No Country for Old Men
Posted: February 17th, 2008, 15:11
Look, this is really really long. I started then I couldn't stop. Then I started drinking. Then I coundn't stop even more. Sorry
I hate the very idea of going to the cinema in Brussels. I hate it because you can't reserve seats. Anywhere. This means you need to be there an hour before or accept sitting in some obscure fucking corner behind the tallest dutch bloke you ever laid eyes on and 2 seats across from some french prick intent on spending the whole movie on his pissing mobile phone or texting .. while eating popcorn and smelling. This mixed with the fact that I have a projector at home and that Amazon have most movies on DVD before the Belgians have even scheduled a release explains the fact that I have only been to the cinema once since I got to Belgium (except for the BIFFF, but that's a bit different) That was to watch <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0404203/">Little Children</a> and that was rubbish, despite full frontal Kate Winslet having bottom sex, thus justifying my continued policy of being a home movie watcher.
My list of movies to watch has been getting longer and longer of late, though. Mostly this is due to the fact that there seems to be just so many good movies being released in the first half of this year. Some of them even being released in Belgium before Amazon has discounted them on DVD! I needed a plan. Thinking about it, I realised that there are 2 options other than those I outlined above, either of which might make the Belgian cinema experience bearable; Go at a time when no one else will be there (matinées) or choose a movie unlikely to get the movie watching public excited (complete lack of dancing Penguins). I had needed a plan, now I had one. For a fuller chance at success, I decided to do both.
So, on Saturday afternoon after my morning bike ride Bubble and I went to see <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/">No Country for Old men</a>. No singing Penguins and a matinée, we were sure to be alone ... and so we were. I really hadn't expected it to work, I felt sure that the critical acclaim circling the Coen Brothers "return to form" and "best movie since Fargo" would have them flocking to the theaters for all showings. I needn't have worried, there were probably 30 of us, everyone else was in Rue Neuve shopping or watching the penguins on the other (bigger) screen next door. Their loss, the pricks. As such, Bubble I and 25 or so other people sat in a small theater (capacity probably about 200) with a feeling like we were at some sort of press screening. There was something about the crowd too. Many of them were alone. None of them (NONE) had popcorn. These folks didn't come here to be entertained, they came to watch a Movie, they came to experience Cinema. If they got some confusing shit like Oh Brother or some story about a guy being so boring he disappears, there was going to be a (small) riot. The Coens must have been shaking in their boots.
The previews ran and I knew we were in good shape. Of course the previews at the beginning of any movie are pitched at the projected audience of the main feature so one would expect them to give you an early insight into what you are about to get. I'm sure there are several instances where this rule has been broken to hilarious end, like showing a trailer for Ken Park in the opening sequence of whatever Pixar movie came out that year but I can't remember one so I'd be making it up if I gave you an example (erm). The previews that ran before NCfOM (as I shall call it from here on to save space and prolong the onset of RSI) were right on the money; <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480025/">This is England</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469494/">There will be blood</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775529/">The Savages</a>. All were on my movie list (Except I admit, the Savages, but that gets there under the general "everything with Philip Seymour Hoffman in" rule).
And so to the movie. Look ... frankly, if you're interested in this film and were underwhelmed by the Coens two last outings then you will have been paying attention and heard some of the critical hype already. In short, it boils down to the two quotes I mentioned above plus stuff like "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000849/">Javier Bardem</a> is magnificent", "Javier Bardem has the scariest haircut in movie history", "Has an unconventional ending that will leave some viewers wondering what happened but only if you're not seriously into movies" (sort of thing) and on and on, lots of it about Bardem.
Most of this I actually agree with, although you'd have to do better than put a big bloke in a medieval bob to get the scariest-haircut-in-movie-history Oscar nod from me. Of course I am now bound to research the issue, but I feel confident we can do better.
