No Country For Old Men

[GTL]

the scenes at the end of the movie were a bit out of place because they are taken from larger scenes and narration that is used for a different purpose in the book. i'm not going to get into it because there are a lot of spoilers, but the end of the book is a bit different than the movie. this isn't a knock on the movie, the book actually drags a bit at the end and the movie avoids this. i think the book does a much better job of getting deeper into the characters, their moral fiber, and why they do what they do. it also draws parallels between the sheriff and moss' characters that are left out in the movie.

the book, at its core, is comparing the two characters (mainly what they are willing to risk to follow their "morals") chigurh represents someone without morals who therefore can follow his code without a problem. chigurh never has any decisions of his own, there is always a clear choice for him, and the closest he ever comes to choice is flipping a coin. he can do this because he is a sociopath, but "normal" people cannot. the book compares how the sheriff and moss make different choices, and examines the consequences.

[andyfox]

"When you say you didn't understand the last two scenes, are you speaking of the ones at Tommy Lee Jones's house and that of his uncle or whomever that was?"

Yes. Was the uncle's talk supposed to show that violence was always a part of the local environment? I had trouble discerning exactly what Jones said about his dream, he sort of mumbled it a bit. What I did get I couldn't relate to the rest of the movie.

Woody always seems to me to be playing his character from Cheers.

[jester710]

I can't recall off the top of my head what exactly Jones said about the dream.

As for the other scene (warning: may be spoilers ahead), its significance is easier to understand in the book. Jones's uncle, like his father, was a sheriff; the uncle was wounded in the line of duty whereas the father was killed. Jones's character, like many people, tends to paint a rosier picture of the past than is accurate, and compares himself unfavorably to his heroes of that time. So yes, the uncle is saying that violent killers like Chigurh have always existed, and that Jones is not an inferior man for not catching him or dying trying. Jones's character spends the whole movie bemoaning the sorry state the world has come to be in, but the uncle basically tells him that people tend to compare the present unfavorably to the past, when in reality things are how they always have been, and people are people.

Also, there's a subplot in the book that's significant to this scene, and the sheriff's character as a whole, involving a commendation the sheriff won in Vietnam. I won't spoil it in case anyone intends to read the book, but it makes that scene much more significant.

[jester710]

Also, out of curiosity, how do you think you would've liked this movie if you'd never seen Fargo?

[andyfox]

That's a good question. Probably better than I did, because the conversations between the "sophisticated" and the local yokels would have been novel.

Why was the automobile accident towards the end of the movie there? To show that, in the end, Bardem was really no different than Brolin?

BTW, thanks for all your help in this thread.

[GTL]

[ QUOTE ]
That's a good question. Probably better than I did, because the conversations between the "sophisticated" and the local yokels would have been novel.

Why was the automobile accident towards the end of the movie there? To show that, in the end, Bardem was really no different than Brolin?

BTW, thanks for all your help in this thread.

[/ QUOTE ]

again, the car accident makes more sense in the book. the sheriff actually investigates the accident and figures out that it was probably chigurh that the boys saw. the book does a much better job of tying everything together, but the movie does a better job of not dragging at the end.

[GTL]

also, i never really thought of this movie as similar to Fargo. Mainly, I think of Fargo as a movie full of losers (except for the female cop and her husband). No Country is full of smart, capable people. No country is more tragic while Fargo is a dark comedy. When everyone gets caught or killed in Fargo you don't feel bad, not so in No Country.

[andyfox]

Boy, I didn't see any of the people in No Country as smart or capable. Anton is simply a robotic killer who gets no pleasure out of life. Brolin's character is not smart, he is only motivated by trying to keep the money. He ends up as he would have been expected to end up. Woody Harrelson's character is an idiot--he sees the briefcase but doesn't get it and ends up with Anton walking up the stairs right behind him. The guy in the office building ends up the same way. Tommy Lee Jones is a small-town lawman, similar to Macdormand's character in Fargo, but without the intelligence or drive of the heroine in Fargo; he fails to get his man. Brolin's wife is unable or unwilling to help him and her mother is a bigotted loudmouth.

I do agree that Fargo was done more as a black comedy than No Country. Buscemi, MacDormand, and Macy are good comic actors and played their roles accordingly in Fargo. There was nothing like that in No Country, just a few funny lines.

[Sickboy]

Anton is very smart...he may be cold and ruthless but he is not a idiot like the villains in Fargo.

For what he initially appears to be(a dumb hick), Brolin's character shows a lot of smarts. Blowing the chamber before attempting to shoot the dog. Waiting to make sure the guy by the tree is dead.
Hiding the bag. Using the tent poles to get the bag back. Asking for the layout of the hotel. Realizing there is no way Anton could have simply found him. Buying the clothes from the kids and taking their beer bottle. etc etc
But Brolin also does a lot of dumb things...in part because he is way in over his head.

[jester710]

I think what GTL is saying is that Fargo is full of screwups. The characters are mostly screwups (save Frances McDormand), the kidnapping is botched, Jerry's plan falls apart, etc. There really aren't any such screwups in NCFOM. And maybe you don't think the characters are smart, but they're certainly resourceful. Brolin survives a lot longer than anyone else Chigurh wants dead because of his resourcefulness, Chigurh never really makes any mistakes, and even Woody showed that he was able to figure out what Brolin was doing pretty easily.

As for Jones, I think his character was very smart, he just wasn't really up for the job anymore (and for the record, he did get his man....at the very beginning). McDormand caught the bad guys due to their own incompetence as much as anything else, whereas Jones had no such luck. Jones was at least smart enough to do what little he could do, but maybe I'm just defending him because he reminds me a lot of my dad.

And about the car accident...I don't really know why that happened. In the book it says that the guy driving the car that hit Chigurh was high, so maybe it was a statement about how drugs will get everybody in one way or another. In the movie, though, it just came across as something that happened for no apparent reason.