quote:

Originally posted by EricG75:
I will say this about the film though: Javier Bardem gave an excellent performance as Anton Chigurh. I see an Oscar in his future.

It would be a shame for him not to win. Right from his opening scene, he was pitch perfect. The look on his face while he strangled the cop was downright terrifying. Also, his low, slow and methodical delivery was great. I think all three leads were flawless. I can't think of anyone who could play those parts better.

I thought Woody Harrelson was distracting. It was impossible for me to think it was anyone other than Woody.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Mago:
I thought Woody Harrelson was distracting. It was impossible for me to think it was anyone other than Woody.

Woody Harrleson is one of those actors that sort of always comes through as himself though. You never really see him disappear into a role. Even in The People vs. Larry Flynt, which I think is his most un-Woody role, he still comes off as Woody Harrleson doing a Larry Flynt impersonation.

Moss' dying off screen didn't bother me. I thought it correct that the audience and Sheriff Bell discover Moss' fate togather. If either Bell or Chigurh had killed one another (or both killed), I would have felt cheated. One was the alter ego of the other ("Anton" Chigurh and "Ed Tom" Bell sound pretty similiar), so both had to survive (I loved how Bell saw things in the same perspective as Chigurh in Moss' trailer). I'll be disappointed if Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones don't at least recieve nominations for this film.

quote:

Originally posted by Il Mago:
The Departed when Damon went down. Two totally different takes, but at the same time, the people you are meant to care about get offed and you don't see it coming. It's a sad helpless feeling and, imo, it works.

Warning, don't read unless you have seen The Departed.

You mean that you were sad when Sullivan’s killed? I thought it was fitting , especially because it is Sullivan’s fault that Costigan (my second favorite character in the film) gets killed. So when Dignam (my favorite character in the film) kills Sullivan (my least favorite character in the film and more importantly, the rat) it’s sweet justice for me.

quote:

Originally posted by FragileKidA:

quote:

Originally posted by Il Mago:
The Departed when Damon went down. Two totally different takes, but at the same time, the people you are meant to care about get offed and you don't see it coming. It's a sad helpless feeling and, imo, it works.

Warning, don't read unless you have seen The Departed.

You mean that you were sad when Sullivan’s killed? I thought it was fitting , especially because it is Sullivan’s fault that Costigan (my second favorite character in the film) gets killed. So when Dignam (my favorite character in the film) kills Sullivan (my least favorite character in the film and more importantly, the rat) it’s sweet justice for me.

Nope. Sorry FKA, I made an error. Read my post as if I said Leo's character instead of Damon. It's been a year, and I posted without really thinking. Sorry for the confusion.

Spoiler alert!!!!

It drives me crazy when people criticize the ending of the movie. The ending is perfectly in keeping with the film (and the novel) as a whole. Any other ending would have been artistically false.

Those who want a "different" ending are missing the whole point of the movie. If you want a thriller that ties the story up in a nice bow, with evil being vanquished, then go to something else.

The movie is about violence, and the degeneration of America into a country that is saturated with violence, and the decline in old-fashioned codes of conduct and behaviour. It is about a country that is so steeped in meaningless sadistic violence that nothing makes sense any more. It is about a country where there are mass school slayings and drive-by shootings that we cannot make any sense of or even begin to udnerstand on any human level, and a country that has become so immune to, so numbed by, the shock of violence that we have come to accept it as part of every day life and not be disturbed by or even question it anymore. It's just accepted as the way things are.

In that sense, America has truly become no country for old men -- the old-timers who grew up in a less violent era, where there was at least some shred of sense in the crimes that were committed, cannot function in this new world.

Chigurh is not really a character -- he is a symbol of this meaningless violence that has taken over American culture. His coin flipping game is a reflection of this -- he kills just because the coin toss goes one way or another, not because there is any rational human reason to kill (a crime of passion, a desperate need for money, etc.). For Chigurh to die at the end would completely undermine what the movie is about. He has to go on, just as the violence does.

And the Sheriff retires at the end, having given up on trying to make sense of a world that has changed so radically, and he dreams of his father, also a sheriff who lived in that former America that has now disappeared.

