No Country For Old Men

[Alexandro]

I don't have much to add here, the film is quite great. Not a masterpiece in my book, but a good example of how the majority of films should be.

It's a film to think about long after it's over. I loved the ending for the simple fact that it fucks with people's heads. Audiences are so used to get everything chewed up and digested for them that any attemp to think about something for at least two minutes pisses them off. "What? So does this means that I have to think for a second? Fuck that..."

I wouldn't compare a film to a book cause those are two different planets. But they should enrich one another. Is this something that happens in this case?

[Gold Trumpet]

I wouldn't compare a film to a book cause those are two different planets. But they should enrich one another. Is this something that happens in this case?

Not even close. If No Country for Old Men is the height of book adaptations, it means that films should diminish the major theme of the novel and just relate the story back to its nearest genre (in this case, a thriller). The one good thing the film does is make the story cinematic, but because that is to make a pure thriller, the cinematic translation becomes null and void. The end tries to give context to the rest of the story, but the film needed to make those themes and ideas its primary interest through out (which it didn't).

A cinematic experience can be rendered with the themes of the novel in tact. Filmmakers like the Dardennes are excellent for dramatics that entail philosophical relevance within the story. Sam Peckinpah also made violent westerns that had huge themes. It is nowhere near impossible to make a film that would have done the same for No Country the Old Men the novel, but the Coens were more interested in the layout of a shoot out that went the lengths of a full feature film.

[Alexandro]

I kind of agree with you about how the ending tries to give things that weren't there before. It's a very obvious shift, actually, right after the action goes to El Paso; it almost felt like the start of the third act in A.I., when sudddenly the so far standard linear narrative in which everything was clear turned to the philosophical in more abstract non literal ways. However I've only seen No Country once and the thing is it's having the effect of not wanting to leave my mind, so I gues it will take a few more viewings to see if, for real:

a) There was no context before the third act in the movie
b) I'm interpreting eveything wrong
c) The film has more to offer than one great sequence after another. (Just to name one thing)

I do think Josh Brolin is great in this, altohugh he never seemed too dumb to me, or at least not prominently so.

[Pedro]

I kind of agree with you about how the ending tries to give things that weren't there before. It's a very obvious shift, actually, right after the action goes to El Paso...I've only seen No Country once and the thing is it's having the effect of not wanting to leave my mind, so I gues it will take a few more viewings to see if, for real:

a) There was no context before the third act in the movie
b) I'm interpreting eveything wrong
c) The film has more to offer than one great sequence after another. (Just to name one thing)

I've seen it twice, and I would have to say:

a)  there is very little, if any.
c) yes.

I would also agree about how the ending tries to address those themes whereas the whole of the film does not.  But I enjoy how the third act stands out.  Having not read the book, I wasn't sure what I was in for.  They crafted an engaging thriller, and I was convinced that a thriller was all that I was going to see.  I was pleasantly surprised once the themes in question started to make an appearance. It worked for me, but I can see how this opinion could be peculiar to those of us who haven't read the book. 

[Gold Trumpet]

I would also agree about how the ending tries to address those themes whereas the whole of the film does not.  But I enjoy how the third act stands out.  Having not read the book, I wasn't sure what I was in for.  They crafted an engaging thriller, and I was convinced that a thriller was all that I was going to see.  I was pleasantly surprised once the themes in question started to make an appearance. It worked for me, but I can see how this opinion could be peculiar to those of us who haven't read the book. 

This film isn't just riding on being a thriller. It is said the Coens have made a masterpiece and that this film is a modern western. Both bullshit. I can admire the film as a thriller, but this film is wrapping up so much critical and award kudos that it just doesn't deserve. If the concessions the film makes to the themes are accepted then it just shows people are willing to treat film as a second tier art. In no way do large themes and literature go hand in hand. Film can take on subjects and operate in its own way. We honor old hollywood a little too much by considering genre the territory of high art. Enter childrenwithangels.....

