this'll do til the mess gets here
No Country for Old Men (2007), Joel & Ethan Coen. November 11, 7:15pm. View count: One.
I quite liked this. I very much respect and am cheered by the choice to not give normal closure to any part of the story or indeed the story itself (I understand that the latter was handled the same way in the book. I don't really know exactly where it ended and the Coens began, otherwise). It's not a crazy incoherent plot, but to know that you have to do some thinking. We were able to put together the sequence of events reasonably well afterward, but there was still a good chunk left open to interpretation.
One of the more interesting overall aspects was that the movie doesn't care about much of anything that isn't connected with the killer. He is much more constant and attended-to than any of the other characters, which, given that he is a remorseless murderer, is somewhat unusual. Arguably he's even the protagonist of this story. People react to him, not the other way around. He's the most active character, easily. This isn't handled in a Hannibal Lecter way (which people have said, I suspect not least because of the ending, which shares much visually and thematically with Silence of the Lambs'); it's not a case of 'oh, isn't he an insane genius, who just happens to like to eat human flesh?' The killer is treated more like a force of nature, although he has setbacks which he overcomes (which ties into the him-as-protagonist thing). No one in the story has a normal character arc, now that I think of it.
Lessons include: life is precarious, the desert doesn't care, and death will get to you eventually. I definitely want to see this one again.
I quite liked this. I very much respect and am cheered by the choice to not give normal closure to any part of the story or indeed the story itself (I understand that the latter was handled the same way in the book. I don't really know exactly where it ended and the Coens began, otherwise). It's not a crazy incoherent plot, but to know that you have to do some thinking. We were able to put together the sequence of events reasonably well afterward, but there was still a good chunk left open to interpretation.
One of the more interesting overall aspects was that the movie doesn't care about much of anything that isn't connected with the killer. He is much more constant and attended-to than any of the other characters, which, given that he is a remorseless murderer, is somewhat unusual. Arguably he's even the protagonist of this story. People react to him, not the other way around. He's the most active character, easily. This isn't handled in a Hannibal Lecter way (which people have said, I suspect not least because of the ending, which shares much visually and thematically with Silence of the Lambs'); it's not a case of 'oh, isn't he an insane genius, who just happens to like to eat human flesh?' The killer is treated more like a force of nature, although he has setbacks which he overcomes (which ties into the him-as-protagonist thing). No one in the story has a normal character arc, now that I think of it.
Lessons include: life is precarious, the desert doesn't care, and death will get to you eventually. I definitely want to see this one again.