No Country For Old Men (First Viewing)

You should get Blood Simple. Excellent film and of their discography probably the most like No Country, in that it's a non comic crime type thriller.

 

Please. You have no idea what I like to watch nor do you have the ability to respect other people's opinions. My friendly suggestion would be to get some manners or don't bother replying to me in the future. Trust me ; you're no intellectual titan because you like Cohen brothers movies.

 

MORE SPOILERS

I think it pretty clear he did kill her. The film earlier made it clear that part of his approach was to not leave foot prints from the blood of his victims, hence the checking of his feet as he left the house.

I also think the subsequent car crash and its meaning in the film is more significant if it follows his killing her, as opposed to following her letting her live.

His intention to abide by the coin toss (once he decided to offer it) I also think was clear. The gas station attendant after all he scared the daylights out of, and he could not be sure he would not call the police about him. But the main point is I don't think he was concerned about anyone having a lead on him just because he was in Carla Jean's house. He would simply disappear again.

 

NCFOM brings you into its own world so completely that you just accept its terms and don't ask too many 'practical' questions (at least, I don't). BUT - given how dangerous Chigurh was (and was known to be, prior to the events of the film), isn't he treated rather casually by the police? From the local cop who turns him in, then turns his back on him while making a phone-call and so gets garrotted to the Sheriff who just does things by the book and feels 'over-parted'? I don't know West Texas, but I would've thought someone like Chiggurh would have justified a full-scale manhunt, with his face appearing on local news programmes and being plastered all over the papers. Yet he's able to roll up to motels and book himself in for the night without so much as a how d'you do....

 

I tend to at least like Coen Brothers films, but not all of them. For some reason I did not really like Raising Arizona, and Inside Llewyn Davis didn't move me (funny especially there, since I think Oscar Isaac is one of the great actors working today). But I loved Lebowski and Fargo, and really enjoyed the others like Burn After Reading and even A Serious Man. Blood Simple was also excellent.

 

I'd forgotten that was one of theirs. Yes, I liked it, too.

 

Curious what you thought of True Grit

 

Indeed and that he’s gone so far that, by no longer playing by the rules of the game, he no longer belongs.

By the way for noir fans the classic film The Last Seduction by the marvelous John Dahl (kind of a prototype to this film in some respects although it plays by the more traditional tropes of noir before subverting some of them) is available to preorder on Blu Ray.

 

BurnAfterReading did absolutely nothing for me. I thought it was a mediocre Coen “knock off”(meaning they used the tropes of their own films as if they were someone else making a tribute). I side Levy Davis, except for Oscar Issac, did nothing for me although it did seem like an extension of the ASimple Man.

 

Indeed, Blood Simple plays well with The Last Seduction but even better with John Dahl’s RedRocks West.

 

It's the best movie by the best filmmaking team of the past 30 years, for the simple reason that Joel and Ethan Coen were able to take brilliant source material (most of the dialogue is taken verbatim from the book) and then precisely put their unmistakable stylistic stamp on it.

It's visually beautiful, showing a vast, rough Texas that only natives of that state tend to experience.

It has scenes of unbearable tension leavened by several moments of impish humor.

It forces the viewer to confront an ambiguous ending that's more profound the more one considers it.

There's not a false note struck by any of the cast. Even in their brief time on the screen, the border guard and the menswear store owner (to name just two examples) absolutely hit the bull's eye.

Carter Burwell's sound design (not really a score) underscores the story's tone perfectly.

Broad-brush comment, but I really have to question the qualitative savvy of anyone who found nothing to like in No Country For Old Men.

 

I'm loving all the discussion about this movie/story. As it seems that a theme motif is ethics I'm wondering if the initial decision by Moss to take the money is the initial ethical conflict. Had he not taken the money at all then he goes back to life as he knows it, at least for a while. His conscience that moved him to give the guy water was the same that was flexible enough to motivate him to take the money in the first place. I haven't seen this movie in quite some time and so details are a bit fuzzy for me, so I'm basing this on what I can remember.

 

There really isn't - every single one of the minor performances is excellent. I particularly liked Beth Grant's as Carla Jean's Mother



Kelly Macdonald's accent is maybe the best I've ever heard from a non-native Southerner.

 

The Big Lebowski is basically a Mickey Spillane private eye detective story conducted by spastic social burnouts and misfits. Just exchange Humphrey Bogart with Jeff Bridge's slacker, surfer hippy dude and that alone will make anyone laugh. I got it the first time I saw it when it was first released in theaters. I now have the Blu-Ray. It is considered to be a Coen Brothers classic. There's even fan clubs and festivals celebrating the lifestyle of the characters in that movie.

