Entries associated with the tag "No Country for Old Men":

Something to puzzle over ...

No Country for Old Men: serial murderer, deaf to every human appeal for mercy, goes about his business with implacable dispatch—Academy Awards: best picture, best supporting actor, etc.

Michael Haneke's Funny Games remake: serial murderers, deaf to every human appeal for mercy, go about their business with implacable dispatch—back of the critical hand, lots of righteous huffing and puffing, etc.

Not much difference between the two, at least in my opinion, yet one movie's lionized, the other savaged as exploitive swill. Except arguably the Coens distance themselves more thoroughly from the corpse pile than Haneke ever could, who's more into closing the empathy gap vis-a-vis. (Or is he?—more on that below.) And if human investment's lacking it's the Coens and their (modified) gargoyle brood who seem the more culpable parties. Score one for the vilified Austrian there.

Still I'm wondering if visceral, pandering "violence" is actually the problem. Sadism or cruelty, yes, more a matter of gamesmanship than literally inflicted injury, and a lot of offscreen suggestion, the way both films indulge the audience's discomfort with sights and actions unseen. But who or what's to blame for that, the respective auteurs or our own willingness to be self-righteously disgusted? Especially in Haneke's case, where the deck's stacked from the beginning. Not only are his human punching bags helpless—and Haneke's extremely astute about this: not a lot of "blame the victim" strategies available, all the psychological escape routes covered—but so is the audience in relation to the ethical trap the director wants to set. Which, as in the original '97 version, is this: "Anyone who leaves the cinema doesn't need the film, and anyone who stays does." Now there's a funny game for you!—as if, after plunking down our ten bucks, we're already planning an exit to avoid the moralizing taint. But even if we do leave, the outcome's already anticipated, preemptively arranged. Or maybe it's performance art: paying for the privilege of applauding our own outraged stomachs. But stay or leave, we're losers either way, another clutch of "victims" in a disempowerment bind.

Like the family in the film—though actually not like them: their cooperation's too patent, too dramatically foreordained—I kept trying to escape from Haneke's manipulative grasp, negate the implied assumption that only he can call the tune, define the moral high ground, determine what our relation to the bloodletting and terror should be. So how's this for equalizing leverage? First scene after the kid's been slaughtered, blood on the TV, the walls, everything bottomed out emotionally ... and why is Naomi Watts being framed like a Georges de La Tour painting, profile an artful nimbus against the surrounding chiaroscuro gloom? What's the relentless aestheticizing for, especially now when the only credible response seems utterly nihilistic—to give the whole game up, dispense with all the fussy embellishments? And what's Haneke's own relation to the designated snuffs: are they worth his (and by extension our) falling apart for or simply another opportunity for aaarrrrttt?

Which seems worse than anything he can accuse the rest of us of doing—or not doing, as the case may be. But exiting the cinema isn't an option for our moral arbiter in chief—since somebody has to backlight the corpses, make elegant objets d'art from human desolation and hysteria, etc—the only artist's alternative being to soldier on, on, on ...

So much for the everlasting high ground. Is our funny game over yet?

Hey, glad you could make it! Let me take your coat. What are you drinking? Guinness? Well, how about Old Style? This is a free paper, you know.

Yeah, we realize the Oscars are hopelessly corrupt, but we needed an excuse for a party. We've all filled out ballots, and here's what we'd like to see win:

PAT GRAHAM  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages ("choice with a figurative gun to my head, though Nicole Kidman in Margot at the Wedding's more to my liking"). Best Actor: Viggo Mortensen, Eastern Promises. Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There ("easiest of all the procrustean decisions here, with fewest reservations—though oddly enough I did have a couple on first viewing"). Best Animated Feature: Persepolis ("unfortunately"). Best Cinemathography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood ("though how much actually has to do with Elswit, since most of the important logistical choices—re where to position the camera and how scenes ought to reveal themselves through evolutionary long takes rather than editing-room montage—belong to the director rather than the cinematographer [or at least ought to], and seem open to debate"). Best Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum (really brilliant, in a frenetic, hyperactive way that, unfortunately, makes for a movie badly in need of an anchor"). Best Costume Design: Albert Wolsky, Across the Universe ("just to get the movie in there somewhere...what do I know about costumes?").

