I saw "No Country for Old Men" yesterday, and thought it was amazing. I'm not, you know, an "expert" in movies, but I do consider myself a cineast (if that's a word in English). Which to me means that I try to go to the cinema at least once a week (sometimes even twice), and I try to be careful about the movies I choose to go to (also because it's quite expensive, I think). Oh, and also: I like to go to the cinema on my own (as in: alone), which some people consider a very sad thing to do, but I love it, mainly because after having seen a good movie, I don't feel like talking at all, neither about the movie, nor about anything else. I just want to go home silently and still be in the "mood" of the movie.
Anyway, coming back to the new Cohen brother's masterpiece and why I think it is a masterpiece. It begins like a lot of Cohen brother's movies do: somebody does something really stupid which gets him (almost never her) into a really bad situation. Like for example: You find a bunch of abandoned cars with corpses lying around in the middle of the desert, obviously there are drugs involved, so - what do you do?? Well, what I would do is get the hell out of there and hope no one saw me. I might consider calling the police. Which, obviously, isn't a very interesting plot for a film, and that's why the protagonist of "No Country for Old Men" does nothing of the like, but goes chasing after the only survivor (well, obviously: if you find a bunch of shot people, there must be at least one survivor), and that's when the troubles start. So far, so Cohen.
What I really really like about this movie: it's about violence, but it doesn't give you all that psychological explanation bullshit like a lot of movies do. There is this psycho killer (Javier Bardem) who is a total lunatic, but throughout the movie, you learn next to nothing about him, his life, why he's doing what he's doing etc. Considering there are a lot of films about psychos and serial killers that most of the time end up giving you an explanation for their conduct (usually, child abuse is the answer!), I think it is pretty amazing how little you learn about this killer's psyche and life. I mean, this guy is running around with this animal-slaughtering-machine thing, Jesus, you would think that deserves some kind of explanation (like in "Silence of the lambs" or so)! My guess is that the Cohens are "playing" with precisely this genre of "psychological thriller", they know we are "trained" to expect an explanation, that we make up all these conjectures throughout the movie, etc. So basically I think they're leaving this blank because we are filling in all sorts of explanations anyway, to make sense of the movie. Which reminds me of something Peter Haneke once said about violence in movies: He said it's much more effective to not show violence "directly", in a full shot, because nothing you can ever film will be as gruesome as the spectators imagination.
Coming back to the Cohens, I think they also discharge the "historical" explanation. At one point, the sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) brabbles on how he doesn't understand the world and the people anymore (we're talking about the 80ies here), and that he wants to retire because it's just too much for him etc. Upon which his uncle (or some other older relative) tells him the story of a sheriff getting violently killed in 1909. So it's always been like that. Furthermore, there's obviously drugs and a lot of money involved in this whole chase, but that's really also quite out of focus. It's a frame, allright, to get the story going. But you never know: who is fighting against whom, why did the deal not work out, what happened, who are the "good" guys, who are the "bad" guys, etc. There's violence. You don't understand it. Voilà. Or rather: whatever we do to try to understand it won't ever be enough.
Another great thing about this movie: It doesn't give you this whole "action-hero-alone-against-all-odds" bullshit. I mean, the protagonist is just a "somebody", he's not fucking Bruce Willis in "Die Hard", and so he won't get out of this mess easily, even though at one point you get to know that he was in Vietnam, so there is this (very brief) moment of "Oh, okay, now here's Rambo coming back, he will all outwit and shoot them".
Then, the title: "No Country for Old Men." Which I think is brilliant by itself. If you want to dig further, obviously a lot of people get killed throughout the movie, so, you know, there are no old men because a lot of them die young or fairly young. (At one point, towards the end, Tommy Lee Jones says that he is twenty years older than his dad ever was.) Also, as I indicated, Lee Jones plays this older sheriff who is getting really tired and anxious about his job (and the world in general), so, again, no country for old men: even if you live to grow old, you're not going to be able to live/stand it.
