^
Every time I've thought about it since seeing it, I've liked it more.

i really liked the characters and the setting. i liked pretty much every thing until the ending. it was like somebody was blowing up this balloon, and then it got so full that it burst, but then nothing happened.

I just finished reading the book. I am thinking about seeing it tonight.

really? i thought the ending was perfect. i am starting to 'get' why the sopranos' producer hated his casual audience who didnt like his ending.

i'm tired of movies that are great the first 95% and then peter out at the end.

eh, matter of opinion i guess.

true enough

"Cole Trickel" didn't like it...I guess if you think "Days of Thunder" should have won an Academy award, then you probably will not like this movie...

I think the same people that hated the ending wouldn't hate it if it faded to black instead of cutting to black. I thought the story was pretty resolved. There wasn't much left to tell, unlike the The Sopranos finish.

The more I think about this movie the more I like the ending. It is not a satisfying or happy ending, but it is appropriate to the movie and the message they are trying to relay to the audience. Great movie, but it's just not one that you want to watch if you want to feel all warm and fuzzy inside after watching it cuz the message is pretty bleak.

I saw this movie last week and for the most part enjoyed it....until the end. I keep reading how people say that the way it ended made alot of sense. Well I'm just not understanding it. Can someone discuss what the ending was supposed to mean? I really don't feel like going back to see it.
p.s.
I know this will be a spoiler, so please warn everyone else with a spoiler alert.

I thought it was great too. The bad guys weapon of choice was brutal but simple.

The ending was bleak, but appropriate.

quote:

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For one - they get West Texas right.

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I agree, but I'm not sure which river he dove into to get away in the one scene.

I thought it was cool that one guy said he was from Alpine...that's my hometown. Too bad he had a really short part and was kind of a nobody.

Spoiler:

I think the movie is about the way things are changing. Old men still believe in things like free will and "joining their fathers, who pass on before them into the cold and dark and prepare a fire - and will be waiting on them." A new generation - the crazy killer - is fascinated by choice and deny that it is real. The killer asked Woody's character if he would have chosen a different path if he had known. Then, there was the coin thing. He told the wife to call, and she refused, saying:

"there is no coin. Only you. You choose."

Killer replied with frustration:

"coin got here the same way I did."



We are leaving a simpler time when people believed in choice and afterlife and are entering a new time when people believe in determinism and a death that is an end. As such, it is "No Country for Old Men."


That's what I got, anyway.

i understand that. i just didn't enjoy the end.

I saw No Country on Saturday and really liked it. It was an incredible movie. Best Coen Bros. film I've ever seen.




SPOILER ALERT





The parts I didn't like were how Llewelyn died and we didn't know anything about it. I get that his mother in law and wife talked too much and gave his location away. Also the scene where TLJ goes back to the motel where Llewelyn was killed and they show that Anton has been in and looked to be hiding in the room, but nothing happened. It just didn't flow with the rest of the movie.


END SPOILERS

SPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERSSPOILERS







the mexicans came up to the mother and asked her where they were staying. then the mexicans ambushed llewelyn.

i was also curious about anton hiding in the hotel room when jones goes up to it. was he hiding in another room?

SPOILERS:

I thought it went down like this:

The Mexicans tracked down Llewelyn from the info from his mother in law and killed him and the girl he was drinking beer with, mistaking her for his wife. Anton got there later to check the AC for the money. He was in there getting it when the sherriff arrived, but snuck out through the ducts before the sherriff came into the room. I think he got the money.

He went back to kill the wife not for the money, but to keep his promise.

[This message has been edited by letters at random (edited 11/28/2007 1:37p).]

schmendeler - i understand how it happened. i would have just liked to have seen what letters at random described. i think that would have made for a better movie.

i agree

The ending can be explained without spoiling the film for anybody and here is my shot:

The dream TLJ describes to his wife is a classic literary dream: the narrow canyon and darkness represent the last trip any of us will take. The idea of two people entering the dark canyon is as old as the Orpheus and Eurydice story from Greek mythology and a more recent example would be Midnight Cowboys in which the two men enter the underworld or the land of the dead (NYC) and try to emerge into the light (Florida in the case of that film).

TLJ says his dad is going on without him and he expects he will light his way and provide a place of warmth for him with the light he is carrying in the horn--yes, I know he does not say that explicitly, but literary allusions are like that.

The reason the old man TLJ dreams for such a thing is that at the end of his career and the meaningless insanity he has witnessed in his career, he wants there to be some light on what it all means and some warmth for his soul at the end of his journey.

The point of view of the author, Cormac McCarthy, is that there is no such relief from the casual meaninglessness and random destructiveness around us. The Coen Brothers, instead of giving us a Robert Redford type happy ending do what McCarthy did and so TLJ says in the final line:

And then I woke up.

