No Country for Old Men

Bea says: I loved this film. Seen in Hull, at the new St Stephen's Centre, it was my father-in-law's choice. He didn't like it, and I think Cecil could take it or leave it, but I really, really liked it. The last Coen brothers film I saw was probably Fargo, and I used to see a lot of their films when I was hanging with a hipper crowd than I do now - I'd forgotten just how good they are. I also didn't realise until the closing credits that the film is based on a Cormac McCarthy book - I went straight to the library on getting back to London and borrowed everything of his I could lay my hands on (only The Road actually). I've thought about reading his books for a long time but they always seemed really male. They are, and yet they're not.
The bleak, seemingly empty Texan landscape of the film reminded me of home, and of all the books I've read and films I've seen that use the landscape of Australia, North America, Canada, New Zealand as symbols of foreboding, fear, death and ancientness. The film follows Tommy Lee Jones (a mature sheriff) through a hunt for a serial killer, and increasingly we get Jones's sense that the world is changing fast, and not for the better. The early 80s setting serves to reinforce this - we know what's about to happen (Thatcher springs to mind - there is no society, only the individual...). Performances are superb, direction amazing. Only one thing didn't sit well with me: it's my usual complaint I'm afraid. The only main female character, who supposedly works at Wal-Mart and lives in a trailer in 1981, had collagen enhanced lips - not likely! The only blot on an otherwise perfect copybook.

Cecil says: Bea is wrong. I did like the film. What I'm not sure I liked was the constant sense of foreboding throughout the film and the feeling that around the next corner there would be yet another violent act filmed in such a matter-of-fact way. The story-line is gripping, certainly. But maybe where my perceptions differ from Bea's is in the overall feeling of how alien those vast expanses of almost lifeless land feel (I love the feel of Australia, but America could be on the other side of the Moon for me and I am just conscious that nothing close to home anywhere in Europe is comparable). And I could not identify with any of the characters - that doesn't matter in itself but it added to my sense of observing something happening a long way away. Oh, and I can't say I noticed the collagen lips, but hey, I'm not looking. I did notice Javier Bardem's hair cut, though, which seems to be the thing all the fashion and style pages are talking about.

And one final comment: just to reassure our blog readers, Bea and I are NOT chasing prize-winning films. We didn't even realise that The Edge of Heaven (now on release in the UK) had won the Prix Lux until the credits at the end of the film. And No Country for Old Men only won its Oscars AFTER we saw it Hull. Honest!