No Country for Old Men

[Starving_Artist]

@AuntiePam

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.

At the beginning of that scene I thought Anton was behind the door too, and it seemed that Ed Tom saw a reflection of movement in the metallic hole where Anton had punched out the door’s lock. But Ed Tom pushed or kicked the door open suddenly and it went all the back to make contact with the wall.

I wouldn’t have thought that a man of Anton’s size could fit in the small space that would have created, nor do I think that Anton would have stayed hidden there as he would have been too vulnerable if discovered (that is, it would have been too difficult to bring his shotgun or cattle spike to bear on Ed Tom quickly enough had he been discovered hiding behind the door.

So I’m going with Anton in the next room but filmed so as to create audience belief that he was in the same room with Ed Tom.

I’m another who thought the movie was excellent but found the ending disappointing. Moss was too much the protagonist, and too much went on that Ed Tom knew nothing about, for most people (myself included) to get that the movie was really about Ed Tom’s coming to grips with the times he lived in vis-a-vis the crimes he had seen.

It’s easy to go against audience expectations. I just don’t understand why anyone’s willing to finance it whenever some auteur decides it would be a cool thing to do.

[Wee_Bairn]

I don’t think they would have made it a point to show two taped off hotel rooms if he wasn’t supposed to be in the other one- did anything happen in the second one that would require it to be taped off as well, or just that it was next door?

[AuntiePam]

@Starving Artist

So I’m going with Anton in the next room but filmed so as to create audience belief that he was in the same room with Ed Tom.

That works for me.

It’s easy to go against audience expectations. I just don’t understand why anyone’s willing to finance it whenever some auteur decides it would be a cool thing to do.

But when the auteurs are the Coen brothers and the book is from a Pulitzer winner (with another book being filmed), financing shouldn’t be a problem.

[Starving_Artist]

@AuntiePam

But when the auteurs are the Coen brothers and the book is from a Pulitzer winner (with another book being filmed), financing shouldn’t be a problem.

I suppose not. Still, wasn’t the box office for this film rather disappointing? I don’t know what qualifies as successful box office these days, but IIRC the film did around $74 million gross in the U.S., and given that the makers probably grossed less than half that, I’m wondering if there was any profit to go around after subtracting costs for filming and advertising.

And I agree 100% with Zoe about the scenery being virtually another character in the film. I can’t recall when I’ve been so struck with a film’s cinematography as I was with this one.

And Wee Bairn, I don’t recall the specifics regarding the second room but I do know that it didn’t stand out as being odd at the time I was watching the movie. I believe my impression at the time was that the second room was rented by Moss as a dodge, or by either the Mexicans who killed him or by Anton so as to facilitate recovery of the money. But I could be wrong.

[AuntiePam]

@Starving Artist

I suppose not. Still, wasn’t the box office for this film rather disappointing? I don’t know what qualifies as successful box office these days, but IIRC the film did around $74 million gross in the U.S., and given that the makers probably grossed less than half that, I’m wondering if there was any profit to go around after subtracting costs for filming and advertising.

The Box Office site says it’s made $152 million worldwide – $74 million US and $78 million foreign. I don’t know what it cost to produce and market, but $152 million seems successful for a non-blockbuster no-special effects film.

On another note, didn’t Woody Harrelson’s character seem rather young for a “retired colonel”? Maybe I’m just getting so old that anyone under 50 seems young to me.

[Starving_Artist]

@AuntiePam

The Box Office site says it’s made $152 million worldwide – $74 million US and $78 million foreign. I don’t know what it cost to produce and market, but $152 million seems successful for a non-blockbuster no-special effects film.

Yeah, that seems respectable enough. Still, I would imagine that it would have done twice as much - in the U.S. at least - with better word-of-mouth and a more satisfying ending. I saw it with five or six other people and while we all thought it was great, I don’t think any of us would have recommended it to anyone else - at least not without some sort of caveat - and that kind of reaction can’t be good to anyone with big bucks invested and anxious to see a healthy return.

