a movie i will watch more than once: no country for old men
why do we call it the dollar theater and then pay a dollar and three quarters to get in? and why does the fella at the box office harass people who pay with a jackson? i believe he referred to it as a "big bill" while trying his hardest to shame the lady in line ahead of me. perhaps he forgot that twenties are standard fare at the atm and it all spends the same anyway? but enough of that, maybe you'd like to know what we watched? why, we watched no country for old men, of course! although two of our entourage had already seen it, the other two of us had been anticipating the day it made it to the dollar theater for, oh i don't know, at least a month. needless to say (but here i go), the mood was one of much excitement. besides the movie, the other part that was really awesome was the part where tickets and popcorn for all four of us cost less than if i'd gone to see it by myself the week before. i know this makes me sound "cheap," but c'mon, isn't that a great deal?! i love a good deal!
anyway, no country for old men! it's a masterpiece! based on cormac mccarthy's novel of the same title (named, ironically it seems, for a yeats poem) the movie comes through with full literary cred. first, the basics for those of you who don't keep up with this sort of thing: it's 1980 in the middle of the desert in texas and a hunter/welder happens upon a bunch of money and drugs from a drug deal gone awry. he takes the money which is in a satchel. also in the satchel: a transponder, used by "the bad guys" (who fall into two camps) to track him. his wife is dragged into it. local law enforcement is involved. much blood is spilled.
standard themes of good and evil, pride, and chance wrap around classic coen-esque dialog. (though i think my posse were the only ones laughing out loud in the theater--what does that mean tallahassee? don't you know a good line when you hear one?!) the movie generally keeps the hero and the anti-hero in different frames throughout the movie, but uses the type of character development that we count on the coens for to point out that there is more than one kind of virtue and more than one kind of transgression in this world. as a parallel to these archetypes there are various law enforcers--a young one and one who is about to retire, the retired uncle of the about-to-retire, and the big-wig from a different jurisdiction. these four do double duty as they stand in for the path from young to old while still faithfully representing separate archetypes to contrast against "the good guy" and "the bad guy." in case the movie-goer still misses the allusion to cosmic roles, near the end the scene with the youth-on-bikes functions as a heads up: "the characters in this movie," the scene seems to say "are not unique to the particulars of this story." and if that still missed the mark, the movie ends with a description of a dream sequence. without saying more about the dream, it takes the viewer back out of the story itself and asks them to take with them the type of story that's just been told.
if you are a young man, see this movie with your father. if you are a man with a son with whom you enjoy r-rated movies, take him to this movie. if you like broad and sweeping thematic content in a tight narrative package with lots of action, treat yourself.
special props to joel and ethan coen for hitting paydirt with the absence of a sound track.
finally, it's probably worth mentioning, the r rating is for the violence. the movie is quite violent. don't say i didn't warn you.