Of course I can only say so much without going into spoilerz and I fully intend not to because <span>you should go and see this movie</span>. I really struggle to think of the type of individual who would get less than the 2 hours of their life and the cost of admission is worth from it. Sure you will find those who need to have exploding helicopters handed to them on a plate and singing animals in the background but I severely doubt that any of them would ever read anything I wrote so I think I'm on safe ground when I say go see it. Just incase though, suffice to say that the following do not appear in this movie
Sex
Helicopters (blowing up or otherwise)
Aliens
Large rocks heading at breakneck pace towards a terrified earth
Kiera Knightly
What we do have, in contrast are;
Characters big and small, central and periphery
Subtle meandering plotline
Good acting
Desert ... More Desert
Loads of dead Mexicans (not that I'm against mexicans per se, but there are lot of dead ones in this film)
The best ever border crossing into Mexico made by a man with a gunshot wound
The movie starts with our hero stumbling across a deathly tableau in the desert. Ton of mexicans, all dead and a truckload of brown packets, probably full of something not very legal and a whole bunch of cash. Our hero does the only sensible thing and makes off with the cash. So far so formulaic. There have been dozens of films which start of this way and move on to be cautionary tales about how money ruins you. You'll all have seen at least one, but <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120324/">A Simple Plan</a> stands out as one of note that starts in an almost identical way while also not being shit (if you haven't seen A simple Plan, I really recommend it, make sure you're not having a depressing week though, you'll need the buffer). Such a movie can go a few ways from here, ours goes to the chase. Our hero is soon under persuit by the haircut himself, Anton Chigurh (Bardem) and separately by a bunch of very alive and heavily armed Mexicans. Transamerican chasery ensues. In the background, the local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) is following the events, always one step behind the action and feeling it.
The acting is all on the superb end of things. Bardem really is as good as the critics say. There's a very small scene where Chigurh is sitting on his quarry's couch, having just missed our departing hero and a mite before the sheriff gets there, with a glass of milk in his hand. His face is rock, all you can hear is his breath. It's terrifying.
The Sheriff, TLJ, is .... well .... TLJ, just 10 years older and without the swagger that we all grew to know and love on the Fugitive etc. The older comportment brings with it a gravity and world weariness that could probably only have been topped by Clint Eastwood, but then you wouldn't have got the dry humour and southern drawl that TLJ brings to the party which would probably have made the whole enterprise unbearably depressing. Plus Clint would have killed everyone with a very big revolver and then had bastard children with all the women. Probably.
Llewelyn Moss (our Hero) is played by Josh Brolin who I don't remember seeing before and looking at his filmography I can see why, the last movie he was in that I've seen was The Hollow Man, although American Gangster and the Grindhouse stuff is on my ever lengthening list. He's good in this, it's far from Genius but he carries a major part amongst an ensemble cast with aplomb, mostly I suspect by acting it very honestly straight, but it's no mean feat for that.
In fact, and I really hate to say this because I love his stuff, but the biggest let down (a very relative statement in this film admittedly) was Woody Harrelson. I was really pissed off that he didn't get more time in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/">A Scanner Darkly</a> and he probably gets less here, but I have to say I'm less sad about it. His character is somewhat of a guardian angel interlude during after a climax in the chase, he opens the movie up and allows us all a bit of time to breath. Perhaps then it's not fair to lay into him for propping the movie open but after he was gone, I just found myself thinking "meh ... now what's Chigurh going to do next?"
As far as the plot is concerned, that is provided by the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Country-Old-Men ... =8-1">book of the same name</a> written my Cormac Mac Carthy. He's apparantly some famous writer dude , but you could have fooled me, I've never heard of him. Anyway, this is a departure for the coens (their first adaptation) and the first reason why I don't agree with the critical comment "a return to form". True, previous stuff has been influenced and laden with references to other stuff etc etc but, if the pundits are to be believed, this is a faithful retelling of the book, almost word-for-word. The other reasons extend to the fact that, while yeah there's cops and some dead guys, just like Fargo and Blood Simple (although, thinking about it, Blood Simple had no cops in it, not even one) and this one scene where you know the Deputy is desparate to say "and then you got this execution type deal" this movie is different in one very important aspect. It is not farce. While there is some wry humor from the Sheriff, our linchpin to the tale as a whole, this is a full blooded thriller with dramatic underpants on. Actually I did hear one critic, just today, saying that the difference is that in the past the Coens have dealt with violence and death lightly, here they bring weight to the subject, which I think is half right. Actually, my take is that the Coens have always wanted to make this kind of film but found they couldn't write it themselves. Look at Blood Simple.