@AuntiePam

On another note, didn’t Woody Harrelson’s character seem rather young for a “retired colonel”? Maybe I’m just getting so old that anyone under 50 seems young to me.

If he entered an officer’s program while in college and then gone into the service at the age to twenty-two, he could have put in twenty to twenty-five years and still have retired in his early-to-mid-forties. I’m no longer up on military advancement but I would imagine that coloneldom would be achievable within that period of time.

[JohnT]

The budget, according to IMDB, was an estimated $25 million. Assume that P&A doubled that to $50 million. Also assume that the studio/theater split was 50/50…

$152/2 = $76 million to the studio
$76-$50 = $26M
$26/$50=52% profit

Of course, there are a lot of assumptions (both implicit and stated) in this. But it looks as if the film did pretty well, well enough to finance.

[Siam_Sam]

@ExTank

I just rewatched it, and I think Anton was in the hotel room.

As I remember from the book – which I checked out from our library and so do not have here handy to refer to – he was clearly NOT in the room. He was downstairs in the parking lot sitting in his car about to get out when he sees the sheriff pull in. He watches the sheriff go into the room. This was not shown in the movie. At that point, the POV switches to the sheriff. The sheriff enters and while inside gets a weird feeling. He rushes downstairs and starts looking in all of the cars but sees no one. Then he calls for backup, for some reason sure that Anton has just left and will be close by, but even though they block off the only two exits available up the road, he’s gone. The book never relates him leaving, so you never know if he’s actually left or is just hiding.

Someone please correct me if I am wrong…

[Yookeroo]

This is the Coen brothers biggest grossing movie. O Brother is next at $45.5 million.

[Princhester]

I loved the movie, overall, but…

Firstly, there is a major plot hole in terms of Moss going back to the drug deal gone wrong scene in the desert. Moss is generally a fairly analytical character. He supposedly feels sorry for an immobilised guy bleeding to death in the middle of the desert. So does he phone in an anonymous tipoff to the police that will get the dying guy some medical aid? No, he personally goes to the crime scene at tremendous risk to himself to do something completely useless other than in the extremely short term, namely giving a guy dying of a gunshot some water. His character wasn’t otherwise so utterly stupid.

Secondly,

@Wee Bairn

If I may, a few words on Chigurh: he is a fascinating and terrifying character–a pure sociopath, with no emotional connections to or empathy with others. He kills as quickly and easily and casually as the rest of us would turn off a light or close a door. Meaningless acts, without passion. He has no backstory (“What business is it of yours where I’m from, friend-o?”), and this adds to his beyond-human status. As one character puts it, Chigurh is a “ghost.”

Mrs P found him terrifying. I didn’t find him scary at all. I just found him too unreal and ghostlike to engage my sense of reality and therefore fear. As you say, it’s like he’s a ghost that no one notices, but that just doesn’t happen in real life. His character does outrageous things in what seems like an unreality bubble that lets him get away with it. Instead of being scared I found myself just thinking “Yeah, right” and it spoiled it for me.

[AuntiePam]

@Princhester

I loved the movie, overall, but…
Firstly, there is a major plot hole in terms of Moss going back to the drug deal gone wrong scene in the desert. Moss is generally a fairly analytical character. He supposedly feels sorry for an immobilised guy bleeding to death in the middle of the desert. So does he phone in an anonymous tipoff to the police that will get the dying guy some medical aid? No, he personally goes to the crime scene at tremendous risk to himself to do something completely useless other than in the extremely short term, namely giving a guy dying of a gunshot some water. His character wasn’t otherwise so utterly stupid.

I was okay with this. He lives in a small town so it’s conceivable that a dispatcher would recognize his voice. (Ed Tom recognized his truck.) But I think he would have gone back anyway. Something momentous happened there, and I think he was attracted to it, and maybe he was also attracted to the danger. Because he and Carla Jean could have rented a car and just taken off with that money.