That is, he woke up to the fact that there is no light that will illuminate the confusion and misery and make sense of it all.

It is an even better ending than the one in Fargo, when, after the carnage Frances McDormand lectures the remaining killer and concludes, as the blizzard descends:

And it's such a beautiful day.

As you have probably gathered, I think the ending summarizes the film to perfection.

huisache, that's probably the best explanation/defense of the movie ending i've seen.

that said, i wish there had been just a little bit more fleshing out of how things went down at the end.

i think i want to see it again with your perspective in mind.

KINDA SPOILER?






I think huisache hit the nail on the head with that summary of the ending. Good job. The movie is bleak because it is saying that senseless violence is just that, senseless. There is no use trying to explain it or make sense of it all because you can't. The world is cruel sometimes and the days of honor and the good guy always coming out on top doesn't always pan out that way like in the old days. Thus it is.....No Country For Old Men. You may not like the ending but it would have totally contradicted everything the movie was trying to get across to the audience if things would have ended the way you wanted them to. Not a movie that you would want to have multiple viewings of merely for the depressing nature of the message, but it is very compelling and brilliantly crafted by the Coen Bros.

quote:

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The reason the old man TLJ dreams for such a thing is that at the end of his career and the meaningless insanity he has witnessed in his career, he wants there to be some light on what it all means and some warmth for his soul at the end of his journey.

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I had a different reaction to it. I haven't read the book, so this is based completely off what I saw in the movie...
I took TLJ's character to be haunted by his inability to save Moss...but even more than that was the fact that he lived through it. Throughout the whole movie we hear about how old lawmen died doing their jobs, not for the glory but because that was part of their job. We learn in the movie that TLJ's father died 20 years younger than TLJ's character is, doing his job as a lawman. TLJ failed to do his job in two ways: he didn't save Moss, but more importantly he didn't die, that is, he didn't have anything to show for the fact that Moss is dead. In the dream, we hear that his father goes on ahead of him with his torch, ignoring TLJ and leaving him in the dark. TLJ's dream is an expression of his fear that his father is ashamed of him for living while those around him die. He knows that whenever he catches up to his father, ie dies, he'll be there with him again and not be a failure for keeping his life while those around him lose theirs.
I think an illustration of this interpretation is when he learns that Chigurh returned to the scene of a previous crime. TLJ returns to the El Paso motel to find the door lock cylinder blown out. He stands in the doorway and senses that Chigurh is inside, gun in hand, waiting for him. He stands outside the door, gathers himself and enters, fully expecting to die. Because he wants to. But as he says in the film, Chigurh (or twisted fate, as it seems he is often portrayed), is elusive and unknown like a ghost (as TLJ calls him), and TLJ escapes the fate he seeks. His "And then I woke up" to end the movie expresses the disdain he feels because he is able to do so. I guess mine is a particularly dark interpretation of the ending...

If someone who has read the book has some more insight into everything, I'd love to hear it.

quote:

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i was also curious about anton hiding in the hotel room when jones goes up to it. was he hiding in another room?

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Anton was there, I guess in spirit, although that's a cheesy way to put it. His presence was there, but he physically was not. It's a heavily symbolic scene that seems open to interpretation. As I explained, I think he was there only because TLJ wanted him there. You can see in the cylinder of the lock the movement of shadows, ghost-like reflections. As TLJ opens the door, they disappear and Chigurh is gone. I don't believe he physically escaped the room...he may have been there when TLJ arrived, and if he was, it cements his status as an elusive ghost-like figure who is unable to be captured. He would not escape through the vents though - doesn't fit Chigurh's behavior throughout the movie. The only time he ran from someone was when Moss shot him.

The title comes from the opening line of a poem entitled "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats.

Like the film, it is a bit opaque. Or maybe I just don't read much 20th century Irish poetry.

Worth a look, it is less than a page long.

That's a great post, hui. Thanks.

Thanks for your insight guys. I walked out in frustration when I first saw it but now I can't help but like it the more I think about it. Everybody's got to admit though, that movie was extremely well made, seems just like Texas would have been around 1980.

SPOILER:

What these kinds of movies where the bad guys win, usually have some sort of "deeper meaning" but that is something that pisses me off because I know the particular lesson already. This one has two- the one that you guys say explains the title, and the other that there is no certainty, but in this case I felt pretty sure that the bad guy would "win" early on to prove some point like this.

I don't know that the bad guy won. He did not look to be in too good a shape at the end.

Maybe that is another lesson we are supposed to take----getting the money doesn't mean you won. In that respect it is like Fargo. The guy who got the money in that one ended up in the wood chipper.

