As I recall it, it was “Can you see me?” Same meaning, but a little more sardonic.
Just finished watching the DVD. I don’t have anything of substance to add to this enlightening discussion, except that I was surprised when I heard Kelly MacDonald (Carla Jean) speak on one of the extra features – she’s Scottish. Why is it that foreign-born actors do much better US accents than US-born actors?
I’m looking forward to watching again after having read the thread, especially the stuff about Anton’s choice of weapons for different types of people.
You had one too many and at least one too few.The body in the motel swimming pool was undoubtedly killed by the Mexican gang that killed Moss, most likely a wild shot. The one left out was the clerk at the Eagle Hotel, where Moss and Wells both wound up staying. He didn’t answer the phone when Moss was suspicious of the faint noises outside the door, and the lobby cat was lapping milk from its dish, now broken.
One thing that no one’s mentioned is Chigurh’s fascination with the process of death. My blood turned to ice cubes during the scene in the office as he was watching Tom Root die painfully. He was spellbound as Root choked on his own blood.
On a slightly different note, this Cocker Spaniel’s review of the movie made me laugh: No Movie for Young Dogs.
The men Anton killed in the Del Rio motel – were they also on the trail of the money or was it wrong place/wrong time for them?
Anton seemed to think they were following the money, but I don’t see how they could have been.
I don’t understand the benefits of a transponder – it doesn’t have much range. Was it just a literary device?
How can you not see the benefit? You drive around the town and when it beeps you follow it to the place with the money. Without the transponder you drive around town and hope you physically see the guy.
Being able to track someone down from a thousand yards even if he’s in a building or hiding behind bushes is a lot better than hoping he’ll randomly be visible from the road.
:dubious:
But it’s still needle in a haystack because of the limited range. The thing didn’t beep until Anton was almost on top of it.
Killing the kids would be pointless and harmful to him- sure TLJ is after him, but at that moment he’s just a victim on a car accident- killing two kids as a result would make a bunch of noise- its not like the guy kills everyone who comes in contact with him- that would be impossible.
What kills me about movies like this is, you have a small rural town full of nice people, horrid wreck on one of the pleasant tree lined resedential neighborhoods, and not a single person comes out of the house to see if anyone needs care, in like five minutes? Similarly, in the shootout scene on the street with Brolin and Bardem, cars are lining the streets of a small downtown city at night, which is weird enough, but the cars are all obviously abandoned as we see not one other soul during the lengthy chase and shootout. :rolleyes:
Some great performances, especially by the Scotwoman, (agree with the earlier post about foreigners kicking Americans ass with their ability to pull of accents), but too long and slow moving, and I say that as a lover of The Passeneger and L’Avevntura. Also, there was absolutely no reason to include the lengthy scene with the wheelcahir bound friend, just like no reason to have the scenes with the Japanese guy in Fargo- any insight they wanted the viewer get from each could have been inserted somewhere else.
Also, I took the scene with the accountant where he said “did you see me” as he’s telling the guy, if you are telling me that you will not tell anyone you wtinessed what I just did, then I won’t kill you.
I won’t even mention that the entire set-up, while a Mcguffin, was unbelivable- if he’s going to make the admittedly stupid move of returning to a crime scene you just took money from, have the sense not to go in your car. It would have made more sense just to have someone spot him as he was leaving with the money the frist time he was there.
I think it helped establish his character. He has a good heart but he doesn’t always think things through. He’s impulsive, but when he has to, he plans ahead.
The Onion is not just goofy parody - they actually have real articles, including movie and album reviews.
I just saw this tonight. What a great film.
One thing I was curious about at the time - when Bell goes into the model room crime scene at the end, we are clearly shown that Anton is waiting in the room. Bell enters, wanders through the (very small) motel room, and finds no one. The filmmakers even make a point of showing that the window is still latched on the inside. And yet, Anton isn’t there. I assume that he didn’t get out of the small-looking ventilation duct - it was open because he was looking for the money in there.
So was this one of those little existentialist things the Cohen Brothers like to throw into their movies? Were they making some larger point about how it was not the destiny of these two to meet, or something like that?
The message I really got from the movie is that of inevitable mortality. Death is like a random force that just sweeps people up. Random strangers killed for being in the wrong place. People who’s lives are spared or taken on a coin flip. The bizarre traffic accident that comes out of nowhere and almost kills the evil force in the movie. It never goes away. You live your life until it catches up with you or you grow old and die. Bells’ character made it through, but he’s still going to die, just as his dad did.
Or was I reading too much into it?
The most common explanation is that Anton was actually long gone, and Jones was just imagining the worst in his head, that he was still in the hotel room when he entered. They could have made it clearer that he wasn’t really there if they had wanted to. That, or he was in the adjacent hotel room to the one Jones went in. In the book IIRC he was watching Jones from his truck in the parking lot.
The bathroom window was locked? I couldn’t tell (sucky TV) and I thought the lingering shot was to show us that it wasn’t locked.
