No Country for Sane Men?
Karl Jung once wrote that we are a sick society because we have lost a valid myth to live by.
What a perfect quote to describe the society pictured in the Coen Brothers remarkable, powerful, perfect, and devastating movie, No Country for Old Men. I have been avoiding seeing it until I absolutely had to. The reviews all talked about the level of violence that was in the movie even while praising it as perhaps among the greatest movies ever made.
Well, I agree. And was surprised by it. Yes, it was violent. Terribly violent. But any more so than last year's winner, The Departed when blood splattered all over Boston- which is where it got its name? Any more so than this year's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead? No, I don't think so.
What made this movie so incredibly shocking as the story and direction and the whole package of the movie itself. The violence is so senseless. Even more so than in Before the Devil. It leaps at you, grabs you, reminds you what you don't want to be reminded of- that we humans are a violent species. We do things to others of our own for less than noble- or even instinctive- reasons.
That is Anton Chigurh's character. A robotic killing machine. Javier Bardem has added a new character to the classic evil character. Chigurh is right there with Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter. He makes you want to invite Freddy Krueger and Darth Vader over for dinner. Cold, calculating, creepy- you name it, Bardem manages it with hardly a blink of an eye.
Josh Brolin plays the target of Bardem's evil after he finds drug money and wants it to better his life and his wife's. Under his rough exterior you get the sense that he really just wants out of the dead end street of life. But you don't get something for nothing. Not in this world. He and Bardem are hardly on the screen together but they play off each other quite well. Brolin's acting is superb.
Then there's the older, wizened sheriff of Tommy Lee Jones. What a treat to watch him on the screen. He's tired and worn out and overwhelmed by what has happened to his world in just the stretch of one lifetime. Chigurh is just the final straw to help him realize he is someplace he can't be anymore- this is no country for old men. If this isn't his best performance of the year, I can hardly wait to see him in The Valley of Elah for which he got the nomination. It is a deeper variation on his amazing turn in Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
The sheriff is the voice of the soul in this bleak picture of humanity. There is no hope, there is no salvation to be found. You can have your dreams- but in the end you have to wake up.
The Coen Brothers have created their masterpiece. They have their odd-beat sense of humor. Yet you are afraid to laugh when it happens for fear that it will be just a trick and lead into something even more horrific than you have already seen. You are sure you are being mis-directed, set-up, for the kill. There is no music on the soundtrack but the use of sounds in that deafening silence is amazing. You know, you just know what is about to happen and you also know there is no way you will be ready for it when it happens.
Is this, then, a horror picture? Not in the sense of Elm Street or Friday the 13th. This is Hitchcockian- and then some. This uses the world around you, in its desolate aloneness to create the atmosphere. After the movie I stopped at a gas station to get some coffee for the ride home. As I walked out I had a moment of terror- what if....
If this doesn't win the best picture, nothing should. In terms of movie making, it is what movie making is all about. I only hope that it, along with Cormac McCarthy's book on which it is based, is not a picture of the truth of humanity. Sanity is lost; hope is lost and you only hang on to your humanity by the thinnest of threads.
Well, I agree. And was surprised by it. Yes, it was violent. Terribly violent. But any more so than last year's winner, The Departed when blood splattered all over Boston- which is where it got its name? Any more so than this year's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead? No, I don't think so.
What made this movie so incredibly shocking as the story and direction and the whole package of the movie itself. The violence is so senseless. Even more so than in Before the Devil. It leaps at you, grabs you, reminds you what you don't want to be reminded of- that we humans are a violent species. We do things to others of our own for less than noble- or even instinctive- reasons.
That is Anton Chigurh's character. A robotic killing machine. Javier Bardem has added a new character to the classic evil character. Chigurh is right there with Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter. He makes you want to invite Freddy Krueger and Darth Vader over for dinner. Cold, calculating, creepy- you name it, Bardem manages it with hardly a blink of an eye.
Josh Brolin plays the target of Bardem's evil after he finds drug money and wants it to better his life and his wife's. Under his rough exterior you get the sense that he really just wants out of the dead end street of life. But you don't get something for nothing. Not in this world. He and Bardem are hardly on the screen together but they play off each other quite well. Brolin's acting is superb.
Then there's the older, wizened sheriff of Tommy Lee Jones. What a treat to watch him on the screen. He's tired and worn out and overwhelmed by what has happened to his world in just the stretch of one lifetime. Chigurh is just the final straw to help him realize he is someplace he can't be anymore- this is no country for old men. If this isn't his best performance of the year, I can hardly wait to see him in The Valley of Elah for which he got the nomination. It is a deeper variation on his amazing turn in Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
The sheriff is the voice of the soul in this bleak picture of humanity. There is no hope, there is no salvation to be found. You can have your dreams- but in the end you have to wake up.
The Coen Brothers have created their masterpiece. They have their odd-beat sense of humor. Yet you are afraid to laugh when it happens for fear that it will be just a trick and lead into something even more horrific than you have already seen. You are sure you are being mis-directed, set-up, for the kill. There is no music on the soundtrack but the use of sounds in that deafening silence is amazing. You know, you just know what is about to happen and you also know there is no way you will be ready for it when it happens.
Is this, then, a horror picture? Not in the sense of Elm Street or Friday the 13th. This is Hitchcockian- and then some. This uses the world around you, in its desolate aloneness to create the atmosphere. After the movie I stopped at a gas station to get some coffee for the ride home. As I walked out I had a moment of terror- what if....
If this doesn't win the best picture, nothing should. In terms of movie making, it is what movie making is all about. I only hope that it, along with Cormac McCarthy's book on which it is based, is not a picture of the truth of humanity. Sanity is lost; hope is lost and you only hang on to your humanity by the thinnest of threads.
Back to Jung's quote and the need for "valid" myths. Sadly this movie shows us that the myths we have often lived by are not "valid," i.e. don't give us health and hope. The myths we live by can be very violent and hopeless leading to death of body and soul. I am sure the sheriff's soul is not dead since he knows that something is very, very wrong. In that may lie the hope even if we do have to wake up and face the reality around us.
Wow! What a movie! But don't expect to be uplifted.
Wow! What a movie! But don't expect to be uplifted.
1 comment:
Well written article.
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