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Andrea Doria wrote:

Abductor wrote:

Earwicker wrote: When he kills Carla

Very next sentence:

Earwicker wrote:Most everyone else he kills (that I recall) is someone who lives violently.

Doesn't he crash his car after killing Carla?

I think this Abducter fella is one of them Trolls I hear speak of.




Either that or he's just really fucking thick.

Who knows - maybe both

I just finished the book, which I think does a much nicer job of clearing up the confusion of the characters and what happens to them.

*SPOILERS*

First off:

It's made clear what happens to the money. Chigurh delivers it to the men in Houston and doesn't kill them like in the movie.

The character of the uncle is more fully developed and the scene between the uncle and Ed Tom is chopped considerably in the movie.

I dunno, there are a few other liberties that the Coens took, like the dog getting shot, but they mostly stayed pretty faithful to the book except for the scene with the 15-year-old hitchhiker. Much better outlined in the book.

Honestly, I probably would've liked the movie more if I'd read the book first. Instead I'm pissed at the Coens for making it more confusing.

Really like this film.

I suppose it is a caper film, but it seems to me more a contemplation on the ways that personal philosophy play out in the time and space of a world where intention and the random frequently collide. It is also, of course, about the violence at the root of the American condition or experiment. This is cat and mouse with unseen forces and unseen men. People that are what's coming and people that are waiting for the same.

Chigurh is not quite as interesting as the Judge in Blood Meridian, but Bardem really does a great job of imbuing the character with purpose and a faintly understandable ethos. I love that, when he has come to keep his word with the wife (who is a whimpering simp - only thing in the movie I disliked), she refuses to 'play' the game of chance, which prompts him to remind her that he came into her life the same way that the quarter did. It's a package deal. He respects the randomness of life and death and sometimes, if it is not an intolerable inconvenience, he will allow chance to further have its say.

Three main characters, along with some support, play out their hand according to the logic they know and understand. The walk the same grounds but see different things. Jones' character is in the same room as the killer he doggedly seeks but he cannot see him, cannot fathom the changes that are afoot via the drug wars. Brolin's character cannot fathom what he is up against, nor the difficulty of controlling all tentacles of his end. Mother-in-law yaps about the world she knows and is clueless that the play taking place in front of her face is death. Chigurh, living on another plane of reality almost, is seen and not seen. Can we wrap our minds around the totality of violence and greed and all that is thereby unleashed? Chigurh's methodical, unhurried movements amidst the many, unseen for the most part, suggest that the answer is largely in the negative. Do we see mankind or America, etc., for what it is? Probably not.

Best movie I have seen this year so far...

Really great!

This film really reminded me of Point Blank (1967) with Lee Marvin, a film which could probably use a C/NC thread of its own.

*SPOILS*

Just read the book. Great of course but the first two thirds are basically just the script for the film. There is hardly a change at all, the dialogue's identical and the description is plain and matter of fact.

The last third however adds a lot of flesh to things that happen in the film (particularly with the hitchhiking girl. This makes what happens really touching for many more reasons than the film is) and Bell's character is also much more fleshed out and this adds a lot. I advise a read. They're so close they can be said to work as companion's to each other i'd say.

mattw wrote:It's made clear what happens to the money. Chigurh delivers it to the men in Houston and doesn't kill them like in the movie.

These are different men i think. It's never explained who they are but he kills the fella he kills in the movie (the other fella's not in the room when he does) but then gives the money back to some other fella.

Unless I'm forgetting things from the film - I still only seen it the once.

I have to admit that I love the film so much that I am reluctant to read the book. And I love his books, those that I've read at least. From the above, I gather this is a rare example of a fine book making a fine film. Also from above, I gather that the book removes some of the narrative ambiguities that exist in the film. Stubbornly, I'd quite like to cling to these gaps. The film seems to contain a hint of the supernatural. Not in the literal sense - it does not imply that Chigurh is magic. More in a slight bewilderment at a few moments where cause and effect seem to be disconnected, the failed confrontation at the motel being the most obvious example.

(The missing-floor line by Woody Harrelson is related to this, in that this appears to be another gap in knowledge that is explained in the novel, but is left hanging in the film. I like this idea of leaving deliberate gaps in the narrative for effect. Reality is not tidy.)

Double post, curse it.

sparky wrote:I gather that the book removes some of the narrative ambiguities that exist in the film.

Only a couple but there are a couple of other such ambiguities added.

sparky wrote:The film seems to contain a hint of the supernatural. Not in the literal sense - it does not imply that Chigurh is magic. More in a slight bewilderment at a few moments where cause and effect seem to be disconnected, the failed confrontation at the motel being the most obvious example.

I think the book does this too and again if anything adds to it. The difference (on this subject) is in a difference between literature and film I think. With literature you can present the magically-real or surreal and the reader is able to accommodate it more easily I think.
In a film the incongruities of 'magic realism' are much bolder. More apparent because of what we have come to expect from film language generally and genres specifically.
I feel it's similar to Catch 22. Odd and ridiculous stuff happens in both book and film (I like both) but in the book it doesn't seem so crazy as when you see it on screen.
I imagine this is something to do with the fact that film gives the closer illusion of reality so a break from our illusion of reality is much more pronounced.

I will check out the book when I've got a little more distance from the film. Sutree is still waiting on my shelf as well.

Part of my reluctance I think is from a fear that I might even prefer the book and therefore spoil this idea I have of a perfect film! Or, dismiss the book and thus denigrate a novelist I admire.

Silly and trivial psychological reasons, hence a little space needed.