I like Aggienk's take. I am going to read the book next week and see if there is any additional help there.

But I suspect that the author and filmmakers are leaving some things opaque on purpose. The cave metaphor of Plato comes to mind here---do we ever see the truth clearly, or merely as a shadow cast on a wall over which we cannot see?

How many films have you seen in the last five years have you actually given this much thought to afterwards? For me, not but a handful

Aggienk, having read the book I can respond to your comments on the movie. However, as you of course understand, the film is not the book, so what is true in the book does not necessarily apply to the film.


SPOILER ALERT ABOUT THE BOOK





















In the book, Ed Tom Bell's father was NOT a lawman (his grandfather was, as the movie says). Ed Tom, who speaks of his father right at the end of the book, is clearly proud of the grit and determination of his father, who apparently led quite a hard life, but he also thinks that the world would consider Ed Tom to have lived the more important, successful, valuable life. (He does not say that in the sense of bragging; it's just a fact.) So the notion that his father (in the dream) is somehow embarrassed by Ed Tom and so rides on past is, looking solely at the book, probably not borne out by the text.

I will say, though, that Ed Tom did something in WWII that he is ashamed of. Moreover, when he visits the motel where Anton has lately been, Ed Tom senses (correctly) that Chigurh is watching him (he is in a car in the parking lot) and, rather than forcing the issue on his own, drives out of the lot and calls for backup. By the time it arrives, Chigurh has disappeared from the lot. So your theory that Ed Tom contrasts himself unfavorably with other more "heroic" lawmen from the past makes a lot of sense to me.

The film follows the book quite closely, for the most part. I have to say that I prefer the book. I suspect I'd have enjoyed the film more if I had not read the book: the movie "reads" like a sort of short-hand Cliff's Notes version of the book. But that's what has to happen in moving from the one medium to the other.

[This message has been edited by OldArmy71 (edited 11/30/2007 9:23p).]

Calling for backup in such a situation is what the law enforcement officers are trained to do these days. That's why less of them get shot.

Still, that interpretation makes a lot of sense.

By the way, I read one bit somewhere to the effect that McCarthy named the bad fellow Chigur because in 1980 (the time when the novel is set) the baddest fellow in El Paso was Jimmy Chagra, the drug running lawyer who was convicted of hiring an assasin who killed federal judge John Wood, whom the courthouse in San Antonio is named after.

Chagra hired Woody Harrelson's father to do the killing.

By the way, the bit in the film when Woody is sitting in the chair at his hotel talking to Chigur is one fine bit of acting. He oscillates between arrogance and terror in a blink.

Hui:

Wow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Harrelson

That's really interesting.

But I thought Woody's role was the one casting that didn't "fit." Not because he did a bad job acting; he just didn't seem to fit.


Seriously, click that link. Really interesting. Sounds like Harrelson's father did not kill the judge, but did kill people. He killed a Hearne (of all places!)graindealer named Sam Degelia.

[This message has been edited by letters at random (edited 12/1/2007 11:13a).]

One of the things that seemed a bit out of place for me was when TLJ was talking about lawmen from days past and referenced the county that each one was from, same thing later when Barry Corbin was talking about the old days. If I were talking about someone from Comanche County, I'd refer to them as being from Comanche, or a town instead of a county and including the word "county" in the description. Am I off base on this, or is this the way an old-timer would talk?

Great movie BTW, although I wish the Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root angle would've been fleshed out better.

good thoughts by all.


SPOILERS


i LOVED the fact that we got no details about Moss's death. By that point, we had seen such incredible violence and intensity. the way they edited that last scene together, i realized there was nothing more theCoen brothers could show us that would have served that scene. instead, there's just this hopelessness that surrounds it and it really takes on the point of view of the tragic character TLJ plays. which brings me to the ending. i love that TLJ doesn't swear a vendetta or something corny. you're sitting there, and you hear a man talking about the death of his father and about his impending death, and the whole thing is just swamped in this hopelessness that followed the whole movie. we went from "most lawmen didn't carry guns" to a man murdering people in incredibly violent ways. he's a man who knows he's beat. then you've got bardem sulking off injured but otherwise alright after killing dead Moss's wife "because he had made a promise"

damn, if i didn't love this movie!













end spoilers.

ttt

The book also gives no details on Moss' death. The girl wth the beers has a larger role in the book, but nothing major.

The book was great.

The movie was a great film, but cannot possibly live up to the book.

The most concise, natural dialogue I've heard in a very long time. It's a classic. It takes alot of thought to have so much subtext in so few words. This is why it's one of those movies you can talk about long after you've seen it.