Why I love No Country at THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS

The movie begins with us inside the voice of the old, soon to retire sheriff, and though ostensibly the action occurs elsewhere, we realize at the end of the film that we’ve never left this voice, in fact we’ve fallen deeper into its Texan cracks, even into its dreams. How do we know this? We know this because, like a sheriff, and unlike a movie, we miss most of the action. Sure, we come upon it in anticipation, but most of the killings are (literally) veiled from our eyes. We can’t figure out who the heroes are because they keep dying in very anticlimactic ways, right before, or right after, our attention has been called. I’m so excited that a filmmaker (two even!) have resurrected the art of “not showing”–Hitchcock definitely had that one down, as did many others, though perhaps in part out of regard for the censors. Well the censors have mostly gone home, but the viewers remain, and No Country for Old Men is described as a “violent” film or one that is “action packed,” but these lines come from censors who were once viewers. The truth is that the film simply shows us what it’s like to be an old man who is too slow, too peaceful, and too intelligent, for the world of terror.

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8 Responses to “Why I love No Country”

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1 Janet Leslie Blumberg
03/05/2008 at 16:44

Wow. Great review.

Guess I’ll have to watch it after all. Drats! (Do I have to watch Will Be Blood, too?)

There’s something archetypal in that pit-bull terrier scene shown in the trailers for No Country. These are the (not-so)guilty nightmare desires of our current specular world, the world we “view” everywhere on all these screens that we throw up to mirror us. We must have a haunting sense of our own bad faith. What would Lacan say…
2 A.D.
03/05/2008 at 17:12

I can’t think of where the terriers come in . . . but I can say that No Country is a much better flic than There will be blood, which i thought was over hyped and, as usual, Daniel Day-Lewis out acted everyone else so much that it comes out lopsided
3 Dan
03/06/2008 at 11:41

This blog used to be such a positive place…

Well, while I haven’t seen There will be blood, I did hear the interview on Terry Gross with the Paul Dano (Eli Sunday). The clips she played really highlighted how vibrant he was, at least in those clips. Do you feel that those scenes, like Eli making Plainview confess, were so lopsided? And why are you such a playa-hata?
4 Janet Leslie Blumberg
03/06/2008 at 13:55

It’s when the dog goes after what’s-his-name in the river. The actor told Terry Gross that he was terrified and that the dog was the “Javier Bardem” of the dog world…. Or the “Anton Chigurh” of the dog world. Everyone was yelling “Don’t worry, it’s okay….” I’ve only seen the mesmerizing clip.

As for Day-Lewis, I was sort of hoping for Viggo — that was a great scene in the bath house in Eastern Promises — until I saw the clip from There Will Be Blood at the Oscars, and I knew that no-one else stood a chance.

So Dan, you liked Blood?
5 Dan
03/06/2008 at 17:37

Can’t say – haven’t seen either film. Have a feeling, knowing the directors from each, that I’ll like both. It’s a good feeling. Better than the cultured despair to which Aron seems so attached.
6 A.D.
03/06/2008 at 17:59

But this happened in Gangs of New York as well, in which Mr. Day-Lewis was phenomenal but the rest of the cast just stunk it up. I really think people idolize his acting too much and don’t know how to integrate him into the film. And besides PT Anderson has still not gotten rid of his pretentiousness. . . PT Barnum more like
7 Dan
03/06/2008 at 22:33

Apparently my comment about cultured despair was inaccurate. I think something else is called for, something akin to what Schliermacher called “cultured despising“.
8 P.J. Ramey
08/12/2008 at 16:10

I do not despise this website. Nice!

THE LAND OF UNLIKENESS