No Country Like The Old Country
Posted on | May 12, 2008 at 11:15 pm | 6 Comments
It won Best Picture this year. The critics loved it. Javier Bardem rightfully won Best Supporting Actor. The acting is great. The cinematography is wonderful. But No Country For Old Men just didn’t do it for me. N and I watched it the other night (on Blu-Ray!) and it definitely held our interest, but ultimately it was a hollow experience. It wasn’t the violence – that didn’t bother me much, although N had some problems with it.
[Warning: Spoilers follow.] I’m not a big believer in conventional Hollywood endings. And I’m willing to trust the Coen Brothers to bring the Interesting, although as I’ve stated before, I really like only about half their oeuvre. And I know that they were adapting a novel, fairly faithfully. But when you have a movie where the leading man dies 3/4 of the way through and the remainder of the movie meanders down a path/moral that was already outlined by the opening narration, you just don’t have proper closure. What bothered me the most is that the death happened off-screen, like it really didn’t even matter. The movie felt like it was really building up to something, and then… fizzle. I wanted something more. I wanted a final confrontation, cliché as that is. I wanted more of an explanation of just what the heck was going on, and who all the different factions were.
I know one has to learn to expect the unexpected from the Coens, but at least they’re usually decent storytellers. Maybe they just don’t know how to end a movie. I had similar problems with The Ladykillers. But I loved O Brother, Where Art Thou (which I finally saw after Ladykillers). I’ll still keep watching their movies and appreciating their idiosyncrasies, but I just don’t understand why this movie is so universally loved. Back to Film Class for me.
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Whatever happened to the Old Country restaurant? I used to love that place. I think.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: I can’t even bring myself to put it in here, it was so bad. There are some sick people out there. I feel really bad for the person doing the search though.
Comments
6 Responses to “No Country Like The Old Country”
May 13th, 2008 @ 1:00 am
Agreed that “No Country…” lacked a real ending, but at least it was a lot better than the reheated melange of cliches that won BP last year!
You gotta grade on a curve, Rogj – what else deserved to win in 2007? “Juno”? Give me a break…
May 13th, 2008 @ 4:03 am
I saw it as a seat back movie on my flight back from England, so not the best venue, but I agree with most of what you said. Most of the movie had been spoiled for me already because my drunken uncle kept raving about it and explaining the differences between the book and the movie. And the final death is a lot more explicitly detailed in the book.
What search can be so bad? I get “J***** T****** nude” several times a week. Sorta deservedly. That is pretty bad though.
May 13th, 2008 @ 8:08 am
What search can be so bad?
The search term looked like it had been input by a troubled kid and was very personal.
May 13th, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
I believe the the Old Country restaurant burned and was never reopened.
May 14th, 2008 @ 7:44 am
yellojkt, I’m afraid I’ve censored part of your comment – sorry. The hits were already starting to come in from that.
May 15th, 2008 @ 5:46 am
As you are well within your right to. I try to share the wealth and it’s a pretty cruel prank on my part because whenever I leave a comment about it, the victim becomes part of the search results.
I justify it as a way of misdirecting the sad, sad people doing the search.