Anyway, I’m watching again, and there’s either a plot hole or a continuity error in the scenes with the dying agua guy. In the first scene, the driver’s side window is either open or closed and dirty. It’s hard to tell – the sandy color could either be a dirty window or a view through the open window. But in the night scene when Moss goes back, that window has a huge jagged hole in it.

If it’s not a continuity error, then someone went back and shot agua guy through the driver’s side window. Weird.

[Princhester]

@AuntiePam

He lives in a small town so it’s conceivable that a dispatcher would recognize his voice.

So call the dispatcher a couple of towns away. He’s a resourceful guy in every other way.

[Ellen_Cherry]

I’m surprised to find a thread I started so long ago still active today! We purchased the movie when it was released watched it Friday night.

I’m SO GLAD I refused to read or hear anything about this movie since its release. Roger Ebert pronounced it as good as Fargo; that’s all I needed to hear. I didn’t even come back and read this thread until Saturday, more than four months later.

Anyway, the analysis here has been wonderful. ** Princhester**, to address your remark, yes perhaps he could have gone to another town and called 911 (did they have 911 in 1980?) but … we wouldn’t have had a movie, then, would we? I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz dozens of times, and there’s not a time when Dorothy runs out back and bangs her foot on the storm cellar that I don’t wish Auntie Em and Uncle Henry would open it and let her in. Surely they could hear banging, even above the roar of a storm? Yet they don’t … and because they don’t, we have The Wizard of Oz.

One idea I haven’t seen raised here is why the Coens set the move in 1980. Probably that’s when the book is set, but that in and of itself isn’t a compelling reason. Frankly for most of the movie there’s no perceivable difference between 1980 and now. What would have been changed? At first I thought it was because, then, on the cusp of the '80s and the increase in cocaine trafficking in the U.S., it was the beginning of a new, more dangerous era … but isn’t that one of the points of the movie, that “now” is no more dangerous than the past? Human beings are violent creatures and before we were blowing each other away with shotguns, we were stabbing each other with lances and crushing heads with maces. Or big rocks.

Then I thought that, perhaps, the world in 1980 was a bit more “innocent” in that it was still a bit larger. No internet, no instant knowledge of what was going on halfway around the world, or even halfway around Texas. Would having cell phones made any difference to the way the plot unfolded?

One last thought – just like I didn’t want to know anything about the movie til I saw it, I didn’t want to know anything about ANYTHING about the movie, so I avoided the Academy Awards as well. Imagine how thrilled I was to find that Javier Bardem won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor! Someone near the top of this thread predicted this very thing. I thought he was menacingly horrible; perfect. What a guy. Here’s what he said in his acceptance speech:

@Javier Bardem

Thank you to the Coens for being crazy enough to think that I could do that and put one of the most horrible haircuts in history over my head.

Perfect. Perfect movie, too.

[stolichnaya]

@Princhester

I loved the movie, overall, but…

Firstly, there is a major plot hole in terms of Moss going back to the drug deal gone wrong scene in the desert. Moss is generally a fairly analytical character. He supposedly feels sorry for an immobilised guy bleeding to death in the middle of the desert. So does he phone in an anonymous tipoff to the police that will get the dying guy some medical aid? No, he personally goes to the crime scene at tremendous risk to himself to do something completely useless other than in the extremely short term, namely giving a guy dying of a gunshot some water. His character wasn’t otherwise so utterly stupid.

This bothered me too, especially given how smart Moss was thoughout the rest of the story- and Chigurh could have been placed on the trail to Moss (getting the story moving) in any number of more plausible ways. Therefore it’s not there to be plausible, it’s there to make a thematic point.

I’ve decided that he does the strange good deed, and he loses everything in the end, because he is still in some ways moral and humane, and that is the point of the tale. In fact, he says to his wife that he is going to do something probably stupid- despite this he does this futile good deed for a stranger.

