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February 25, 2008
No Country For Hope
This year was the first time I can remember in which I saw all of the films that were nominated for Best Picture in the Academy Awards. I liked four of them (“Atonement,” “Juno,” “Michael Clayton,” and “There Will Be Blood”). The one I didn’t like, “No Country For Old Men,” won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director. What’s wrong with me?
Or should I ask, “What’s wrong with the voters in the Academy?” Or “What’s wrong with our country?” “No Country For Old Men” is a movie in which the villain wins, in which evil wins, and in which the mumbling hero quits in fear and despair. There is no character in the movie to admire or like, there is no character development, the ending is as unsatisfying as Weight Watchers cookie, and there is not even a smidgen of hope to be found anywhere. Is the message that this is no country for hope?
I asked a good friend who is a successful writer and member of the Academy if she liked the movie and she said, “I hated it, but my 23-year-old son loved it.” I replied, “Strange, my 25-year-old son loved it, too. He said it was the best movie of the year, as did my wife’s 29-year-old son.” I read the reader reviews on The New York Times website and they were, I’d estimate, about 75 percent negative; well, more than just negative, they were witheringly critical: “No there there,” “…non-ending,” “repellant,” “very nicely styled garbage,” “testicle-level rubbish,” “Terminator movie shot in Texas,” and “US film industry has sunk to this very low standard,” among many others in a similar vein.
I guess the comment I agree most with is “very nicely styled garbage.” But what fascinated me most is that young people who I know are Obama supporters, and, thus, most likely embrace a message of hope, loved a film in which there was absolutely no hope. In order to explain this apparent contradiction, I went back to Bruno Bettelheim’s book, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales to see if I could find some answers.
Bettelheim writes that children like fairy tales because at a very deep level the stories help them deal with their greatest fears. Certainly “No Country For Old Men” is no redemptive fairy tale, even though it begins with the visual message, “once upon a time, in a place far, far away.” But it is a story about random, horrific, technology-enhanced violent death without death. In his book, Bettelheim refers to J.R.R. Tolkien, who described the facets which are necessary in a good fairy tale: fantasy, recovery, escape, and consolation – recovery from great despair, escape from some great danger, but, most of all, consolation.
“Old Country…” has the bleak fantasy land of Texas in the 80s – a time our current President was living near Marfa, TX, the location for the film – but there is no recovery and absolutely no escape. But what about consolation? Could it be that the greatest fear younger people have is of the random nature of uncontrollable violence and death by pathological foreigners, as horrendously imprinted on their memories by the tragedy of 9/11 and by continuing images of death in Iraq – a fear that is manipulated and given growth hormones by the same Texas president? If so, then perhaps “No Country…” is a film that makes people confront their greatest fears and provides a psychological outlet for them.
However, the movie’s ending in which Sherriff Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) gives up, is as unsatisfying as if Frodo and Sam Gamgee in “The Fellowship of the Ring” had said, “Screw the ring. There’s no hope; let the Dark Lord have it – my big feet hurt.”
I’m sorry, we need heroes, not villains in our modern stories myths. We need hobbits and Jedi Knights, not wimps. We need hope, not despair.
Posted by Charles Warner at February 25, 2008 02:08 PM
Comments
teddoyle ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mediacurmudgeon.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 27, 2008 04:47 PM writes:
Amen, Charlie. I, too, felt hollow at the end of the film--as I remarked to my sister during our margarita-enhanced post mortems, lots of interesting moments but no glue...and certainly no hope.
My mother used to say that art has the obligation to lift the spirit...not in the Pollyanna sense, but in that it should bring you to a new, more enlightened place. That place could be a happy one or a disturbing one, but at least you would have learned something.
"No Country" offered no such enlightenment to my thinking...but your take on the Post-9/11 mindset offers some really interesting straw for the fire.
Hope all's well with you.