Both endings perfectly encapsulate what the movie was about. Good for the Coens to have maintained the integrity of the themes and not caved in to any pressure to give a feel-good ending that provided people with a tidy close to the narrative.

I don't think anybody here, including myself was advocating a happy ending.

I think my problem was more due to the pacing of the film, than the direction it took. I said "ending", but I'm really referring to the final quarter of the film that really ruined the movie for me.

Well, no one has been that clear or detailed about what aspecifically they didn't like about the ending.

Several comments were made that the film was anti-climactic. The film was essentially about the Tommy Lee Jones character and his view of the world, so it made perfect sense that it ended with his final ruminations. When he said "and then I woke up" and the movie ended, I found it very moving (kind of like the abrupt ending of The Sopranos that left the viewer to form his own conclusions). And the sudden ending recreated the feeling of waking up for the audience, so that both the sheriff and the audience abruptly wake up into the new world that is now seen in a different way due to the experience of the sheriff's dream (for him) and the movie (for us). Very powerful.

I also found that the unreleased tension of the final scene with Chigurh and the kids on the bike was amazing. Again, this was consistent with the whole movie, where so much tension was created through the mere threat of violence that does not actually materialize but that creates a sense of inescapable uneasiness and continuous danger -- think of the coin tossing at the gas station, or the scene with the woman who works at Moss's office.

One of the things I assumed people meant when they said the film was "abrupt" and "anti-climactic" was that it lacked a traditional narrative climax near the end, in the way of a traditional thriller, and I think that to want that kind of narrative arc is natural but it misunderstands what the film was about. The film was about how powerless "old men" like the sheriff are against the insane violence and worldview of men like Chigurh. There cannot be a "confrontation" between the two (in the usual way that a Western or a thriller pits good and evil in a final confrontation) because they actually occupy different worlds, the sheriff in the past that he mourns the loss of and Chigurh in the new world that we all live in. The sheriff cannot even properly LOCATE Chigurh to confront him. So a confrontation or similar traditional narrative resolution (not a "happy ending", but a resolution) would have been false to the themes of the movie.

I'm surprised that people found the pacing flagged in the last 25%. I found the whole movie to be perfectly controlled and entirely successful in achieving its effects. The pacing of the whole thing was slow and deliberate, yet there was a continual sense of dread looming over it. I admired the fact that, instead of adopting the usual narrative arc that builds to a climax towards the end, the filmmakers maintained the creeping uneasiness that permeated the movie.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Peewee,

Wow - I had read this forum earlier and was waiting until the end of work to compose a response. And here Peewee says essentially everything I wanted to say. Well done.

IMO a movie such as this should not tell me its exact point of view. Instead its a true piece of art which challenges us (and allows us) to come to our own interpretations. So often in this society we're mouth-fed what our opinions and views should be - but it's in the artistic world where we're free to interact the artists' experience with ours. How refreshing is it to be creative along with the creators?

The question is not whether it's OK to defy audience expectations (or annoy those ubiquitous frat dudes), but whether it is better for a particular film to have done so. No question the film is great... but damn.

Unexpected twists, novelties, films that defy expectation... I enjoy all of these things. But once in awhile a film may be better served with the traditional plot arc. This is one the few instances when I have ever felt this way, which is what prompted me to post in the first place.

It's kinda like director's cuts: they're almost always better than the studio cuts. Almost.

This was not a story that easily fit into a three act structure and that bothers me too...
Robert McKee or was it Sid Field that always said that the three act structure, despite its predictability delivers the most satisfaction - the hero alone , struggles through adversity, to win at the end. thats classic cinema.
But the Coen brothers break the rules and everyone calls them geniusi - i don't know. I like the 3 act structure better - the hero should win in the end.

quote:

Originally posted by arob:
This was not a story that easily fit into a three act structure and that bothers me too...
Robert McKee or was it Sid Field that always said that the three act structure, despite its predictability delivers the most satisfaction - the hero alone , struggles through adversity, to win at the end. thats classic cinema.
But the Coen brothers break the rules and everyone calls them geniusi - i don't know. I like the 3 act structure better - the hero should win in the end.

