Re: No Country For Old Men
 

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Yes..takes place in 70s.

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it takes place in exactly 1980. In the gas station scene he talks about how the 1958 quarter has been around for 22 years.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

Great movie, great discussion. Not sure if we should still be whiting out spoilers this deep into a thread, but I will anyway just in case.
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I picked up on most of what has been talked about so far. I thought the boldest choice in the entire movie was not showing the "protagonist" finally meet his end in the hotel at the hand of the Mexicans. That took real balls by the Cohen brothers and I think it'll be the downfall of this movie with the general public. In my theater it seemed that I was the only person who liked the movie, with a couple people even shouting "I want my money back" to the screen during the credits.

The scene in the hotel room with Tommy Lee Jones confused me because I also don't know where Anton was. But unlike most of you in the thread, I thought the window latch was "locked" and that focusing on it was to heighten the suspense that he couldn't have slipped out the back and must still be in the room.

The one other thing that I haven't seen discussed yet is that there wasn't much money in the satchel that everyone is killing each other over. In the scene where he finds the transponder by flipping through the stacks of money, everything below the first layer is a $1 bill instead of $100. The tragedy of all that death over a much smaller amount of money may have been too obvious to generate much discussion, but I thought I'd throw it out there since it seemed my wife missed it.
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Re: No Country For Old Men
 

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The one other thing that I haven't seen discussed yet is that there wasn't much money in the satchel that everyone is killing each other over. In the scene where he finds the transponder by flipping through the stacks of money, everything below the first layer is a $1 bill instead of $100. The tragedy of all that death over a much smaller amount of money may have been too obvious to generate much discussion, but I thought I'd throw it out there since it seemed my wife missed it.
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I was under the assumption that all of the bills inside the satchel were $100's, except for the one stack of $1 bills which were cut in the middle to hide the locator that Anton was using.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

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I was under the assumption that all of the bills inside the satchel were $100's, except for the one stack of $1 bills which were cut in the middle to hide the locator that Anton was using.

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I thought he flipped through a couple other stacks that were like that, but I could be wrong. Darn, another excuse to go watch it again.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

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[ QUOTE ]
I was under the assumption that all of the bills inside the satchel were $100's, except for the one stack of $1 bills which were cut in the middle to hide the locator that Anton was using.

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I thought he flipped through a couple other stacks that were like that, but I could be wrong. Darn, another excuse to go watch it again.

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He flipped through the top two stacks starting from the right until he got to the 4th stack from the end which had a bunch of ones and the transponder in between.

Re: Great film
 

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GTL what are your thoughts on this(taken from comments section on blog in regards to Jones final speech)


"One of the things I most love about the end of the film is the ambiguity of Tommy Lee Jones' final monologue. I'm not referring to the film suddenly ending and some not understanding the point the film is making. Instead, I'm referring to the final line of dialogue that Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tells his wife about his second dream.

"I continue to think long and hard about that final line. And I ask myself how I'm supposed to take that line coming from that man.

"Is the story of the second dream supposed to provide a ray of hope, a sense of eventual contentment of a full life lived to its fullest being finally rewarded? Or am I supposed to take the final line as an admission that this kind of hope has been completely, irrevocably taken away? That the good sheriff had that dream of a hopeful place there in the dark, a warm place made by his father waiting for him out there in all that dark and all that cold.

"And then I woke up".

"And that the events he's recently seen have removed any possibility of that hope coming to pass?

[/ QUOTE ]

This one's a bit complicated of course, and i don't feel like organizing my thoughts and writing the essay that would be necessary. I got choked up when I read it, and I got choked up when I watched it. To me, I think it represents something very positive and is a statement about a common life experience. We might all live in a brutal world, but it has always been this way. All the people that we respect are probably just as bad as us, and we should be hopeful because of this, not despondent.

Re: Great film
 

[ QUOTE ]
GTL what are your thoughts on this(taken from comments section on blog in regards to Jones final speech)


"One of the things I most love about the end of the film is the ambiguity of Tommy Lee Jones' final monologue. I'm not referring to the film suddenly ending and some not understanding the point the film is making. Instead, I'm referring to the final line of dialogue that Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tells his wife about his second dream.