Finally: there is no music in this movie (except for the very end, when the credits start appearing). Which again reminds me of Peter Haneke, who said that using music in a movie to enhance emotions (fear, sympathy, romance, etc) is just a very plain and easy thing to do, because it picks up the spectator very easily without needing a lot of well elaborated visual hints.
So, to come to an end: go see the movie.
Anyway, coming back to the new Cohen brother's masterpiece and why I think it is a masterpiece. It begins like a lot of Cohen brother's movies do: somebody does something really stupid which gets him (almost never her) into a really bad situation. Like for example: You find a bunch of abandoned cars with corpses lying around in the middle of the desert, obviously there are drugs involved, so - what do you do?? Well, what I would do is get the hell out of there and hope no one saw me. I might consider calling the police. Which, obviously, isn't a very interesting plot for a film, and that's why the protagonist of "No Country for Old Men" does nothing of the like, but goes chasing after the only survivor (well, obviously: if you find a bunch of shot people, there must be at least one survivor), and that's when the troubles start. So far, so Cohen.
What I really really like about this movie: it's about violence, but it doesn't give you all that psychological explanation bullshit like a lot of movies do. There is this psycho killer (Javier Bardem) who is a total lunatic, but throughout the movie, you learn next to nothing about him, his life, why he's doing what he's doing etc. Considering there are a lot of films about psychos and serial killers that most of the time end up giving you an explanation for their conduct (usually, child abuse is the answer!), I think it is pretty amazing how little you learn about this killer's psyche and life. I mean, this guy is running around with this animal-slaughtering-machine thing, Jesus, you would think that deserves some kind of explanation (like in "Silence of the lambs" or so)! My guess is that the Cohens are "playing" with precisely this genre of "psychological thriller", they know we are "trained" to expect an explanation, that we make up all these conjectures throughout the movie, etc. So basically I think they're leaving this blank because we are filling in all sorts of explanations anyway, to make sense of the movie. Which reminds me of something Peter Haneke once said about violence in movies: He said it's much more effective to not show violence "directly", in a full shot, because nothing you can ever film will be as gruesome as the spectators imagination.
Coming back to the Cohens, I think they also discharge the "historical" explanation. At one point, the sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) brabbles on how he doesn't understand the world and the people anymore (we're talking about the 80ies here), and that he wants to retire because it's just too much for him etc. Upon which his uncle (or some other older relative) tells him the story of a sheriff getting violently killed in 1909. So it's always been like that. Furthermore, there's obviously drugs and a lot of money involved in this whole chase, but that's really also quite out of focus. It's a frame, allright, to get the story going. But you never know: who is fighting against whom, why did the deal not work out, what happened, who are the "good" guys, who are the "bad" guys, etc. There's violence. You don't understand it. Voilà. Or rather: whatever we do to try to understand it won't ever be enough.
Another great thing about this movie: It doesn't give you this whole "action-hero-alone-against-all-odds" bullshit. I mean, the protagonist is just a "somebody", he's not fucking Bruce Willis in "Die Hard", and so he won't get out of this mess easily, even though at one point you get to know that he was in Vietnam, so there is this (very brief) moment of "Oh, okay, now here's Rambo coming back, he will all outwit and shoot them".
Then, the title: "No Country for Old Men." Which I think is brilliant by itself. If you want to dig further, obviously a lot of people get killed throughout the movie, so, you know, there are no old men because a lot of them die young or fairly young. (At one point, towards the end, Tommy Lee Jones says that he is twenty years older than his dad ever was.) Also, as I indicated, Lee Jones plays this older sheriff who is getting really tired and anxious about his job (and the world in general), so, again, no country for old men: even if you live to grow old, you're not going to be able to live/stand it.
Finally: there is no music in this movie (except for the very end, when the credits start appearing). Which again reminds me of Peter Haneke, who said that using music in a movie to enhance emotions (fear, sympathy, romance, etc) is just a very plain and easy thing to do, because it picks up the spectator very easily without needing a lot of well elaborated visual hints.
So, to come to an end: go see the movie.
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