Labels

architecture Asheville atheism bard bbq books buddhism buffy burgers cars comics fashion film food japan kung fu Las Vegas manga memory music New Zealand other people's blogs photography podcast updates politics San Francisco Santa Cruz sex shoes shopping snow skiing taoism toys travel TV video web 2.0 women writing

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Thanks, Joel and Ethan. Thanks a lot.

As Moe Szyzlak's father used to say, "Sooner or later, everybody gets shot." Yep. It's inevitable. Death. It's a-comin'. Thanks for the reminder, guys. No Country for Old Men was a real holiday treat. I take comfort in the fact that the odds of me encountering any of the brutal ends depicted here are slim. What's unnerving is that when confronted with the choice, I might rather take a quick demise over any one of the impending, soul-crushing deaths of the characters who survive the duration of the film.

So what's to be thankful for? That No Country for Old Men has graced us with its presence in the world with its devastating landscapes, perfectly executed monologs (THANK YOU Tommy Lee Jones), uncomfortable comedy, horrific gore, understated social commentary, and literary regard. I've not read this Cormac McCarthy novel, but back in film school, I read

All the Pretty Horses as part of a Westerns class. When I heard that this film was based on a McCarthy novel, I knew the stakes would be high in the despair department. No question, they were.

Despite my emotional reactions to the gut-wrenching and intimate nature of the drama, I feel compelled to include a more clinical film school analysis. My disclaimer here is that the professor for my aforementioned westerns class was pretty hung up on Ronald Reagan's presidency. Oh, and I'm also currently reading Al Gore's The Assault on Reason. Sorry, everybody.

Given the time this story is set (the dawning of the Reagan era in which the romanticized ideology of the American West was the backdrop for covert military actions, imperialism and laissez-faire economic policy) and the time this story was written and produced (the pinnacle (I hope) of American world domination fueled by fear and corruption), I have to believe the Coen brothers chose to tell this story to reflect a growing sense of helplessness and dread in this country and to remind us a little about the nature of man in the face of hopelessness. Lawlessness does not create heroes.

There. That's the abstract for a thesis that'll never be written.

While it's clear to me that every aspect of this story is precisely contrived to elicit a sense of the past while showing us our present, sometimes I prefer to believe the process happens the other way around. I like to think creators involuntarily reflect

their influences filtered through the most emotional parts of their brains. The commentary on reality is communicated intuitively while the creator remains completely focused on the subject matter at hand. When done well, the result reveals some intelligence about the world in which we live that could not have otherwise been expressed...the immortal wisdom of Moe Szyzlak's dad notwithstanding.

Labels: books, film