"I continue to think long and hard about that final line. And I ask myself how I'm supposed to take that line coming from that man.

"Is the story of the second dream supposed to provide a ray of hope, a sense of eventual contentment of a full life lived to its fullest being finally rewarded? Or am I supposed to take the final line as an admission that this kind of hope has been completely, irrevocably taken away? That the good sheriff had that dream of a hopeful place there in the dark, a warm place made by his father waiting for him out there in all that dark and all that cold.

"And then I woke up".

"And that the events he's recently seen have removed any possibility of that hope coming to pass?

[/ QUOTE ]

In the beginning of the movie, Jones' character says,

I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job - not to be glorious. But I don't want to push my
chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. You can say it's my job to fight it but
I don't know what it is anymore. ...More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. ... He would have to say, okay, I'll be part of this world.

When talking about his dream at the end of the movie, the warm place he refers to seems to be the world he has fancied himself a part of, the olden days when times were better. He does not want to be a part of the new cruel world that doesn't make sense to him, and tries to escape by retiring. However, his wheelchair bound friend tells him that times haven't changed that much by telling him a story of a bunch of outlaws killing a sheriff. In his dream, Jones' character wakes up and realizes that is a part of this new, cruel word not the warm and cozy days of yester year.

Edit: In the screenplay I just read, it says the final line is " Out there up ahead", not " And then I woke up."

Re: Great film
 

me and silver have pretty different interpretations of the dream. i don't see anything wrong with his. there are probably a ton of perfectly reasonable interpretations.

Re: Great film
 

I loved this movie. It took me two times watching it to understand what happened to the money. Anton ends up with it, that is why he went to the hotel. Right before that scene with TLJ ends, there is a dime on the floor next to the vent. Anton knew Moss hid the money in the vent from the previous hotel so that's how he knew where to look.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

This movie sucked.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

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This movie sucked.

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You make a compelling case.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

i'm assuming the book provides a more complete explanation of the parties involved in looking for the money. can someone who has read the book provide some of the background for some characters like the guy who hired woody harrelson, the guys who hired chigurh, how the mexicans tracked down the package before chigurh gunned them down in the hotel, etc.

would appreciate anything you have time to describe for us. thanks.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

[ QUOTE ]
i'm assuming the book provides a more complete explanation of the parties involved in looking for the money. can someone who has read the book provide some of the background for some characters like the guy who hired woody harrelson, the guys who hired chigurh, how the mexicans tracked down the package before chigurh gunned them down in the hotel, etc.

would appreciate anything you have time to describe for us. thanks.

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How the Mexicans tracked it down doesn't need the book to clear up. They also had a device like Anton. He complains about it "you gave them one too!". It seems like the person that hired Anton was the same guy that hired Woody Harrelson.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

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How the Mexicans tracked it down doesn't need the book to clear up. They also had a device like Anton. He complains about it "you gave them one too!". It seems like the person that hired Anton was the same guy that hired Woody Harrelson.

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it did seem that way, but i'd like a little confirmation about what that actual relationship was. is it definite that the 2 guys chigurh killed at the drug deal site were working with the guy who hired harrelson? were the mexicans also hired by that same person? was the guy behind the desk part of the organization that was buying the drugs or selling the drugs?

less interested in speculation by people who have only seen the movie, because i can do that myself, but background information from the book that was left out of the movie.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

The two guys Chigurh killed at the drug deal weren't necessarily working with the guy who hired harrelson, but he gave them the device, which could have been done at a cost (selling it).
Anyway, in this thread people have commented on those questions you asked, in particular with respect to the person that hired harrelson. GTL commented on it and if I recall correctly, he said the book wasn't very explicit about that guy.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

[ QUOTE ]
The two guys Chigurh killed at the drug deal weren't necessarily working with the guy who hired harrelson, but he gave them the device, which could have been done at a cost (selling it).
Anyway, in this thread people have commented on those questions you asked, in particular with respect to the person that hired harrelson. GTL commented on it and if I recall correctly, he said the book wasn't very explicit about that guy.