Here is a very stripped down tale of a dude's wife running off with one of his employees. Said dude hires a guy to kill the both of them, but the killer has a better idea and takes the money then kills the client with the wife's gun, framing her. Coincidence ensues and the barman arrives on scene, makes the same conclusion that the cops are supposed to and proceeds to clean up after his lover. Of course the killer was incompetent (I'll get to this in a minute) and the husband isn't actually dead. On the way to the burial site he manages to get out of the car and is crawling down the road with the barman lacking the balls to finish the job. Instead he buries him alive in the middle of a potato(e) field so neatly ploughed that Neil Armstrong coiuld have looked up from the moon and seen where it had happened ... 50 feet from the farmhouse. Here a dramatic premise and what could have been a very short simple story descends into farce (in a good way). I don't think the Coens could help themselves. The structure of using someone else's work, though, probably kept them in line and what we have is NCfOM.
Another major difference a major departure from a central tenet of the Coen's work (pointed out to me by Dave years ago) is that, in the earlier movies (especially Blood Simple and the big Lebowski and throughout most of Fargo) all the characters are irredeemably stupid. This is not true of NCfOM. All major characters are smart, resourceful (if a little tired, in the case of the sheriff) and quick on their feet. I'd have to read the book (as if) to see if this comes form there or whether the coens are making a point about their departure form their self imposed exile in the land of the stupid, but in the meantime I know what I'll chose to believe.
OK, that took longer to write than the movie took to watch. In other news, I went for a ride today and got a stick in my front wheel after about 10 minutes. I didn't get thrown off the bike (something that I could have dusted myself off from and carried on) no, I ripped 6 spokes from my front wheel. Thus I'm sitting at home writing this instead of mountain biking. Well, I am drinking beer aswell
Hope you enjoyed it.
I hate the very idea of going to the cinema in Brussels. I hate it because you can't reserve seats. Anywhere. This means you need to be there an hour before or accept sitting in some obscure fucking corner behind the tallest dutch bloke you ever laid eyes on and 2 seats across from some french prick intent on spending the whole movie on his pissing mobile phone or texting .. while eating popcorn and smelling. This mixed with the fact that I have a projector at home and that Amazon have most movies on DVD before the Belgians have even scheduled a release explains the fact that I have only been to the cinema once since I got to Belgium (except for the BIFFF, but that's a bit different) That was to watch <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0404203/">Little Children</a> and that was rubbish, despite full frontal Kate Winslet having bottom sex, thus justifying my continued policy of being a home movie watcher.
My list of movies to watch has been getting longer and longer of late, though. Mostly this is due to the fact that there seems to be just so many good movies being released in the first half of this year. Some of them even being released in Belgium before Amazon has discounted them on DVD! I needed a plan. Thinking about it, I realised that there are 2 options other than those I outlined above, either of which might make the Belgian cinema experience bearable; Go at a time when no one else will be there (matinées) or choose a movie unlikely to get the movie watching public excited (complete lack of dancing Penguins). I had needed a plan, now I had one. For a fuller chance at success, I decided to do both.
So, on Saturday afternoon after my morning bike ride Bubble and I went to see <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/">No Country for Old men</a>. No singing Penguins and a matinée, we were sure to be alone ... and so we were. I really hadn't expected it to work, I felt sure that the critical acclaim circling the Coen Brothers "return to form" and "best movie since Fargo" would have them flocking to the theaters for all showings. I needn't have worried, there were probably 30 of us, everyone else was in Rue Neuve shopping or watching the penguins on the other (bigger) screen next door. Their loss, the pricks. As such, Bubble I and 25 or so other people sat in a small theater (capacity probably about 200) with a feeling like we were at some sort of press screening. There was something about the crowd too. Many of them were alone. None of them (NONE) had popcorn. These folks didn't come here to be entertained, they came to watch a Movie, they came to experience Cinema. If they got some confusing shit like Oh Brother or some story about a guy being so boring he disappears, there was going to be a (small) riot. The Coens must have been shaking in their boots.