[JG]

spoilers i guess if you still haven't seen it..

i don't know gt. what about the people who haven't read the book? i had no preconceptions of theme or genre, and mostly everything worked for me. this question might be addressed in your blood review, but does that movie fail because it doesn't accurately represent the themes presented in oil? it doesn't want to! you acknowledge that the movie doesn't need to be totally true to the book, but you still point out that the coen bros. omitted some of the best scenes. i didn't know that, so it didn't hinder my viewing experience. i don't think it should matter. i know a lot of of the no country praise comes from it being a "true" adaptation, but what if we approach it as 'no country: the movie' and not 'no country: the adaptation' and then try and derive meaning from that?

i wouldn't deny most of what you said in your initial review. most of the movie is an excellent thriller interspersed with seemingly anecdotal moments with tommy lee jones' character, but i think the importance of those scenes are made clear by the end. i don't know, does he literally do more to affect the main story in the novel? his inability to alter circumstance - his lack of "presence" - was what made the ending so sad for me. i thought this to be similar to zodiac in the way the themes slowly present themselves through the subtext, except no country goes a little bit further in illuminating the meaning by the film's end.

what do you consider to be the main themes anyway? i guess that's worth clarifying..

[Gold Trumpet]

spoilers i guess if you still haven't seen it..

i don't know gt. what about the people who haven't read the book? i had no preconceptions of theme or genre, and mostly everything worked for me. this question might be addressed in your blood review, but does that movie fail because it doesn't accurately represent the themes presented in oil? it doesn't want to! you acknowledge that the movie doesn't need to be totally true to the book, but you still point out that the coen bros. omitted some of the best scenes. i didn't know that, so it didn't hinder my viewing experience. i don't think it should matter. i know a lot of of the no country praise comes from it being a "true" adaptation, but what if we approach it as 'no country: the movie' and not 'no country: the adaptation' and then try and derive meaning from that?

i wouldn't deny most of what you said in your initial review. most of the movie is an excellent thriller interspersed with seemingly anecdotal moments with tommy lee jones' character, but i think the importance of those scenes are made clear by the end. i don't know, does he literally do more to affect the main story in the novel? his inability to alter circumstance - his lack of "presence" - was what made the ending so sad for me. i thought this to be similar to zodiac in the way the themes slowly present themselves through the subtext, except no country goes a little bit further in illuminating the meaning by the film's end.

what do you consider to be the main themes anyway? i guess that's worth clarifying..

I'll put it in a different way. It's like if someone adapted Hamlet and made it into a standard horror film because of the ghost and murders at the end. The adaptation could still have scenes at the end that paid lip service to themes in the original work, but people would balk because a great play was marginalized to fit a genre molding.

The reason they would balk isn't because the atmosphere of the play was changed, but because the characterization, the great meat of the play, was dropped to cater a substandard story. The subsequent film would lose all importance we associated with the play. Since No Country for Old Men isn't a great novel, it can be improved. The Coen Brothers could have improved the characterization. Doing so would have involved a lot of differences and new concepts, but they were completely off try to make a super thriller. It really marginalized the original concepts. The point is that film should be different, but it shouldn't concentrate on storytelling of lesser importance.

People don't need to read the novel to see a great part of the film is an out and out thriller. Looking above, I can tell other people already spotted it anyways.

Also, I haven't read Oil and resent your assumptions. That film is incompetent by itself. I also don't need to clarify themes. They are paid lip service to at the end. The point of the criticisms is in which how those themes are applied to the film. If it worked for you, good. It seems like a subjective point is made so I can't do much about that.

[tpfkabi]

just the other day i realized that Josh Brolin was older brother, Brand, in The Goonies.

  that's fucking crazy man

i don't get the pullman reference.

[Gamblour.]

I think it's obvious that he says that line in some movie. Judging from the grab, maybe Lost Highway? I've never seen it, but whatever.

[72teeth]

it's actually from Casper...

[Jeremy Blackman]

I think it's obvious that he says that line in some movie. Judging from the grab, maybe Lost Highway? I've never seen it, but whatever.

That's correct. It's a response to something the Robert Blake character says.

[MacGuffin]

The Coen brothers in the garden of good and evil
A turn to gravitas results in their most tragic, heartfelt work -- it's no country for the easy wisecrack.
By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times

Afamous dead white male, Horace Walpole, once observed, "Life is a comedy for those who think . . . and a tragedy for those who feel."

