written and directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
novel by Cormac McCarthy
USA 2007
I finally decided what nails me about this film, and it was only after something my friend Brian mentioned. The Coen brothers prove to be masterful nearly all of the time, combining taste and imagination with solid physical delivery of information within the film, for instance a dog chasing a man down a river is not only an awesome idea while the physical sights and sounds of it are pretty awesome in themselves. This is a usually unnamed feat that marks great filmmaking but in the Coen universe is held in higher regard than the film itself. It's similar to movies seriously immersed in genre, but the essential difference is that in those films thematic material--i.e. the message of the filmmaker--is allowed to surface due to that genre adherence, while in Coen work this thematic material gets completely lost. Any themes that exist in No Country, because they certainly exist, come across as some kind of sideline attraction on a cinematic rollercoaster.
The idealogy of competitive men, that violent motivation that runs the world and in a significant majority of cases supercedes that of all other human sects, including women, children, socialists, etc., is once again on full display. Can you name a 2007 film that doesn't, for lack of a better term, fetishize human masculinity? In the case of No Country this reliance on such a thematic mainstay is the only reason the film actually leaves any resonance. We pay rapt attention to the man-dance on stage and whatever existential struggle that plays out is unfortunately overshadowed by the many years of man that came before. OK, I'll admit it's about time existentialism is treated with the hilarious irony it deserves. Rather than some Sam Shepherd world, taken a shade too seriously, Cormac McCarthy's story bounces not only with the absurd humor of founding thinkers like Ionesco and Albee, but somehow these days this absurdity makes complete ironic sense. Either way, there's some solid filmmaking here that only seems to get in the way of it all.
1 comment:
In order to fully review "No Country for Old Men" it is imperative to familiarize oneself with the novel as well; and not just the latter novel exclusively, but perhaps with the entire canons of Cormac McCarhty's contemporary American ethics. No Country embodies something more than just a masculine entitlement to aggression and violence and its sovereign aptitude to suffice vertical mobility and a stalwart "bad-assness".
Violence, ethereal in its form, is symbolized in this flic (and story) with the archetypal character, Chigurh. Like the psyche is ethereal, its aberrant mutation of psychopathology enters the ethereal realm of "violence" as well. Furthermore, in a nation that has been built upon the bedrock of violent proclivities, its evolution is ever so capricious that it's unpredicatble and unimaginable every step of the way.
We also see the depiction of violence in its inherent form - "formless" - as there is no protocol to it, just momentum and aggrandizement; whereas conversely, the vietnam vet and the deputy are both characters playing out roles where their occupation and motives adhere to a specific protocol or rule of conduct and engagement; both failing to transgress, let alone meet, the true nature that gave nascence to such enterprises.
The older one ages, the more the nature of violence's tendencies, propulsion, and kinetic manifestations become alien.
Don't get me wrong, there's much more to this as well; there are ties to capitalism, but, capitalism is also an enterprise of hyper-exploitation and ultraviolence, so as time progresses, the violence surrounding pecuniary matters will also progress.
And still, there is yet more to this film than the latter, but the true analysis should ultimately be saved for a review of McCarthy's entire works; as they all unravel a story of American history, violence, patriarchy and capitalism; all the way to the bitter post-end in "The Road" where only after an apocolyptic crumble of a system built on masculine aggression and the latter's material rewards, are contended with true maternal forethought.
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