Really incredible. I need to watch it again.

Those open-plain shots where Brolin is tracking are really great.

SPOILERS again

Just saw this earlier. Brilliant stuff.

I've not read the book - but have read a few of Mccarthy's other work and I was surprised that the Coen's (who I love) managed to capture the peculiar dreamlike edge that McCarthy often presents.

world of pee wrote:re: spoiler script stuff

this doesn't seem to make sense. if anton is just on the other side of the door, how does bell open the door without it bumping into anton? if anton kills just about everyone, why not him? because of a psychic premonition that this guy isn't a threat? he kills plenty of people who aren't a threat too.

The fact that it doesn't make sense doesn't matter if you consider certain elements to be symbolic representations. For example Anton, it seems to me, is connected in some way to the dogs?
Lewellyn sees a limping dog, walking away from the scene of the crime in the same way as Anton limps away at the film's conclusion.(Lewelyn also clips the deer at the films opening I think. It certainly seems to limp away) We see him be injured three times in the film - each after killing someone innocent - not sure if that means anything as I've not had too long to think about it but it struck me as significant somehow - especially given the random nature of the crash at the end.

Also re: Tommy Lee Jones in the room. Earlier in the film he doesn't bother taking out his gun when he and the other cop enter the trailer. This is unusual and suggests he has a sense/presumption of invincibility.


There's a ton of meat on this movie - not surprising as that can be said of all McCarthy's books - and I'll definitely be seeing it again.


Really haunting stuff. Again - just like I feel when i finish one of McCarthy's books.

i watched this again yesterday just before the oscars. they deserved to win best picture and directors. brilliant film, even better the second time around. like most cohens bros. films i need to see this a third time to catch everything. very subtle.

Saw it in the theater last night. There was a loud buzzing in the film...since no one else got up I had to go out to the lobby to find the manager so I lost up to the deer kill. The lead up to the car crash that injured Chigur was fucked up too so I missed that...

So, a question about what I missed.

Who was in the car that crashed into Chigu and what happened to them? Also, I've not read any of this author's work. What else is good? I'm going to pick up the novel (I already downloaded the script but haven't read through it yet). I'm taking my wife to see the film sometime next week (I screened it by myself yesterday on my day off) but feel that the car crash question is important to my understanding of the film and I can't wait.

Goddamnit what an excellent film. Thought the ending was spot on perfect.

We don't know who crashed into Chigurh, and it's irrelevant.

I haven't read anything else of McCarthy's except for his post-apocalyptic bummerfest "The Road." It's good, but not as good as "No Country".

I have only read two of his novels so far (though both The Road and Suttree are waiting on a shelf for me), but Blood Meridian is a masterpiece.

My thought was that Chigurh doesn't kill Sheriff Bell because he (Bell) has trancended the topology of fate that is central to the film (and the overarching focus in all of McCarthy's books), and is therefore irrelevant, arrives everywhere too late, &cetera. Bell is free, but he is also dead. Or a ghost, anyway: simply not the map. He goes horseback-riding.

connor wrote:Early on, a pickup chases a man across West Texas brush just as the sun is coming up. For just a split-second in the sky, you can see heat lightning in the distance.

Incredible.

My favorite part of the film.

sunlore wrote:My thought was that Chigurh doesn't kill Sheriff Bell because he (Bell) has trancended the topology of fate that is central to the film (and the overarching focus in all of McCarthy's books), and is therefore irrelevant, arrives everywhere too late, &cetera. Bell is free, but he is also dead. Or a ghost, anyway: simply not the map. He goes horseback-riding.

I like this. Certainly, the shadow Bell casts on the motel room when he opens the door is that of a myth: the long-dead cowboy. His being perpetually too late is one of themes that I picked up on.

This reverses my own pet interpretation of the scene, which is simply a magical one: Chigurh was there, then he wasn't. He simply does not exist in the same ethical universe as Bell, or perhaps even the same fictional one.

One can get enjoyment from viewing the film as a circulation of different ethical universes. To my eyes, of the main characters only Chigurh and Carla Jean come out as acting wholly in good faith. In fact, perhaps only Carla Jean... Moss hesitates and changes his mind throughout - returning to the wounded man after refusing him water; rejecting Carson Wells then calling him, fatally; and finally electing to pursue Chigurh having spent the last couple of days running away from him.

Bell, as Sunlore points out, is perpetually too late, which seems to me indicative of his rather passive nature - he reacts out of duty, he never instigates. Fair enough, but at the end he quits his position because he is unsatisfied by this. He claims that changing times have made him obsolete, but this is debunked by his uncle. He ends the film evidently waiting for the death that he has missed in that motel room.

Which leaves us with Carla Jean and Chigurh. I love their confrontation, as it appears as a collision between two very different sets of values; her set is humanist; his is cruel and seemingly tailored with care to his proclivities, which lead him joylessly to her. However, she calls bullshit on him; despite knowing that he offers her a chance of survival, she is honest to her belief. Your coin toss is toss, she says. His final expression in that scene appears uncomprehending to me - he simply cannot understand her logic. So he kills her.

The interesting aftermath to the car crash is the rather shifty aspect he adopts with respect to the teenagers after he pays them. "You didn't see me." Was that a nervous wink? Surely, even he is compromised here.

Another perspective I like is that of watching the film as a play around Chigurh's vulnerability. The dialogue and the framing of Bardem throughout the film ostensibly point to him as some mythical beast, essentially immortal evil; but we also keep seeing him hurt or tripped up. After all, he begins the film in captivity and bloodies himself in his escape. Then there is the perfect moment when he briefly chokes on the peanuts - it disrupts the menace of the scene in the gas station for good reason other than comic surprise. He kills almost everyone who faces him, but Moss still seriously injures him the one time they meet. And then there is the final meeting with Carla Jean with the car wreck punchline. That leaves as with yet another terrifying message: that someone as seemingly dominant, consistent and supernatural as Chigurh is ultimately as vulnerable to the whims of fate as us. You can do everything right according to your ethics and still end up utterly compromised with your arm bone sticking out of your shirt.

Finally saw this movie last night. Absolutely incredible. The ending was my favorite part. Bell's last speech, his dream of the afterlife (I took it thus as his father was leading him there, though it could be this world too) as "all that dark and all that cold," is just perfect. Gorgeous film. If only the gentleman behind me wasn't talking through the first half of the movie with brilliant observations like, "he's tough, boy."

One thing that impressed me in this film was the amount of silence in it. We could hear laughter and sound from the theater next door, it was so quiet. It really made you focus on the screen.

Absolutely perfect. It felt like reading a Cormac McCarthy novel, which is just about all you can ask from a film adaptation.

just fyi it comes out tomorrow on dvd/blu-ray. Looking forward to seeing it again.