Since they first hit the big screen big-time two decades ago with the neo-noir thriller "Blood Simple," Ethan and Joel Coen have earned a reputation as thinking persons' comic entertainers, cockeyed observers of American life, with its ritualistic violence and heroic failures, its conflicted morals and bizarre regional folkways.

Over the course of a dozen movies, they've tended to make us laugh (and think) first and feel second; to crack deadpan jokes and paint gorgeous images while raising cosmic questions about the nature of good and evil and the devil's bargain that each man inevitably makes with his own soul.

But as last week's best picture Oscar confirmed, the Coens finally may have scored their long-awaited masterpiece with "No Country for Old Men," the brothers' most tragic, least humorous and, not coincidentally, most heartfelt work.

That powerful combination stems in large measure from "No Country's" source material, an existential-borderlands thriller by Cormac McCarthy. It was the Coens' good fortune, at a crucial juncture of their careers after two so-so movies ("The Man Who Wasn't There," "Intolerable Cruelty") and one major misfire ("The Ladykillers"), to have partnered with a kindred creative spirit. In McCarthy, the brothers found an artist equally as fascinated as themselves with the metaphysics of bloodshed and the everyday yet epic struggle between our inner angels and demons.

Though "No Country" is unmistakably a Coen brothers movie, it's also in some ways their least characteristic film. Yes, it exhibits their typically extra-dry sense of humor, often pitched at an odd upper register, like a dog whistle. Think of that scene in which the battered, bleeding Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), on the run from a relentless assassin (Javier Bardem) who wants some waylaid drug money back, wakes up in a Mexican border town to find himself surrounded by curious mariachi musicians.

Throughout their careers, the brothers have used such screwball touches to put a twist on their newfangled genre pastiches and to soften the sharp edges of the various mobsters, hit men, suburban desperadoes and chain-gang fugitives who wander across their mythic American landscapes. Their erudite wisecracking took the sting out of their penchant for jocular moral fables bathed in blood.

But it also removed some of the emotional bite from their movies. Even admirers sometimes wondered whether the brothers' distancing irony made it hard to take their movies seriously as statements about the human condition.

It was as if the Coens were constantly slipping a whoopee cushion between their art and their audience's emotional reactions to what was on the screen. Even the warmly humanizing presence of Frances McDormand (Joel Coen's wife), playing the tough- but-maternal police chief in "Fargo," couldn't fully thaw out the brothers' icy-black humor.

(After winning the lead actress Oscar for "Fargo," appearing backstage with her husband and brother-in-law to face the media, McDormand chimed in sympathetically and said something to the effect that she'd been trying to get a straight answer out of these guys for years.)

But in the desert wilderness that McCarthy's prose and Roger Deakins' cinematography so lyrically evoke, there is no oasis of sophomoric sight gags, no place to take refuge in smarty-pants references to old movies.

A biblical connection

"NO Country" (which will come out on DVD March 11) is a stark but richly poetic allegory about a Western garden of original sin in which a world-weary authority figure, Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), and a satanic predator (Bardem) fight over a naive young Adam who falls into temptation and drags his Eve down with him.

Measured in body counts, McCarthy's book is far gorier, to the point of macabre. But with "No Country," the brothers have reined in both their inner joker and their inner sadist and set free their inner humanist. We wince watching Llewelyn pluck those cactus spines (or whatever they are) out of his bleeding body. We shiver along with the gas station owner who saves his own life simply by calling "heads" when Bardem's blank-faced killer engages him in a high-stakes coin flip.

The Coens allow the story's full horror to register, while resisting emotional cheap shots. For example, they pass up McCarthy's description of a dead woman slumped in a rocking chair after being caught in the crossfire between Bardem's character and a group of rival bad guys. In their younger years, the Coens would've filmed that image with glee, maybe even have added a dead pet cat, plugged with a ricocheting bullet.

Now solidly into middle age, the Coens have entered their mature phase, more attuned to the perspective that comes with getting older, the understanding that mortality (even the cinematic illusion of mortality) should mean something more than beautifully photographed pools of blood.

That perspective suffuses McCarthy's novel, and it's the vision that lies behind the 1927 poem that gave title to his book, William Butler Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium." In Yeats' poem, an old man, dismayed at his physical decline, rhapsodizes about transmuting himself into a work of art, presumably through the very verses he is reciting to us.