ANDREA GRONVALL  Best Picture: No Country for Old Men. Best Director: Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Original Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Best Adapted Screenplay: Ronald Harwood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Actress: Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men. Best Foreign Language Film: Beaufort. Best Documentary Feature: Sicko. Best Animated Feature: Persepolis. Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Editing: Christopher Rouse, The Bourne Ultimatum. Best Art Direction: Dante Ferretti/Francesco Lo Sciavo, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Best Costume Design: Colleen Atwood, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Best Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Atonement.

J.R. JONES  Best Picture: Atonement. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Michael Clayton. Best Adapted Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, Atonement. Best Actress: Julie Christie, Away From Her. Best Actor: George Clooney, Michael Clayton. Best Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Animated Feature: Persepolis. Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood. Best Editing: Juliette Welfling, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood/Katie Spencer, Atonement. Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Atonement. Best Original Score: Dario Marianelli, Atonement.

JOSHUA KATZMAN  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Brad Bird, Ratatouille. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Julie Christie: Away From Her. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Hal Holbrook, Into the Wild. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Cinematography: Robert Elswit, There Will Be Blood. Best Editing: Jay Cassidy, Into the Wild. Best Art Direction: Jack Fisk/Jim Erickson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Score: Marco Beltrami, 3:10 to Yuma.

REECE PENDLETON  Best Picture: There Will Be Blood. Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Original Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins, The Savages. Best Adapted Screenplay: Paul "I Drink Your Milkshake" Anderson, There Will Be Blood. Best Actress: Laura Linney, The Savages. Best Actor: Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. Best Supporting Actress: Amy Ryan, Gone Baby Gone. Best Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Charlie Wilson's War. Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight. Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Best Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran, Atonement. Best Original Score: "Sorry, but I just can't get past the fact that Jonny Greenwood's score for There Will Be Blood wasn't eligible."

So how silly is it gasbagging about a movie you haven't seen based on a book you haven't read? Since that's approximately where I'm at vis-a-vis Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men, adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel of no particular distinction, at least if you trust what the literary rags tell you. But already we've been inundated from all sides as the national release date approaches (11/9), and preliminary impressions have been formed. Not least from the track records of all the parties concerned—the two sibling filmmakers, the novelist—which, for me anyway, sets anticipations galloping in contradictory directions.

Not because "one's good, the other isn't," but mostly for the mismatched sensibilities and tones. Since why would the Coens, generally irreverent, scattershot types, ever be drawn to the work of someone so resolutely hermetic and austere? "For the characters"—or maybe caricatures, depending on your point of view—is how some critics see it ... except McCarthy doesn't traffic in characters: typically he has oracles, avatars of violence, prophetic mouthpieces raining down perdition. Nothing wrong in that, and within the straitened, minimalist context he almost invariably adopts (in Blood Meridian, The Road, the Border trilogy, etc—every pared-down syllable a discrete "plish" in the silent narrative pool) it manages to work just fine.

But the Coens aren't minimalists (yes, there's the highway stripe in Fargo, but still ...), so what's the "creative" connection? Apparently there is one—or so the brothers' "conversation" with the author in Time (10/18) would lead you to think, though the exact reasons for it seem pretty obscure. Some sample musings:

Cormac McCarthy Days of Heaven is an awfully good movie.
Joel Coen Yeah. Well, he is great, Terry Malick. Really interesting.
CM It's so strange; I never knew what happened to him. I saw Richard Gere in New Orleans one time, and I said, "What ever happened to Terry Malick?" And he said, "Everybody asks me that." He said, "I have no idea." But later on I met Terry. And he just--he just decided that he didn't want to live that life ...
JC One of the great American moviemakers.
CM But Miller's Crossing is in that category. I don't want to embarrass you, but that's just a very, very fine movie.
JC Eh, it's just a damn rip-off.

Miller's Crossing? Richard Gere? Some of the things folks tell you you'd rather not know ...