Movie Reviews

No Country for Old Men, February 2008

Well, it is no country for young men, either. As a matter of fact, I also wouldn't recommend it for women of any age.  I was interested in seeing this movie for three reasons:  First, I enjoyed a couple of the Coen brothers' movies. I thought that Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing were clever and entertaining, although some of the violence was a little overbearing and not particularly germane to the story. But the writing, dialogue, and plot twists in these movies were interesting and helped develop the plot and the characters.

Second, I grew up in the mountainous region of west Texas by the border with Mexico. So, frequently, I like to see how this region of the country is envisioned in popular culture. In fact, Tommy Lee Jones, who is usually good in movies, owns some land close to a little grocery store my family runs in Van Horn, Texas. He comes into the store on occasion. Third, I suppose the hype associated with the movie got to me. The film received some critical acclaim and some Oscar nominations. Apparently, it has already won some other awards. Roger Ebert said that No Country for Old Men is a perfect film. This amalgam of critical commentary prompted some interest. Also, I noticed that among the user ratings of westerns on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB), No Country for Old Men surpassed Once Upon a Time in the West, and is now second to only The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in user ratings.

While I doubt that No Country for Old Men is a bona fide western and question its placement by IMDB in this category, I was interested to see why it would be rated higher than Once Upon a Time in the West, which I consider to be the finest, most thoughtful, western film. After seeing the film, however, I question the evaluation by the users, critics and the film establishment, as well as my own decision to pay attention to them in the first place.

The plot of the film was too simple and simplistic to generate any real thought or interest in the story itself. The film was about an unbelievably ruthless and barbaric assassin who pursues a foolish trailer park cowboy who stumbles upon and steals a case of drug money totaling $2,000,000. Unlike Blood Simple and Miller's Crossing there were no interesting plot twists in the movie and no significant vehicles for either developing the characters or the theme of the movie. The story is nothing more than a sequence of gruesome murders by the psychotic assassin. The murders were the only events in the movie that moved the plot along.

The story was little more than the technical details of how the assassin killed characters who were involved with the failed drug deal. It was also about the murder of persons who had no discernible role in the story whatsoever. Eventually, the writer and director become bored with even this in the last third of the film preferring to have the killings occur off-screen. Oddly, only the aftermath of the showdown between the cowboy and the assassin is shown in the film. The showdown itself was not shown. There was absolutely no pay-off in No Country for Old Men to the tension the director tried to create between the cowboy and the assassin. It was analogous to Sergio Leone deciding to film the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly without a showdown, only having Clint Eastwood (Blondie) ride off in the desert. Or, not showing the gunfight between Charles Bronson (Harmonica) and Henry Fonda (Frank) at the end of Once Upon a Time in the West. Instead of a denouement between the primary antagonists in the story, we are diverted to the emotional aftermath for the sheriff who pursued the killer.

Inadvertently, the conflict between the cowboy and the assassin is revealed as only a pretext for the babbling retirement speech of the aging, bored, and exhausted sheriff. Tommy Lee Jones played the burn-ed out, supposedly wise, sheriff who attempted to warn the cowboy and to track down the assassin. At best, his efforts on both tasks were half-hearted. There was no passion in his character for anything, especially his job or the pursuit of justice or public safety. Passion, commitment, and tenacity are long gone and seem inappropriate in this barren, harsh country.

The sheriff was beaten down and demoralized by years of pointless work in the desolate, lifeless environment of west Texas. The primary philosophic principle directing his approach to life and work was the futility of just about everything. He wasn't a particularly good detective, he even missed the killer on the scene of the murder of the cowboy. He didn't seem to prevent any of the crimes. With a totally ineffectual sheriff, the movie ended without any sort of conclusion, except that the sheriff announced his retirement and the killer was still on the loose without finding the $2,000,000, which is the one small piece of satisfaction we can take from the two hours of watching the carnage.

There is another contrast in the film with the work of Sergio Leone: the role and meaning of the desert landscape in the film. In Leone's works, the desert plays an important and, at times, contradictory role in his videography and his stories. In Leone's work, the desert is certainly a field where the action takes place and it certainly provides a wonderful backdrop for the facial close-ups that provide powerful visual definitions of the cognitive and emotional dynamics of the characters in the films.

This is especially true of the broad vistas in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and in Once Upon a Time in the West that are counterposed against the beautiful portraits of Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach, Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda that visually capture the characters' motives and emotions. Additionally, in Leone's works, the desert is frequently an antagonist that the human characters must either overcome or accommodate. Examples of this point are the death march through the Jornada del Muerta in New Mexico in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the progress of the railroad in Once Upon a Time in the West. In Leone's movies, the desert is both obstacle and enabler.In No Country for Old Men, the desert landscape plays no significant role in either the story, the videography, or the interaction among the characters.

In the work of the Coen brothers, the desert is barren, desolate, lugubrious, and uninteresting, just like the barren, desolate, lugubrious, and uninteresting dialogue and actions of its inhabitants. The story happened to occur there, it did not occur there for a reason that matters to the plot or to the development of the characters. The movie could have been filmed in a swamp, forest, or corn field with no consequence for the plot, videography, or character development. Lacking a vision about the relationship between the characters and the environment, the swamp, forest, or corn field can also be filmed as barren, desolate, lugubrious, and uninteresting.