His lyrical inspiration is the exquisite, eternal city of Byzantium (modern-day Istanbul), which is "no country for old men" because its sensual vitality is tailor-made for the young. Yeats' narrator muses about the immortality that a work of art can attain. "Gather me / Into the artifice of eternity," he pleads, striking a note that's simultaneously heroic and despairing.

The moral backbone

THE "old man" of the book and the film is craggy, humane Sheriff Bell. Like the narrator's lament in Yeats' poem, the sheriff's somber, wryly bemused reflections about the deteriorating ethical state of the world provide the narrative and moral framework of "No Country." But whereas Yeats' narrator comforts himself with the idea that he can use art to transcend death, Sheriff Bell knows that he can't save the world any more than he can stave off his own decline.

"No Country" ends with the sheriff telling his wife about a dream, a conclusion that many viewers apparently found baffling or unsatisfying because it wasn't a conventional Hollywood shoot-'em-up finale. But the ending, besides being true to the letter and spirit of McCarthy's book, also reflects the Coens' deepening artistry.

The chain-gang musical "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" (2000) was the Coens' adaptation of Homer's "Odyssey," considered the original comedic work of Western literature because it ends in renewal and regeneration. "No Country" may be the Coens' gruesome "Iliad," the cornerstone text of Western tragedy, because it offers a fatalistic vision of life in which character is destiny and action is fate.

[MacGuffin]

No Country for DP's
We chat with legendary cinematographer, Roger Deakins.

With No Country for Old Men making its way to DVD, we recently had the opportunity to sit down with legendary cinematography and frequent Coen-collaborator, Roger Deakins, to discuss his life-long body of classic work.

IGN: How did you originally get your start as a cinematographer?

DEAKINS: I went to the National Film School and whilst there I made some documentaries which I used to get work as a cameraman. It was mostly industrial training films at first but then I got a job covering the war in Rhodesia for the ANC and then a documentary about what life was like on a yacht in the Whitbread Round the World Race. I spent 9 months sailing and making a 90 min. film which was shown on ITV. That was my start and after about 7 years of doing documentaries and TV work I started getting offers for feature work.

IGN: What sort of creative partnerships work best for you - ones where the director has a very clear idea what he wants and you are responsible for realizing it (say, creating a storyboard on set, etc.), or ones where you are asked to create or compose a shot yourself (you are responsible for the cameras while he or she handles the actors)?

DEAKINS: It is really impossible to make a film that has a 'personality' unless the director has a clear idea of what he/she wants. That is not to say that as the Cinematographer I might not create and compose the shots myself, it's just that I need a point of view to work from. There are many times that I will create a shot list whilst watching a rehearsal and be totally responsible for the way something is shot but that is not to say the director, in such a case, has not a clear idea of what he wants. There are so many ways you can shoot a film. You could shoot everything wide with a static camera or you could shoot everything on a 100mm and extremely close. Neither is 'right' as there is no 'right' way to make a film, just an infinite set of possibilities.

IGN: Are there certain types of movies - dramas, effects-laden action films, etc. - that you respond most strongly to or enjoy most? Or least?

DEAKINS: I really have not done any action films or effects driven work. I am only really interested in seeing films that are about characters and about the world we live in. Those are the kinds of films I want to work on.

IGN: Describe your collaboration with the Coen brothers, who are very strongly visual directors and have always seemed to be very specific about what they want on screen.

DEAKINS: There scripts are very specific in the kind of world they are set in and therefore very visual. The Brothers are always very prepared. They storyboard everything and that is why they can be so efficient on smaller budgets. That is not to say everything is fixed on the day of shooting because it's not. Things can vary on the day depending on circumstances and ideas that crop up but they always have a plan.

IGN: How does that compare with someone like, say, Scorsese for M. Night Shyamalan? Why do you think you have found these lasting collaborations that have worked so effectively?

DEAKINS: From my own experience Scorsese is also very prepared. Whilst he didn't do storyboards on 'Kundun' he did do diagrams and we would always go through these ideas before the day we were scheduled to shoot them. M. Night storyboards everything and, again purely from my own experience, very little will change when you shoot. His films seem to be created at the storyboard stage.