I don't necessarily think the protagonist need win in the end, however, what bothered me about No Country's "third act" was that the focus shifted almost entirely to Tommy Lee Jones, who seemed like a supporting character up until that point. By the time they shifted the focus from Josh Brolin to Tommy Lee Jones, I didn't really care about Jones' character, because we had been so immersed in Brolin's character for the first hour and a half.

Brolin is obviously the classic noir anti-hero, and Jones is the Bertolt Brecht choir. I think Bardem was the Efficient Evil Ghost of Christmas Past. I enjoyed all the characters for what they were, but the Coens pulled a Barton Fink (which I liked better) and a The Man Who Wasn't There (which I liked less). It's obviously their call and everybody else's to decide how much they like what they did. However, Eric, I think you have the time frame wrong; the first 5/6 was excellent, not the first 3/4.

The movie was "okay", but it wasn't great. And certainly not one of the Coen Brothers best films. I understand that people were upset because it didn't end happily and didn't follow the ususal Hollywood formula (everyone makes it out alive, the good guy wins, etc.), but that's not why I didn't like it.

Besides seeming extremely pretentious, the dialogue was sub par at best. I didn't care for the actor who played Anton (the way the words poured out of his mouth like a computer), the plot holes - if he knew there was two million dollars in the bag (implying that he counted it), how didn't he find the tracker between the stacks of bills, blah blah blah.

I'll give it respect for following the book well, which it did to the point of insanity. But anyone who's ever made a movie should know that killing the main character off screen is probably a bad idea.

Well... I finally saw it... and I COMPLETELY AGREE with EricG on the ending and with Tubano that this movie is waaaaaaay overrated! It had soooo much potential, but it did several things wrong. Especially the ending!

I'm not sure what the rest of you were watching, but I THOUGHT I was watching a dramatic thriller similar to "A Simple Plan". It started off a tad bit confusing, but very interesting... then soon spirals into mediocrity! We see a man with a bob-cut (he kinda reminded me of Tobias at first ) getting arrested with an air tank. We don't know why he's being arrested and (apparently) neither does the officer. We then see the most ridiculous killing ever to grace the silver screen! (Ridiculous because we're forced to ask: Why wasn't this VERY LARGE AND OBVIOUSLY DANGEROUS MAN in a cell? ) After that, we move to a mustachioed man trying to shoot some deer and who ends up following a trail of dog blood to a BLOODBATH in a circle of trucks. He finds a survivor, but instead of helping the man right then and there (you'd think he woulda, if he were going to), he waits until the middle of the flippin' night after he saw the bed of the truck filled to the brim with dope and AFTER he had found (and stole) a bag filled with $2,000,000?????!!!!! (Which brings the question to mind of how did he KNOW there was 2 mil in the case when he NEVER took all of the money out of it? By counting how many stacks there were from the top and doing a little multiplication?) Who doesn't expect someone to end up at that spot, in the middle of the night, looking for their dope and money????? That wasn't good movie making by any means. It woulda made a bit more sense for him to get caught while he was there the first time. Going back was just... SUPER RETARDED! (I really couldn't think of any other way to describe it. ) Chances are, the mexicano woulda been dead by the time he made it back without the second gunblast to the head! (That's how I woulda made myself feel better about not going, anyway.)

I've read a number of posts talking about how this movie was actually about Sheriff Bell and how old men have no place in this new, young man's violent world, but that just seems like a cop out to me and a sorry explanation for the last scene to an otherwise "decent, good movie". After Chigurh was in the car accident (which wasn't unexpected, but still made no sense ), the movie shoulda did it's fade-to-black as he walked away. Instead, we spend 30 minutes with an "old man" giving a speech. I just kept looking at the remaining time every few minutes because everything just slowed down to a turtle's pace. Now, I know critics (and "serious moviegoers") generally HATE shoot-outs and battles at the end of their movies (even when the movies call for such things. I mean who in the crap was surprised there was a giant battle of robots at the end of "Transformers"? At the same time, who was disappointed that there was?), but to cap off a movie with an extra long monologue from an old sheriff when you spent MOST of it with someone else, completely threw me off. Mostly 'cuz you didn't get to see Llewelyn die! I didn't even recognize the body in the doorway as being his! I was sitting there the rest of the movie expecting him to suddenly turn a corner! In fact, I thought he was going to be in the bedroom, NOT Chigurh! Not to say that's what I wanted because that woulda been REALLY stupid, but most of the time "The Rules" are: "When you don't see 'em die onscreen, then they didn't die." Without it, I was left empty. His death wasn't real to me and I couldn't focus on the Old Man Sheriff like I was supposed to. I just kept lookin' at the remaining time.

