No Country For Old Men

Anyone else see this fantastic film? The Coen Bros. adapted it from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. Is McCarthy an atheist? I got the vibe that the book/film is about realizing the true nature of the world and society.

it was very well directed(as can be expected from the coen brothers), and all of the leading actors and the actress did extremely well with their parts.

it wasn't your typical "good guys always win" hollywood movie, but the plot alone of the movie was somewhat predictable... in other words you saw what was coming(at least i did). i think that the ending was perfect though(i love tommy lee jones)... leaving you with more questions than answers. the movie i think is about faith and choice. chigurh was an angel of death type character. he believed that not only did he have no choice of his actions, but other people had no choice as well, and it was his attempt to give some choice by the coin flip.


try answering the question after watching it: "what would you do if you found a million bucks lying around" :rofl:

That is a really interesting question. He was raised Catholic into a primarily Southern Baptist culture, but I have never read of him definitively stating whether or not he was still religious. His books are full of religious imagery, but most of them have a pretty nihilistic outlook, so I would not be surprised if he were. On the other hand, his most memorable villain (hell, most memorable character), Judge Holden has a decidedly secular materialistic philosophy, and Chigurh could probably be considered an example of a corrupt atheistic philosophy too.

Anyway, I liked the movie. The Coens did a fine job with it, and I am impressed that they had the guts to stick (more or less) with the book's ending. I saw an interview with them where Joel was talking about reading the book, and liking how the book started out like a pure genre potboiler that gradually subverted the genre's structure.

Of the ones up for the awards.

in its scenes that I read, I decide every time to put it down and let the Coen version live in my mind. The book is almost a short story. Chigurh did this, Chigurh opened fire and shot the other guys.

You can tell by my sig I'm a fan of the movie. You'll notice that "You don't have to do this" is greyed out, much like a windows option would be.

I love the movie.

can I borrow?

in the bookstore, and then I put it back. Sorry.

nice place

He is very, very reclusive, to the likes of Thomas Pynchon, of whom it is said there are no known photographs. I think McCarthy would prefer that you read his novels and ask that of yourself. Do the books bring a deeper understanding of life to the reader? I find them simple on the surface but deep in content. Through his characters do we develop a deeper understanding of our own lives?

BTW, I love the movie, the book too. They each stand on their own.

Bo-ring.

The scenes in the Texas brush were what really brought me into the reality the Coens had created. It was so quiet, so desolate, so lonely, so silent. Still, you could feel the tension as Chigurh as he pursued his various targets. The movie kept me on the edge of my seat the entire way through, and though the ending really leaves more questions than answers, it was the perfect way to end the story.

I'm gonna be buying this movie sometime this weekend - along with "There Will Be Blood." :woohoo:

I fell asleep during it. :(

It wasn't the movie's fault...I was very sleepy when I put it in.

I was exhausted and I didn't enjoy it. The second time I watched it, I loved it.

"There Will Be Blood" was great too. I loved it the first time I saw it.

couldn't get through...fell asleep EVERY time...was Rent.

Musical movies don't really do it for me. The only non-Disney exceptions are along the lines of "Moulin Rouge," "South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut," and and Mel Brooks movie that has any singing in it.

Okay, I guess musical movies ARE something I like. Just not musical movies like Rent.

Anyone care to explain it? Otherwise I thought it was a great movie. The Anton Chigurh character was cold blooded and fun to watch.

The plot - Mexican gang figures out where Moss will be via shadowing Carla Jean and her mother. They kill Moss, but clear out before they can recover the money, which has been hidden in another air duct. Chigurh goes back later to recover the money - Bell shows up but goes into the other room (probably - the film is deliberately ambiguous on this point - the book is different). Chigurh kills Carla Jean, gets hit by a car.

The meaning - Here you're getting into personal opinion, but I see it like this - Bell feels guilty for failing to protect his charges or capture Chigurh (in the book, he has been carrying around a whopping case of survivor guilt from WWII, and his law enforcement career is in part a penance for that) Worse, he has come to the conclusion that Chigurh is the embodiment of a new society in which being willing to die isn't enough to do his job - to deal with that sort of ruthless monster, you risk becoming one, and he is not willing to go that far. Finally he has an over-idealized view of the past, and fears that society is so far gone that his job is essentially meaningless anyway - he is a useless relic of an earlier, more civil era, hence the title. So he quits.

and how the whole chase/drug thing ended up, but I realized the whole film was basically about Tommy Lee...that talk with Barry Corbin close to the end was brillant....

"Thats just pure Vanity" was a great insight....

there will be blood, a little light viewing ;-)

The works that I've read certainly reference the Judeo-Christian notion of an ultimate Good and Evil, regardless of whether it exists independently of humans.

"No Country" and "Blood Meridian" seem to differ in that the Chigurh character is more like an undeniable element of life. The character of the Judge in "Blood Meridian" is, in my opinion, more actively malevolent.

Chigurh is the embodiment of the Grim Reaper. He does what he does because of the simple fact that that is his function. Nothing can stop him from his appointed rounds other than blind fate (the coin flipping).

The Judge, on the other hand, seemed to relish in the destruction of life. His character is closer to the historical idea of Satan

of the undeniable, unending randomness and pointlessness of life (the coinflip represents the chance nature of life and the freak car crash emphasizes this point as well). His 'survival' in the end represents the 'triumph' over Bell's idealized, ordered, meaningful view of life (Bell even mentions at one point that he 'always thought he would accept God late in life,' and that 'he didn't'). In the end, Bell awakes from his 'dream,' his idealized view of life. There is ultimately no redemption. My take anyway.


Btw, Ridley Scott is bringing Blood Meridian to the screen. Should be out late '09.

fate? indifferent, relentless. "You chose this path."

but I think I need to go back and watch it again to "get it" and just sort of let it sink under my skin to truly say I enjoy it.

...my favourite thing about the Coen brothers is their mordant sense of irony and black humour. In NCFOM, that irony was either so subtle it was undetectable or else it was completely absent. I felt the film took itself way too seriously and it was long and pointless. Compare it to Fargo or the Big Lebowski. Both films had their share of violence, but you found yourself laughing a lot.

I just felt like NCFOM missed its mark.

it was filmed so that it was practically overexposed and washed-out by light. that just happens to be how it looks in real life without your sunglasses and when you take pictures under midday sun without a filter. i'd never seen a western that quite showed it that way, even though that's how it looks. and it seems to help with the overall metaphor of the film.

i loved that movie.