The previews ran and I knew we were in good shape. Of course the previews at the beginning of any movie are pitched at the projected audience of the main feature so one would expect them to give you an early insight into what you are about to get. I'm sure there are several instances where this rule has been broken to hilarious end, like showing a trailer for Ken Park in the opening sequence of whatever Pixar movie came out that year but I can't remember one so I'd be making it up if I gave you an example (erm). The previews that ran before NCfOM (as I shall call it from here on to save space and prolong the onset of RSI) were right on the money; <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480025/">This is England</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0469494/">There will be blood</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0775529/">The Savages</a>. All were on my movie list (Except I admit, the Savages, but that gets there under the general "everything with Philip Seymour Hoffman in" rule).
And so to the movie. Look ... frankly, if you're interested in this film and were underwhelmed by the Coens two last outings then you will have been paying attention and heard some of the critical hype already. In short, it boils down to the two quotes I mentioned above plus stuff like "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000849/">Javier Bardem</a> is magnificent", "Javier Bardem has the scariest haircut in movie history", "Has an unconventional ending that will leave some viewers wondering what happened but only if you're not seriously into movies" (sort of thing) and on and on, lots of it about Bardem.
Most of this I actually agree with, although you'd have to do better than put a big bloke in a medieval bob to get the scariest-haircut-in-movie-history Oscar nod from me. Of course I am now bound to research the issue, but I feel confident we can do better.
Of course I can only say so much without going into spoilerz and I fully intend not to because <span>you should go and see this movie</span>. I really struggle to think of the type of individual who would get less than the 2 hours of their life and the cost of admission is worth from it. Sure you will find those who need to have exploding helicopters handed to them on a plate and singing animals in the background but I severely doubt that any of them would ever read anything I wrote so I think I'm on safe ground when I say go see it. Just incase though, suffice to say that the following do not appear in this movie
Sex
Helicopters (blowing up or otherwise)
Aliens
Large rocks heading at breakneck pace towards a terrified earth
Kiera Knightly
What we do have, in contrast are;
Characters big and small, central and periphery
Subtle meandering plotline
Good acting
Desert ... More Desert
Loads of dead Mexicans (not that I'm against mexicans per se, but there are lot of dead ones in this film)
The best ever border crossing into Mexico made by a man with a gunshot wound
The movie starts with our hero stumbling across a deathly tableau in the desert. Ton of mexicans, all dead and a truckload of brown packets, probably full of something not very legal and a whole bunch of cash. Our hero does the only sensible thing and makes off with the cash. So far so formulaic. There have been dozens of films which start of this way and move on to be cautionary tales about how money ruins you. You'll all have seen at least one, but <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120324/">A Simple Plan</a> stands out as one of note that starts in an almost identical way while also not being shit (if you haven't seen A simple Plan, I really recommend it, make sure you're not having a depressing week though, you'll need the buffer). Such a movie can go a few ways from here, ours goes to the chase. Our hero is soon under persuit by the haircut himself, Anton Chigurh (Bardem) and separately by a bunch of very alive and heavily armed Mexicans. Transamerican chasery ensues. In the background, the local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) is following the events, always one step behind the action and feeling it.
The acting is all on the superb end of things. Bardem really is as good as the critics say. There's a very small scene where Chigurh is sitting on his quarry's couch, having just missed our departing hero and a mite before the sheriff gets there, with a glass of milk in his hand. His face is rock, all you can hear is his breath. It's terrifying.
The Sheriff, TLJ, is .... well .... TLJ, just 10 years older and without the swagger that we all grew to know and love on the Fugitive etc. The older comportment brings with it a gravity and world weariness that could probably only have been topped by Clint Eastwood, but then you wouldn't have got the dry humour and southern drawl that TLJ brings to the party which would probably have made the whole enterprise unbearably depressing. Plus Clint would have killed everyone with a very big revolver and then had bastard children with all the women. Probably.