 

And she's the voice of the main scottish girl in Pixar's Brave!! Hard to believe.

 

A lot of great stuff in this thread.

I hated the movie the first time I saw it. Too intense for me. I generally don't like horror or gore movies, and the Coens set up a lot of scenes where you're waiting for the worst. Once i got through it, and came back to it a year later, knowing what happens in the movie, I loved it - a LOT. As you can tell from this thread, there's a lot of pieces open for interpretation, a lot to absorb and take in. Well acted, and beautifully shot.

A few years ago we moved out to West Texas. I took my cranky little boy for a drive, when he fell asleep I turned down a road and just drove for 30 minutes, didn't see another car. Took a picture, and had it as my wallpaper for a while. Next time I watched No Country, I realized I took that at the exact spot where Chigurrh kills the first guy by pulling him over in the cop car, I was standing at the little rock wall you can see in that scene. Still one of my favorite places out here, it's so quiet and beautiful, we had family portraits taken there one year. You're at the top of hills that roll below you , and that road hits Mexico about 15 miles later.



Fast forward a few years, my wife now works for the guy who gets killed by Chigurrh in that scene. He's a local, and I couldn't place how I knew him til it clicked. He's a very nice guy.


I still prefer There Will Be Blood, also filmed out this way at the same time, and both hired lots of locals for extras or bigger parts - the kid that played Daniel Day Lewis's son for example was a local kid who I don't think did anything else, the Sunday girls.

 

I think Kelly MacDonald is the best thing I've ever seen. Meow.

 

I havn't seen The Man Who Wasn't There mentioned as a Coen Brothers must-see...It is.

 

Yeah, good question.

I thought it was good to very good, but not great. Jeff Bridges part was great, but then what is he bad in? But I thought the Mattie parts were more a mixed bag. Josh Brolin was good, but somehow I was not impressed with Matt Damon's performance. The film overall felt a bit disjointed, loose. The cinematography was excellent, and it all looked very authentic, which since I do love westerns was nice. I gave it a generous 7.5 out of 10. Coulda been a 7. Most of that was for Bridges. He's one of my favorites.

And you?

 

Burn seems at first glance like a procedural with a comedic bent. Since the story is intentionally farcical, it doesn't work for everybody. I think it helps to see it also on the level of being a series of comedy riffs. From talking to those who both liked or disliked it, whether they did often had to do with what they thought of Brad Pitt's character and portrayal, which I thought was hilarious. Great cast.

 

Yes. I am a bit embarrassed to say this, but I love her. I'd say don't tell my wife but she already knows.

 

I especially loved her in this movie. Oh, my.

 

The fundamental problem with seeing the taking of the money as the ethical issue is the complicating factor that the decision to return with the water amounts to. But it starts even before that. Moss after all didn't steal the money by emptying a collections box in a church. The people involved were not only bad guys. They were all dead bad guys dead because of the nature of what they did. It's not even accurate to say he stole it in any legal sense. Having found it, did the law expect him to find the drug buyers and return it to them? Of course not. And even if one takes the position the law would want him to turn it over to the police, that is more in the nature of what the law calls malum prohibitum*, meaning here not having an inherent ethical component. Of course I know many who do not agree with me on that.

But taking it back to a form of but for causation, which is the more interesting imo way to look at it, yes, it is true once he took the money, he unknowingly was getting on a roller coaster ride that eventually and, as the film portrays it, inexorably led to his demise. Except what really complicated that is two things - one is on an ethical level Moss did not foresee where the path taken would lead to. Of course if he literally knew that it would have been a form of intentional suicide to pick up and take the money, he would not have taken it. While he did probably think there was some risk to taking it, I think he discounted the risk, which is part of why he went back with the water. More to the point is the decision to take the water back was motivated by caring for the man left in the truck and his guilty conscience. But if he had not have gone back, would he have gotten entangled with those searching for the money?

Maybe, maybe not.

It's all part of the purposeful ambiguity of the film.

* Malum prohibitum - Wikipedia

 

I would go higher, but I confess a lot of that is due to Bridges. I liked their touches of weird--the sudden violence, the guy wearing the furs, the ending with 'no closure' and her hand.
I don't remember much of the first one, I was underwhelmed by Glen; but Duvall was a force in those days.

 

shes great in, loved since Gosford Park. I think this is in the Coens Top 5: Fargo, No Country, Millers Crossing, Baton Fink, Lebowski, probably number 1.