Sam Stone, well said – I don’t think you’re reading too much into it.
We can also compare Bell’s conversations with two men – the sheriff in El Paso and Ellis, Bell’s friend in the wheelchair. The sheriff was railing against the state of things today, green hair and bones in noses. Ellis talks about the random murder of his uncle in 1909 and says “This is nothing new”.
Accepting this – that random cruelty is part of human nature – could be seen as depressing but I see it as hopeful. Good people will get through it. They might not always win, but they’ll get through.
I was pretty sure they were showing that the window was still locked. If they wanted to suggest that he escaped through it, they could have shown it open. I watched the movie in HD, and it looked locked to me. I’ll rewatch that part and see.
I also liked the scene where the Sheriff is telling the wife about how they kill cattle now, with an air gun and a metal spike. I was waiting for the invevitable scene where he has an epiphany that this is what is killing people and it leads to a big break in the case. But no, he never does. As he says later, this is all just too much for him. He needs to just go into retirement, because the world has passed him by and gotten too strange and complex for him to deal with. At no point in the movie is he ever close to figuring out what’s really going on. I suppose you could read even more subtext into that and find a message about how we all wind up getting left behind as we age and the world goes on.
I just rewatched it, and I think Anton was in the hotel room.
The room is laid out with the beds on the left as you open the door, and the T.V. and dresser on the right. Straight back is the sink and counter, with the bathroom (toilet and shower) to the right of the sink/counter, and a kind of closet to the left.
Ed Tom checks the bathroom, but not the closet; he doesn’t even look towards it as far as I can tell.
I think Anton was there, in the closet/alcove.
I have a theory about it. I think that Americans tend to be a little snooty about regionalisms and to exaggerate the distinguishing factors out of proportion. My only basis for that is a long life of people mimicking various Southern accents by using some vile and non specific yokel twang. And I know that I’ve done just as poorly when trying to copy the good folks in Maine.
That said, it is not so surprising that people from Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales can adapt there own dialects to certain areas of the South. Much of our own usage is derived from those countries. I don’t know if that is true of the border area of West Texas or not.
Back to this splendid movie: Some questions for you: How much is assumed about the plot from what is known in the book? Is it at all possible that Llewelyn is not dead but has faked his death in order to disappear? (I admit this would be a stretch.) Is the local sheriff in El Paso on the up and up? How do we know that he really didn’t find the money in the vent? Why were the holes that were shot in the window of the truck when Llewelyn was inside it made by a rifle? Did you see any evidence that Anton had a rifle?
The movie grabbed my attention in the first scene and held it all the way through. There were times when I felt like I was in the speeding car and in the vent facing the psychopath. I couldn’t find a wasted frame. A times I wanted to stop the camera and get a still photo: A man’s bulk framed by the light in the doorway of a dark room, for example.
For those of you familiar with the area where this was filmed, how far is that from Eagle Pass, Texas? Is the terrain in Eagle Pass as desolate and haunting as it is in this film? How far is this area from Brownsville? What is the terrain like there?
The terrain was like an additional character in this film. It was amazing! Do any of you live in that area?
Both places are on the border with Mexico. Brownsville is near the mouth of the Rio Grande, practically on the Gulf of Mexico. Eagle Pass is approximately 255 miles northwest along the river. I’m not from that part of Texas but I did visit both places many years ago growing up there. Both are more or less desert terrain with Brownsville being much more flat and coastal. Eagle Pass is much like what the first part of the movie looked like; dry, rocky, rugged with a lot of canyons, mesas etc.
Oh, and hot. Very hot. Pretty much always but really hot in the summer.
I just saw the movie for a second time on a flight and still don’t get this part. The mexican gangsters have been given a transponder by the man in the office to track down the money. They find Moss’ motel room and are actually in it IIRC. And they don’t find the cash in the ventilation duct? That is pretty unbelievable, but maybe I have the events wrong.
It is definitely a film that rewards a second viewing as mentioned upthread. So many nuances. Chigurh’s fastidiousness towards blood is really noticeable on several occasions. On first watch, I missed the part at the end where the two sheriffs are talking and one is marvelling at the chutzpah of Chigurh and says to Ed Tom ‘who would go back to a crime scene?’ - making Ed Tom realise that he better go back to the crimescene himself as Chigurh will probably be there.
Nope. He was clearly dead on the floor when Bell got there and there is even a scene where Bell was standing over his body in the morgue. That’s dead.
The first motel? I think the Mexicans thought Moss kept the money with him and were waiting for him to come back. They probably checked the closet and under the bed, but just didn’t think to look at the vent. Or if they did look at the vent, they didn’t notice the marks made by the suitcase, or didn’t realize what the marks meant.
Moss was pretty clever to move the case way back in the ducts. I would have just left it where it was handy.
I’m still wondering about that scene with Ed Tom going back to the last motel room – why he didn’t see Anton, or if Anton was in the room. My daughter thinks Anton was in the shadows behind the door, and since Ed Tom didn’t “see him”, Anton didn’t have to kill him.