Llewelyn Moss (our Hero) is played by Josh Brolin who I don't remember seeing before and looking at his filmography I can see why, the last movie he was in that I've seen was The Hollow Man, although American Gangster and the Grindhouse stuff is on my ever lengthening list. He's good in this, it's far from Genius but he carries a major part amongst an ensemble cast with aplomb, mostly I suspect by acting it very honestly straight, but it's no mean feat for that.
In fact, and I really hate to say this because I love his stuff, but the biggest let down (a very relative statement in this film admittedly) was Woody Harrelson. I was really pissed off that he didn't get more time in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405296/">A Scanner Darkly</a> and he probably gets less here, but I have to say I'm less sad about it. His character is somewhat of a guardian angel interlude during after a climax in the chase, he opens the movie up and allows us all a bit of time to breath. Perhaps then it's not fair to lay into him for propping the movie open but after he was gone, I just found myself thinking "meh ... now what's Chigurh going to do next?"
As far as the plot is concerned, that is provided by the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Country-Old-Men ... =8-1">book of the same name</a> written my Cormac Mac Carthy. He's apparantly some famous writer dude , but you could have fooled me, I've never heard of him. Anyway, this is a departure for the coens (their first adaptation) and the first reason why I don't agree with the critical comment "a return to form". True, previous stuff has been influenced and laden with references to other stuff etc etc but, if the pundits are to be believed, this is a faithful retelling of the book, almost word-for-word. The other reasons extend to the fact that, while yeah there's cops and some dead guys, just like Fargo and Blood Simple (although, thinking about it, Blood Simple had no cops in it, not even one) and this one scene where you know the Deputy is desparate to say "and then you got this execution type deal" this movie is different in one very important aspect. It is not farce. While there is some wry humor from the Sheriff, our linchpin to the tale as a whole, this is a full blooded thriller with dramatic underpants on. Actually I did hear one critic, just today, saying that the difference is that in the past the Coens have dealt with violence and death lightly, here they bring weight to the subject, which I think is half right. Actually, my take is that the Coens have always wanted to make this kind of film but found they couldn't write it themselves. Look at Blood Simple.
Here is a very stripped down tale of a dude's wife running off with one of his employees. Said dude hires a guy to kill the both of them, but the killer has a better idea and takes the money then kills the client with the wife's gun, framing her. Coincidence ensues and the barman arrives on scene, makes the same conclusion that the cops are supposed to and proceeds to clean up after his lover. Of course the killer was incompetent (I'll get to this in a minute) and the husband isn't actually dead. On the way to the burial site he manages to get out of the car and is crawling down the road with the barman lacking the balls to finish the job. Instead he buries him alive in the middle of a potato(e) field so neatly ploughed that Neil Armstrong coiuld have looked up from the moon and seen where it had happened ... 50 feet from the farmhouse. Here a dramatic premise and what could have been a very short simple story descends into farce (in a good way). I don't think the Coens could help themselves. The structure of using someone else's work, though, probably kept them in line and what we have is NCfOM.
Another major difference a major departure from a central tenet of the Coen's work (pointed out to me by Dave years ago) is that, in the earlier movies (especially Blood Simple and the big Lebowski and throughout most of Fargo) all the characters are irredeemably stupid. This is not true of NCfOM. All major characters are smart, resourceful (if a little tired, in the case of the sheriff) and quick on their feet. I'd have to read the book (as if) to see if this comes form there or whether the coens are making a point about their departure form their self imposed exile in the land of the stupid, but in the meantime I know what I'll chose to believe.
OK, that took longer to write than the movie took to watch. In other news, I went for a ride today and got a stick in my front wheel after about 10 minutes. I didn't get thrown off the bike (something that I could have dusted myself off from and carried on) no, I ripped 6 spokes from my front wheel. Thus I'm sitting at home writing this instead of mountain biking. Well, I am drinking beer aswell
Hope you enjoyed it.
bastard silent. Also, the de lisle carbine always looks to me like an hand pump for oil drums.