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  #101  
Old 11-28-2007, 04:52 PM
milesdyson milesdyson is offline
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Default Re: No Country For Old Men

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

[/ QUOTE ]
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.
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  #102  
Old 11-28-2007, 06:29 PM
Cry Me A River Cry Me A River is offline
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Default 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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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

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  #103  
Old 11-28-2007, 07:33 PM
SoulPower SoulPower is offline
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Default Re: No Country For Old Men

[ QUOTE ]
- 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.
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  #104  
Old 11-29-2007, 01:47 AM
milesdyson milesdyson is offline
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Default 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 ?
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  #105  
Old 11-29-2007, 01:55 AM
GTL GTL is offline
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Default 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 ?

[/ QUOTE ]

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.
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  #106  
Old 11-29-2007, 06:16 PM
Blarg Blarg is offline
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Default 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?"
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  #107  
Old 11-29-2007, 11:57 PM
GTL GTL is offline
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Default 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.
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  #108  
Old 11-30-2007, 01:04 AM
OrangeCat OrangeCat is offline
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Default 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
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  #109  
Old 11-30-2007, 03:01 AM
Thug Bubbles Thug Bubbles is offline
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Default 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.


[ QUOTE ]
[ 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."

[/ 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. "
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  #110  
Old 11-30-2007, 11:22 AM
Thug Bubbles Thug Bubbles is offline
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Default 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.
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