I've also read how people saw Chigurh as Fate come to life. I'm not real sure how that is. He was a murderer that occasionally flipped a coin and let his "victim" call it. He didn't do it everytime and it turned out he was hired by the guy who used to run Newsradio. (Looks like ol' Jimmy James lost his station and has turned to a life of crime and buckshot in his face! )

It seems folks are either putting a whole lot of extra meaning into this movie so they seem smarter than the "average moviegoer" or the novel told you things alot more clearly. I can honestly say that this was THE FIRST Coen Brothers film that left a bitter taste in my mouth by the end of it. The ONLY reason I can see for this picture winning an Oscar would be because it had a monologue at the end instead of a shoot-out. Once again, I'm not saying there shoulda been a shoot-out. I just needed closure... and I never got it. It started with Chigurh. It shoulda ended with Chigurh. If they wanted to end the movie on Sheriff Bell, making it about "old men", they should have made him more the center of the story instead of suddenly switching gears at the end. That's just how I feel about it anyway.

Next up: "There Will Be Blood" I better not be disappointed again! This will be my third most anticipated movie from last year and I was soooooo let down by my other 2 ("Sweeney Todd" & "No Country...")!

You're missing the part where Havier Bardem's performance is so incredible it makes up for a lot of the movie, not to mention wins him like 20 awards..

I saw it this weekend for the first time.

quote:

Originally posted by Monkey_Boy:

It seems folks are either putting a whole lot of extra meaning into this movie so they seem smarter than the "average moviegoer" or the novel told you things alot more clearly. ... It started with Chigurh. It shoulda ended with Chigurh. If they wanted to end the movie on Sheriff Bell, making it about "old men", they should have made him more the center of the story instead of suddenly switching gears at the end. That's just how I feel about it anyway.

After watching it I sorta felt this way, that I had missed something about the film. I wasn't really disappointed. It worked as a 'genre mixing' thriller and was somewhat fascinating in that, as others have said, it "broke all the rules", regardless of whether this was a story worthy of that. Monkey, if I remember correctly, it did start with sheriff Bell's narration wondering about how he stacked up with the elders, so I thought the ending narration just brought it in full circle.

quote:

Peewee:
There cannot be a "confrontation" between the two (in the usual way that a Western or a thriller pits good and evil in a final confrontation) because they actually occupy different worlds, the sheriff in the past that he mourns the loss of and Chigurh in the new world that we all live in. The sheriff cannot even properly LOCATE Chigurh to confront him. So a confrontation or similar traditional narrative resolution (not a "happy ending", but a resolution) would have been false to the themes of the movie.

Excellent analysis and those were my thoughts in interpreting why someone like Chigurh was allowed to "win" and why the sheriff ultimately found himself chasing a ghost, not just lost in the current state of affairs but, as he said in the speech with Uncle Ellis, more importantly his loss in realizing that he will never (and cannot) live up to his own idealized expectations.

One thing I was disappointed with was the character of Chigurh, and the acting of Javier. Now that was overrated. His mumbling and awkwardly forceful demeanor really discredited any sort of tense restraint that he was supposed to exhibit. I just felt like almost any actor could have played that part and given out the same "good enough to fit the part" performance, whereas the rest of the characters/actors seemed to standout in their parts. It's probably not Javier, who is a skilled actor, but the way the character was set-up.

Anyways, I enjoyed it but didn't think it was that spectacular, as it seemed to be more style of substance. There Will Be Blood got robbed . Monk, you might not like that film much either, as it had a rather contentious ending and was even more drawn out than this film - again it was style over substance, but I liked the acting, character development, and story better than with No Country.

Also, has anyone read the poem that the book No Country for Old Men takes it's title from?

Awsome ending
The characters of the movie wer ew fantastic