no country for old men
deej
5,125 Posts
incredible film
deej
5,125 Posts
Comments
I loved the novel by Cormac McCarthy, and thought while reading it that it would make a perfect Coen Bros film, so I was excited when it was announced as their next project. In some ways, however, they stuck to the novel a little too closely; there's a lot of philosophical speech-making that doesn't work too well here, and a few strangely anticlimatic moments that worked as literary devices but on the big screen leave you wanting more.
Maybe it was just me fighting off the usual "the book was better than the movie" sentiment... but I will say that I saw it w/ a few people who hadn't read the book, and they were asking me questions about what actually happened in a few crucial scenes, which isn't a good sign.
But lots of blood, lots of grim humor, and good performances all around -- plus some amazing scenes, especially Bardem's first appearance and a cat-and-mouse type chase/battle scene in and around a decaying small-town hotel -- that make up for a few slow and/or uninvolving scenes.
those two movies you mentioned to me are the epitome of coen bros' glory days. i'm much more a fan of them when they show a little restraint. although i did appreciate the absurd albert finney killing machine scene.
i'm super excited about this movie. i hear javier bardem is great in it
Yeah, it wasn't perfect but this is the best movie of its kind i've seen in a long time. The high points are so good that I would forgive much lower points than actually occurred. I think i'm gonna see it again in the theater.
Plus it was worth it just to see the trailer of There Will Be Blood on the big screen. I'm trying not to hype that one up too much in my head but that trailer should win an award or something.
See, I found him more menacing when he was silent, grim and deranged-looking than when he was calm, seated, and chatty. But I agree, some very tense moments in this film that find an unconventional but intriguing release.
onetet, i got one too...
kind of spoiler:
at the end of the film, what was the deal when tommy lee went into the hotel room where bardem was hiding? seemed like bardem was in there at one moment, then gone the next... was he just hiding behind the door?
Yeah, that one had me puzzled, too. I don't remember from the book (it's been more than a year since I read it), and I wondered if he had been hiding behind, say, the bathroom door but the cutting of the film confused the issue and made us assume he was right behind the front door of the motel room.
Either way, I guess the point is how ghost-like Bardem's character is -- which is kinda a cliche for a movie assassin, but they earned it here.
BTW, the questions my friends had were much less specific -- more like "so who's dead and who's alive at the end of the story?" Which made me worry that the film would leave a lot of people confused on very basic narrative levels if they hadn't read the book. But seems like most other people I've talked to (and people here) have been able to at least get the major plot points.
My take was that he escaped out the window.
here's another SPOILER
Did he kill the wife?
At first i didn't think so but then the last two killing scenes they didn't show the actual killings. So that would be the third, which I think they set up intentionally.
********SPOILER****************
Yes.
SPOILER
Yes he definitely did kill the wife. You know this because as he's walking out the house he checks his shoes to see if there is blood on them.
When he killed Woody you see the blood moving towards his shoes as he's on the phone with Brolin's character and he lifts his feet up to make sure he doesn't get any on himself.
Ahhhh. Have to see that again. I thought at first he might not have because she refused to answer the coin flip.
Also, as far as the structure of the film goes, after the confrontation at the gas station with the old propietor, you know that second coin toss is only going one way.
Music for the film was composed by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood
True, and the structure of not showing the two preceding killings. So subtle with it! At least to my eyes
I don't necessarily agree with that....I mean it's a Coen Brothers film. That could just be the catch with this dude.....
Anyway he was one of the most intriguing characters I've seen on the big screen for a long, long time. Dude was amazing. The Woody Harrelson appearance was very weird I thought....
But the weirdest piece of the film, at least for me, was that a man a row in front of me had what I was told (I couldn't see it) a major during the last five mins of the film. Very large theatre too (LA heads - it was at the Grove). So no one really heard what went down during the last five mins. Guy was yelling for a doctor and all that - felt awful for the dude. Credits began to roll and film was shot and lights turned up after abot 10 seconds of end titles...
Whoa, must not have been my showing. (I was there @11:20 on sat.) A major what? Heart attack? That would be terrible.
Yeah, this aspect of the film was crucial for me.
As this adaptation turned out well, I have to say I'm intrigued by the prospect of this one:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898367/
...an adaptation of McCarthy's far-darker dystopian novel The Road.
Fits somewhere between Michael Haneke films like Time of the Wolf and Jose Saramago's novel Blindness (also being filmed, in this case by the director of City Of God and with an amazing cast:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0861689/ )
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/moviereviews/2007/071108/
Hmm, yeah, I have mixed feelings about that review -- and although I'd still say he's probably my favorite film critic, his taste has become much more erratic in the last few years.
On the one hand, he's always been a crusader for people developing their own taste, and I often cheer him on when he doesn't join the choir for films getting great reviews, even when it happens to be one I liked a lot (as is the case here). His work building an alternative film-history canon (in reaction to the first AFI preserved-films list) was very intriguing to me, making the case that one could omit almost all of the most-cited "best" films of all time, and come up with an equally masterful, intriguing, and arguably fresher approach to film history. I took a lot away from that sort of thinking that I apply to all the arts; brilliant, solidly individualistic stuff.
But I think he missed his mark with this one. While there may be something to the premise that fascination w/ serial killers increases in times of war, I really don't think that's the appeal of this film. First of all, I don't think it's really a serial-killer film; one of the main characters is a remorseless hitman, and this may sound like splitting hairs but I think the killer-for-profit story is a distinct genre from ther serial-killer story, or at least can be. I think the actual appeal of this film is that it's a well-done, atmospheric thriller from a director team a lot of people follow, and whose last few films have been kinda slight and silly.
Also, even the mildly kind words he has for Lars and the Real Girl tend to discredit his taste at this moment in time -- Lars is one of the stankiest terds I've sat through in some time.
feel the disappointment from the full house with the
ending. It didn't bother me so much, although open-ended
films always are a shock to the system.
What struck me the most was the *SPOILERALERT*[/b] killing of
essentially the main character, or at least the one you most
identify with, so early in the film. It's genius and obvious
at the same time - you are rooting for Moss to take out Chigurh
and are conditioned by Hollywood to expect it, which gives his
death an unexpected weight even amidst such a huge body count ... but
some of the air goes out of the film with his killing - again, seemingly
with intent, as we are now lost and feel like we've lost any idea
of what might happen next. The film on a whole is a jarring experience,
slow but never dull, intense but a little hazy.
I agree with what you're saying, although -- early in the film? Seems like there might be only 15 mins or so left after that happens. But yeah, it really creats a mood of disbelief when that happens since it defies filmic expectations so much.
Might be more than 15 minutes, but yeah, I think part of the reason
I thought of it as "early" was because the film ended abruptly and
I expected it to go on longer, so it felt like there was more left
at that point than there actually may have been.