Ted Doyle
Gil Gross at February 25, 2008 11:26 PM writes:
I can see why the movie has made such an impact with younger people. With no Vietnam or earlier wars to sully their impression of a peaceful world, they have been hit by campus mass murders, 9/11, and Iraq with a level of violence that seems shocking to them. They have had no hero at ending the war, stopping terrorism or even protecting them on a bucolic campus that was supposed to be far from city strife. The idea that they live in a world that was safe, no longer is, and that those sworn to protect them cannot is a new and powerful one to them.
To those who grew up in the 60's or during World War 2, it is nothing new and almost just a sad nostalgia.
My problem with the movie isn't that a hero was not able to stop the killing. In fact, I think that's the very point of the film. The film's ending doesn't work simply because after being 90% movie, it ends with 10% Audio Book. An uncle comes in from nowhere as the most obvious device for exposition since Tattoo on "Fantasy Island," and it goes from a cinematic experience to becoming Cliff's Notes on the novel. There really was no reason for that.
There was a famous episode of "Gunsmoke" in which Marshall Dillon and Chester not only failed to catch the bad guys but ended up without their horses, far from Dodge City and in a downpour, with the last words being Chester's "Well, ya can't catch 'em all Mister Dillon."
It not only did not rob us of a hero, but it made their usual exploits more heroic because they were human and could fail.
A cinematic ending showing Tommy Lee Jones' surrender in the face of darker forces could have been very powerful, though possibly even bleaker. The Coens just got lazy. Watching the film was like a good hour and a half of foreplay with the movie falling asleep before consumating the act.
Finally, meaning no disrespect to a powerful performance by Bardem, it was, as was called for by the script, a one note performance. Go back and watch Hal Holbrook's face in the scene in "Into The Wild," where he offers to adopt the protagonist and watch all the different emotions and vulnerabilities play on his face and see what a Best Supporting Actor should be rewarded for.
Holbrook not only shows us all those emotions, but in doing so, makes what otherwise might have been just a tragic choice by a young man who had not considered the consequences, into actual tragedy.
Now that there is acting.
Media Curmudgeon at February 25, 2008 07:08 PM writes:
Nick Kotz writes:
"You are making me think. Yee gods, think!
I saw all except "There Will Be Blood" and "Atonement."
I found "No Country" a powerful film, the cinematography and the whole opening sequence was as good as anything I've seen in a long time. Now, how could I not have been revolted by the totally bleak conclusion without any redeeming characters or message. Well, I guess I was, unless that message was to show the quantum change in the level of and meaning of meaningless violence.
Tommy Lee Jones is, I think, the moral witness to what he cannot comprehend and no longer can deal with. It's out of Conrad and Heart of Darkness. And I guess it did make me think of the ever escalating rise of random violence in our society. The kids of West Side story and that era are not even on the same planet as the black and Latino kids roaming the streets today killing each other and people they don't know. And, of course, the violence perpetrated by our government today -- the waterboarding, dropping thousands of tons of bombs on Afghanistan in frustration over not being able to track the Taliban and Al Queda.
Did "No Country" make me think of that violence in our lives, and make it all the more real and horrifying? Now, I guess I'm searching for the redeeming value which is not there.
Media Curmudgeon at February 25, 2008 07:02 PM writes:
Thanks for your comment, Helen. Excellent point about "Silence of the Lambs," which, because Hannibal got away, set up the opportunity for a sequel. Someone on the NY Times website comments suggested that because the killer in "Old Country..." walked away (certainly less jaunty than in "Silence...") that the Coen brothers were setting audiences up for a sequel. I hope not.
Helene K at February 25, 2008 06:08 PM writes:
I agree with your post. It's similar to the Academy giving Best Picture in 1991 to Silence of the Lambs -- a psychological thriller where at the end the serial killer walks away?? Egads! If there are to be guidelines for the movie industry, there should be guidelines that no excessively gruesome film should win Best Picture... just my two cents.
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