IGN: How do you achieve shots like the one where a bolt of lightning cracks in the background as Josh Brolin's character is running? is it just a matter of using CGI or other visual effects, or is there still that David Lean mentality of "Let's wait as long as it takes for the skies to look right?"

DEAKINS: That lightning bolt was real. We were shooting with a storm around us and hoping for the lightning to happen in frame. We couldn't do too many takes as Josh was having to run so much. I still like to get as much on the negative as possible but, obviously, CGI is a great tool.

IGN: How has HD photography, CGI and/or the ability to change colors and images in post-production affected the way that you work? Does that mean you don't always have to have the perfect image in the camera, for example? Has it sped up the process or made it more technically challenging?

DEAKINS: The advent of Digital timing (DI) has changed what I do quite a bit. It's not that the end product will be so different but that I can save time on the set knowing I can do some things later - changing saturation, flagging a wall, matching day exteriors etc.. Of course, the kind of imagery we did on "O Brother Where Art Thou" could not have been done photochemically but most of the films I do are less of an extreme 'look'.

IGN: Do you have specific points of reference or influence when you work on the look of certain movies? The Assassination of Jesse James evokes Terence Malick, for example, but The Man Who Wasn't There is obviously designed to be more stylistically like a 40s or 50s movie. How much of that is the director's vision, and how much is finding the right visual template for the story for yourself?

DEAKINS: It is all driven by the script. For 'Jesse James..' Andrew had a large body of visual references that we based the 'look' of the picture on. They were from all sorts of sources: old polaroids, fashion magazines, paintings other films etc etc. but the 'look' really comes from the script and is obviously a blend of the director's and the cinematographer's personal attitude to it. Sometimes a director can be quite specific. On 'The Man Who...' for instance, the Coens wanted the theatrical spot light effect for the one jail scene but other than that I don't remember any lighting notes. On 'Hudsucker Proxy' we were on the last day of prep before they realized we had never discussed the lighting of the film but by then we had been pre-lighting for weeks.

IGN: What work (if there's any one) in your filmography are you most proud of? Are there any that if you could maybe excise from the "Roger Deakins canon," you might exclude?

DEAKINS: 'Jarhead' maybe, because it was such a challenge to create that 'look' and yes.

IGN: You've spent a long time moving between bigger and smaller projects. Does the scale of the movie affect the way that you work or matter at all?

DEAKINS: The scale of the film doesn't affect anything in terms of the way I work but I prefer working on smaller films as a bigger budget usually means more politics.

IGN: Was directing ever your ultimate goal, or is it still?

DEAKINS: I guess it might have been at one time.

IGN: What challenges (if any) haven't you tackled as a cinematographer or just filmmaker in general?

DEAKINS: Every film is different and so every new film poses a new challenge. I just want to keep working on good projects, experiencing and discovering what visual imagery can do.

IGN:What's next for you?

DEAKINS: Nothing, as far as work goes right now. I think I am due for a break.

[squints]

[MacGuffin]

Tommy Lee Jones sues Paramount
Actor seeks $10 million for 'Country'
Source: Variety

SAN ANTONIO (AP) Tommy Lee Jones is suing the makers of "No Country for Old Men" for more than $10 million that the Oscar-winning actor claims he is owed for starring in the 2007 hit crime thriller.

The lawsuit against Paramount Pictures claims that Jones was promised "significant box-office bonuses" and other compensation depending on the success of the film, which went on to make more than $160 million.

The movie, which is set in Texas and based on a critically acclaimed Cormac McCarthy novel, garnered four Academy Awards, including "Best Picture."

A message left for Paramount Pictures on Saturday was not immediately returned. Jones declined to comment through his publicist, Jennifer Allen, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

"The paperwork stands for itself," Allen said.

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in Bexar County in San Antonio. N.M. Classics, Inc., a Paramount subsidiary, is also named in the lawsuit.

Jones, who played Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in the film, claims he was not paid promised bonuses and had expenses wrongly deducted. The suit says Jones was paid a reduced upfront fee in joining the film, and that his contract had known errors not corrected before the movie was made.

Jones, 61, is asking that an auditor be named to review financial records to determine how much he should be paid.