangs and a sallow disposition and Jones’ Sheriff is timelessly world-weary. It would be pathetic to reduce/praise No Country as a thriller. The Coens’ technique goes far beyond that. Moss, Chirgurh and Bell’s appointments with mortality lift the film from plot mechanisms to a confrontation with fate.
Like The Man Who Wasn’t There—the Coens’ finest film so far—this movie stretches genre sophistication in order to contend with real-life complexity. Critics disregard the Coens’ political smarts (their brilliant The Ladykillers wasn’t only a superior remake, its final Bob Jones University joke was the best political gibe of the past decade) but to see No Country as a mere thriller misconstrues the Coens’ sensibility. They chart the spiritual mood that ensnares us but that most recent movies—with the rare exception of Neil Jordan’s The Brave One—merely vulgarize.
Coen artistry heightens our level of perception. They reveal the first murder with an astonishing image of shoe sole scuff marks on a jail floor that looks as avant-garde as a Jackson Pollack painting—a harbinger of modern chaos that puts post-9/11 terror in artistic focus. But not sentimentally. When Sheriff Bell expresses existential fatigue, the sorrow he vouchsafes to his father is actually spoken to himself (thus to us in the audience). And still, the Coens contextualize: Bell is brought to reality when his father tells him, “What you got ain’t new. Can’t stop what’s coming. Ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” The Coens make that wisdom mythical and all encompassing—from Vietnam to 9/11 to Iraq and to the Texas homeland.
COEN BROS. COUNTRY
A crime movie for a world at war
By Armond White
No Country for Old Men
Written & Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
“It’s just all out war. I can’t figure it out,” remarks a deputy sheriff on instances of violence—carnage—that disrupt the Texas setting of the Coen Brothers’ new film, No Country for Old Men. This is the Coens’ first crime movie since they began to master the medium, and the way No Country morphs from noir into contemporary-western moral struggle makes it deeper, funnier and even stranger than Fargo, their 1996 hit.
You know what national cataclysm happened since then, so it should be no surprise that the Coens have made a crime movie that seems quietly aghast at the likelihood of death and menace occurring on American soil. Unlike American Gangster’s sensationalized crap, this is a crime movie/western exercise that contemporizes the miasma of a world at war.
Following the novel by Cormac McCarthy, a mysterious psychopath named Chigurh (Javier Bardem) collects underworld lucre and destroys souls at random. A Texas war vet, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), trades good luck for bad when he stumbles upon a cash-pile leftover from a disastrous drug deal and becomes Chigurh’s particular target. The drug deal and Moss and Chigurh’s fates are tracked by worn-down local lawman Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The entire movie becomes a stakeout, but with parts of the story deliberately dropped-out—acknowledging what is unpredictable and unknowable in life. The Coens test audience perception through entertaining details of local color and concentrated sequences that tease tension (Moss hiding the loot while being stalked by Chigurh).
These characterizations are pungent and vivid: Brolin’s Moss has a square, half-Mexican chin like a Rolando Merida drawing, Bardem’s Chigurh wears Richard III bangs and a sallow disposition and Jones’ Sheriff is timelessly world-weary. It would be pathetic to reduce/praise No Country as a thriller. The Coens’ technique goes far beyond that. Moss, Chirgurh and Bell’s appointments with mortality lift the film from plot mechanisms to a confrontation with fate.
Like The Man Who Wasn’t There—the Coens’ finest film so far—this movie stretches genre sophistication in order to contend with real-life complexity. Critics disregard the Coens’ political smarts (their brilliant The Ladykillers wasn’t only a superior remake, its final Bob Jones University joke was the best political gibe of the past decade) but to see No Country as a mere thriller misconstrues the Coens’ sensibility. They chart the spiritual mood that ensnares us but that most recent movies—with the rare exception of Neil Jordan’s The Brave One—merely vulgarize.
Coen artistry heightens our level of perception. They reveal the first murder with an astonishing image of shoe sole scuff marks on a jail floor that looks as avant-garde as a Jackson Pollack painting—a harbinger of modern chaos that puts post-9/11 terror in artistic focus. But not sentimentally. When Sheriff Bell expresses existential fatigue, the sorrow he vouchsafes to his father is actually spoken to himself (thus to us in the audience). And still, the Coens contextualize: Bell is brought to reality when his father tells him, “What you got ain’t new. Can’t stop what’s coming. Ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” The Coens make that wisdom mythical and all encompassing—from Vietnam to 9/11 to Iraq and to the Texas homeland.
"How's the despair?"
Yes, I believe there were 2 scenes before this.flipp525 wrote:I was late to my showing of this film last Friday. Were there scenes before Josh Brolin stumbled upon the drug deal gone bad in the desert?
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
I was late to my showing of this film last Friday. Were there scenes before Josh Brolin stumbled upon the drug deal gone bad in the desert?
Also, upon further reflection, I think one of Bardem’s most menacing moments was when he was fucking around with that gas station attendant. It was so clear that the poor man was starting to become severely afraid and Chigurh was so cruelly loquacious, playing with him like a vampire does before sucking out his victim's blood. It was a really well-written scene and quite memorable.
Edited By flipp525 on 1195063277
Also, upon further reflection, I think one of Bardem’s most menacing moments was when he was fucking around with that gas station attendant. It was so clear that the poor man was starting to become severely afraid and Chigurh was so cruelly loquacious, playing with him like a vampire does before sucking out his victim's blood. It was a really well-written scene and quite memorable.
Edited By flipp525 on 1195063277
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
-Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Despite the "No Country could have been great but it leaves me cold" talk I've been hearing, I'm still excited to see this film once it expands. As long as it's better than American Gangster, which wasn't as good as it was hyped up to be.
"It's the least most of us can do, but less of us will do more."