The characters and the desert are defeated and lifeless in No Country for Old Men. In this movie, the desert is a horrible place that reflects only the misery, stupidity, and purposelessness of the lives of its inhabitants. What is there to commend this movie? Not too much. Some of the murders early in the film are innovative, but that is not much of a recommendation. The acting isn't particularly inspired. The dialogue is tired and sloppy. The story presented in the film is not well-integrated. At bottom, it is a snuff-film, a type of pornography that totally despairs of the human condition and all human potential.

Why should a dismal film be evaluated so highly by the critics and by the users on the Internet Movie Data Base? As far as the cultural elites are concerned, I have come to the conclusion that they really need to cultivate an image of profundity and artistry in the work of the film industry. Images to the contrary unmask the significance of a large and powerful sector of the state capitalist system in the United States. The profundity and artistry of films cannot be left to chance by cultural elites; people cannot be left to decide for themselves whether movies are any good or not.

There are cultural, political, and economic interests in promoting the quality and importance of the products of the film industry. Without the strategic marketing and management of consciousness, why would individuals invest their financial and emotional resources in these products? Thus, critics and the film establishment must produce not only movies but a need or interest in the public for investing in the movies. It would be financially and ideologically devastating, if the film industry could not find five films that could be Oscar candidates.

The quality and artistry of the films are established in the marketing process, in process of manufacturing consciousness about the films. The quality and artistry do not precede the marketing process; they are established in it.  The high ratings that IMDB users give No Country for Old Men may reflect nothing more than the fact that the strategic marketing by the film industry and cultural elites functions successfully to manufacture notions of quality and artistry. In other words, the enthusiasm movie goers have for a particular film may be more of a reflection of a cultural, financial, and economic agenda promoted by cultural elites than it is a principled judgment about the sense of life the film presents. If so, critical reflection about a movie must also include an assessment of the process by which ideas about its quality and artistry are constructed.

***

Atonement, March 2008

I absolutely hated this movie and continue to be baffled by what the cultural elites, in this case the motion picture establishment, consider to be high-quality art. I recognize that, once again, I am proudly in the small minority of reviewers who do not gush over this picture. I know that Atonement is up for multiple Academy Awards, but I hated the movie and the experience of watching it.

I need to say at the outset that, although I tend to prefer other types of movies, since I have been married I have worked hard to appreciate movies that attempt to convey some sort of deep artistic or social message, mostly at the prompting of my wife. With some struggle (and considerable discipline) at the behest of my lovely wife, I have learned to sit through Jane Austen movies and, eventually, appreciate the subtle social and cultural commentary contained in those films. So, I went to Atonement not expecting to see a new favorite, but with the attitude that there would be a significant message, beautiful photography, great acting, and good writing. Who knew? Maybe I would learn something.

It was not to be. The movie was boring, not well-written, and not particularly interesting from a technical point of view.What bothered me most, however, was the presentation of the main character, Briony, without any real moral development during the decades this epic supposedly occurred. Apparently, the "atonement" was her effort to fabricate a happy ending for the couple whose lives she ruined by falsely accusing the man of a sex crime. From what I could tell, there was no "atonement" that would have mattered to the people she victimized or that would have mattered in her interaction with other people.

The "atonement" was a completely internal or privatized act, in the worst sense of that word. Briony was a liar as a teen and she was a liar at the end of her life as she fabricates the blissful reunion of the two lovers. I suppose that the movie wanted to make some sort of statement about the act of writing and its relationship, or lack of relationship, to the external world inhabited by the writer. In this movie, this argument seems to be that cultural products do not really need to benefit anyone except those who produce them. Furthermore, any harm done to people in the process is not particularly germane. 

The "atonement" that occurs in the act of writing fiction, for example, is purportedly sufficient redemption for the harm that the author does to others in the external world. What mattered was only that Briony fabricated a reunion in her writing and in the interview about her work. What mattered was only that Briony was able to assuage her guilt through writing. This is a horrible standard to applaud art and cultural products because it excuses pretty much anything that happens in the process of creating art and culture. And, perhaps more importantly, it does not present any other form of redemption, atonement, or development of the character of Briony.

As far as her truth telling is concerned, Briony did not change, improve, or develop. Her atonement or redemption occurred outside of the experience of the persons she injured. There was nothing particularly noble or heroic in her character either as a child or an adult. There was no moral development in the character of Briony. She remained a predator, focused only on her need to assuage her guilt.

From a philosophic standpoint alone, this movie does not deserve an Academy Award or any other validation from any cultural elite. The fact that it already has received considerable acclaim reflects only how pathetic standards are for assessing art and culture. Atonement is a film that fails to provide any vision beyond interpersonal predation and appears likely to receive the same acclaim and cultural validation as To Kill a Mockingbird. Culturally, and philosophically, this is a sad state of affairs.

***