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i'm pretty sure that you can figure out exactly who everyone is working for with the book. some of it is vague and would require you to reread certain parts a bunch of times.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

when he goes to kill the guy in the office, the other guy tells him he gave the mexicans a second transponder.

the reason he hired woody harrelson was because Chigurh killed 5 of his men (2 in desert, and 3 mexicans in hotel) and he thought he was a loose cannon so he brought in woody but Chigurh took him out.

they guy behind the desk was most likely just a middle man for whoever the boss was.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

I'am going out on a limb, and predicting an academy award for best movie.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

The mexicans aren't working for Stephen Root's character, they're the other aggrieved party in the [censored] drug deal. They are out both the money and the drugs and as a gesture of good faith they are given another transponder.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

A few things:

This was the best movie I have seen this year. I should say it is in top movies I have seen in the theater. There was a definite wow factor with it, at least for me there was.

In the end I thought it possible, not likely, that Anton was in the other motel room. After all, Moss was smart enough to use a different room the first time and it was not altogether clear if that was his room or the woman with the beer's room. Who knows because it did not look possible for Anton to hide anywhere in that room. I am going to rewatch this movie to see it was at all possible for him to be in another room.

Did anyone else catch the 10 spot when he was flipping through the bundles of cash? He flipped through the bundles and one had a 10 spot. Then he started flipping through the next that had all the singles. No big deal, just thought it funny.

The coin flip thing was weird. It I think gave Anton a little bit of conscience without wrecking his code. He is so nuts that he can not out right let people go. Especially in the end with the wife. He realizes that killing her has no point but he can not let her go............. flip a coin. I guess that is his way of showing mercy and not wrecking his code. For some odd reason that coin flip thing really fascinated me. It was a great study into human behavior.
I think I can watch the scene with the old guy in the gas station a 1000 times over and not get sick of it.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

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In the end I thought it possible, not likely, that Anton was in the other motel room.

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i watched the movie again last night, and now that whole scene makes more sense. here's the time line as far as i can tell.

- ed (tommy lee jones) looks inside and sees something suspicious through the door.
- anton is clearly shown standing against the wall behind the same door.
- ed prepares to enter the room. he gets his gun, cocks it, and steps up to the door. *
- he begins to open the door slowly, and then swings it hard to open it all the way. the door knob hits the wall loudly (which would be impossible with anton behind it).
- he walks through the room, notices the open latch, then the dime, and then he leaves.

* this is when anton escapes through the window. there is a realistic amount of time for him to get out.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

[ QUOTE ]
The coin flip thing was weird. It I think gave Anton a little bit of conscience without wrecking his code. He is so nuts that he can not out right let people go. Especially in the end with the wife. He realizes that killing her has no point but he can not let her go............. flip a coin. I guess that is his way of showing mercy and not wrecking his code. For some odd reason that coin flip thing really fascinated me. It was a great study into human behavior.

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Somebody tell me this is just a crazy coincidence and not at all meta:

http://img128.imageshack.us/img128/5351/scanaei2.jpg

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

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- he walks through the room, notices the open latch, then the dime, and then he leaves.

[/ QUOTE ]

There seems to be some confusion about this so I went back and checked the screenplay linked above:

ROOM INSIDE


The door finishes creaking open. Sheriff Bell is a silhouette in the
doorway.

A still beat.

At length Sheriff Bell ducks under the chest-high police tape to enter.

The worn carpet has a large stain that glistens near the door. Sheriff
Bell steps over it, advancing slowly. The room is dimly lit shapes.

There is a bathroom door in the depth of the room. Sheriff Bell advan-
ced toward it. He stops in front of it.

He toes the door. It creaks slowly open.

The bathroom, with no spill light from outside, is pitch black.

Sheriff Bell reaches slowly up with one hand. He gropes at the inside
wall.

The light goes on: bright. White tile. Sheriff Bell squints. A beat.

He takes a step in.

He looks at the small window.

He looks at the window's swivel-catch, locked.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

well i can guarantee you the door swings all the way open and the door knob hits the wall. so are we to assume he's hiding under a bed, or what? and really, i did just assume the window latch was open since it seemed like the only plausible explanation. i don't have any windows like that - i think i've seen one like that once in my life.

so i can now say

WTF ?

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

[ QUOTE ]
well i can guarantee you the door swings all the way open and the door knob hits the wall. so are we to assume he's hiding under a bed, or what? and really, i did just assume the window latch was open since it seemed like the only plausible explanation. i don't have any windows like that - i think i've seen one like that once in my life.

so i can now say

WTF ?

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chigurh is not in the room when bell goes in. you can assume that there is no where to hide inside that hotel room. in my opinion, chigurh isn't in the room because bell doesn't want to face him. he is afraid, and is not willing to go up against chigurh like Moss was.

in the book, you never "see" chigurh in the room, you just know he was in there and got the money. i think they did it this way in the movie to add suspense.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

An interesting response from a reader to Andrew Sarris's review of the movie:

"There is no need to call McCarthy a nihilist. That discredited school of philosophy has produced nothing of value, whereas McCarthy will last as long as there are American readers.

The project of every McCarthy novel can be summed up as a question: Every declining generation thinks the ascendant one is laying ruin to the previous' legacy, and in their vain desire to live forever, concludes that the new kids are leading the world to hell in a handbasket -- but what if sooner or later, one declining generation is right?"

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

[ QUOTE ]
An interesting response from a reader to Andrew Sarris's review of the movie:

"There is no need to call McCarthy a nihilist. That discredited school of philosophy has produced nothing of value, whereas McCarthy will last as long as there are American readers.

The project of every McCarthy novel can be summed up as a question: Every declining generation thinks the ascendant one is laying ruin to the previous' legacy, and in their vain desire to live forever, concludes that the new kids are leading the world to hell in a handbasket -- but what if sooner or later, one declining generation is right?"

[/ QUOTE ]

i wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. in many of McCarthy's books, the reader, or characters realize that previous generations who were idolized were just as terrible as present generations. but this isn't a bad thing, it's gives you hope. you realize that all the people you idolize had flaws just like you.

my take on the Bell's dream fits in with this. it's earlier in the thread and i'm too lazy to quote it.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

Seems like a probable oscar winner for best adapted screenplay. Should get other nominations.

Funny bit of dialog:

Llewelyn: If you don't shut up I'm gonna have to take you in the back and screw ya
Carla Jean: Big talker

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

Finally saw this film, and I'll probably watch it again this weekend. The sound was AMAZING. Not just how it had little to no music, but how that added the tension by allowing every small noise to signal something to the viewer just as it did for the characters.

Everybody is raving about Bardem and Brolin, who were
phenominal, but Jones came out on top, IMO. He seems similar to Eastwood, in that he's not very multi-faceted in the realm of Brando or Depp, but when he settles into his kind of roles he sinks deep. There was so much expression in his performance while he physically did very little. Just looking at his face when he was talking with Brolin's wife was remarkable.

One of the best Coen movies. Right below Lebowski and tied with Fargo.

What do you all think the movie was 'about'? There were some great themes floating around: self-determination, destiny, etc.

The ending was a perfect fit, with the fateful tidal storm of Bardem moving on, even after chance hits him, like he is the inevitability that nobody can have any control over.


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GTL what are your thoughts on this(taken from comments section on blog in regards to Jones final speech)


"One of the things I most love about the end of the film is the ambiguity of Tommy Lee Jones' final monologue. I'm not referring to the film suddenly ending and some not understanding the point the film is making. Instead, I'm referring to the final line of dialogue that Sheriff Ed Tom Bell tells his wife about his second dream.

"I continue to think long and hard about that final line. And I ask myself how I'm supposed to take that line coming from that man.

"Is the story of the second dream supposed to provide a ray of hope, a sense of eventual contentment of a full life lived to its fullest being finally rewarded? Or am I supposed to take the final line as an admission that this kind of hope has been completely, irrevocably taken away? That the good sheriff had that dream of a hopeful place there in the dark, a warm place made by his father waiting for him out there in all that dark and all that cold.

"And then I woke up".

"And that the events he's recently seen have removed any possibility of that hope coming to pass?

[/ QUOTE ]

In the beginning of the movie, Jones' character says,

I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job - not to be glorious. But I don't want to push my
chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. You can say it's my job to fight it but
I don't know what it is anymore. ...More than that, I don't want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. ... He would have to say, okay, I'll be part of this world.

When talking about his dream at the end of the movie, the warm place he refers to seems to be the world he has fancied himself a part of, the olden days when times were better. He does not want to be a part of the new cruel world that doesn't make sense to him, and tries to escape by retiring. However, his wheelchair bound friend tells him that times haven't changed that much by telling him a story of a bunch of outlaws killing a sheriff. In his dream, Jones' character wakes up and realizes that is a part of this new, cruel word not the warm and cozy days of yester year.

Edit: In the screenplay I just read, it says the final line is " Out there up ahead", not " And then I woke up."

[/ QUOTE ]

I think my interpretation was heavily influenced by missing pieces of dialogue through mutter and accent, but I was left with completely different feeling. Looking back at the actual dialogue, what you and others say fits perfectly. I still think that there is a darkness to it. Maybe I'm reading too much into the words, but Jones seems shaken with the dream when he re-tells it, and coupled with the scene directly before it (Chigur [Bardem] continuing on), I walked away thinking the dream was symbolic of death, and our inability to determine our own. Will have to watch again to really dig into this, because I like the duality between wanting/hoping for the better times against the cold present. That interpretation lifts up the ending quite a bit.

Here is the final few lines:

"...and when he rode past I seen he
was carryin fire in a horn the way
people used to do and I could see the
horn from the light inside of it.
About the color of the moon. And in
the dream I knew that he was goin on
ahead and that he was fixin to make a
fire somewhere out there in allthat
dark and all that cold, and I knew
that whenever I got there he would be
there. Out there up ahead. "

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

Checking out some reviews, I decided to look into the select few who didn't like the film. Most seem to say it's just to dark for their tastes, but this Washington Post review maanged to explain why they didn't like it structurally and thematically. Oddly enough, I agree with every grievance he has with the film. However, I simply liked these things he didn't.

For example, he seems to think it's a generic thriller, with no character development, and while accepting that and being happy with a well put-together chase film he felt cheated when they didn't show the pay-off (the Anton/Moss showdown). I completely understand his annoyance, but simply like that very choice. No real explanation. I just liked it where he didn't.

I thought it was one of the few negative reviews that was acceptable.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

Robert Bresson said that one should feel a movie before thinking about it.

Having watched No Country for Old Men, I felt left out in the cold and emotionally disattached in the end. The film is technically brilliant, and has some great moments of tension and characterization in the first half, but becomes convoluted in the second half. And since McCarthy has praised the film as being faithful to the book, I will have to blame the original story for the film's flaws.

I'm on board with Andrew Sarris, Andyfox, and Dominic on this one.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

That was a very good review. His note about the gun's action not working properly definitely sounds like it will irritate me when I see the movie.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

[ QUOTE ]
That was a very good review. His note about the gun's action not working properly definitely sounds like it will irritate me when I see the movie.

[/ QUOTE ]

the fact that the reviewer is making fun of the gun's in the movie is very ironic. McCarthy is a gun nut who probably thinks about the weapons more than some of the minor characters. the guns in the movie seemed to be fairly close to the book. i'm certain the coen's didn't insert any "gimmicky" firearms.

Re: No Country For Old Men
 

[ QUOTE ]
That was a very good review. His note about the gun's action not working properly definitely sounds like it will irritate me when I see the movie.

[/ QUOTE ]


It might now that you know about it in advance...I don't know why you would read a review before seeing the movie, who cares what someone else thinks about it?. I didn't notice the gun thing though. And I disagree with part of his analysis, which I guess we'll talk about once you've seen it.