It’s really the one mistake he makes, and it makes no sense logically, and I think the storytelling point of that is that this is why people like Moss and Bell are artifacts who can’t survive the new way. He is trying to play along with this new type of criminal and he doesn’t have the constitution for the game. To put a finer point on that, we are given Chigurh, who seems at least at first to have no morals at all.

At the end of the movie we realize that the behavior of Chigurh suggests that his vulnerability is his own moral system, corrupted as it is- his unnecessary journey to kill Carla Jean leads to his only real vulnerability, the only time that fate has the drop on him. So it’s hinted that even Chigurh’s odd system of morals will do him in, too.

[Mikemike2]

@AuntiePam

Anyway, I’m watching again, and there’s either a plot hole or a continuity error in the scenes with the dying agua guy. In the first scene, the driver’s side window is either open or closed and dirty. It’s hard to tell – the sandy color could either be a dirty window or a view through the open window. But in the night scene when Moss goes back, that window has a huge jagged hole in it.

If it’s not a continuity error, then someone went back and shot agua guy through the driver’s side window. Weird.

I took it as someone had come back and shot the last remaining witness.

[ivylass]

I must be a Philistine (no insults to Philistines ) but Ivylad and I both hated this movie. It seemed pointless, with no ending. I love Tommy Lee Jones, he seems like such a laid back guy, but we felt we wasted two hours watching this thing.

[AuntiePam]

@Mikemike2

I took it as someone had come back and shot the last remaining witness.

But who? Someone from the original shootout? Maybe someone who was able to drive away when the shooting started? Could be, I suppose.

[Wee_Bairn]

@Princhester

So call the dispatcher a couple of towns away. He’s a resourceful guy in every other way.

Or not go in his own car. Or do the handkercheif over the receiver bit. Or any of a number of other things that wouldn’t have viewers annoyed from the beginning at such a stupid action, and having the character admit his stupidity is stupid doesn’t justify it. And the annoying thing, it wasn’t even necessary for the plot- dumb acts are understandable if a key point in a movie wouldn’t work without it, but damn, you could have just as easily had someone spot his car when he was there leaving with the loot in the first place, instead of having him go back a second time.

And if the point was to show from the beginning that Llewellyn is a decent guy, have him happen to have a jug of water with him in the truck already. Or have him stop to give some of the money to a homeless shelter- anything would have been better than to have your movie have such a colossal what the fuck moment right off the bat. And let’s not even go into having him throw a briefcase containing millions over an international bridge in broad daylight, deserted or not- couldn’t he find a freaking empty stretch of woods to hide it in? And again, this had nothing to do with the plot, so why include something so ignorant?

[Mikemike2]

@AuntiePam

But who? Someone from the original shootout? Maybe someone who was able to drive away when the shooting started? Could be, I suppose.

I agree “who” is not answered, although it could have been the bad guys had surveyed the area before they showed up with Chigurh. It is just so obvious that the window has gone from damaged to blown away that I doubt it was a continuity error.

[stolichnaya]

Or any of a number of other things that wouldn’t have viewers annoyed from the beginning at such a stupid action, and having the character admit his stupidity is stupid doesn’t justify it. And the annoying thing, it wasn’t even necessary for the plot- dumb acts are understandable if a key point in a movie wouldn’t work without it, but damn, you could have just as easily had someone spot his car when he was there leaving with the loot in the first place, instead of having him go back a second time.

And if the point was to show from the beginning that Llewellyn is a decent guy, have him happen to have a jug of water with him in the truck already. Or have him stop to give some of the money to a homeless shelter- anything would have been better than to have your movie have such a colossal what the fuck moment right off the bat. And let’s not even go into having him throw a briefcase containing millions over an international bridge in broad daylight, deserted or not- couldn’t he find a freaking empty stretch of woods to hide it in? And again, this had nothing to do with the plot, so why include something so ignorant?

The idea (in my opinion) is not just to make Moss come across as a nice guy, but to make his niceness or sympathy his undoing. To show that his entire quest to keep the money is doomed from the start by his nature. I’ll agree that there may have been a more elegant way to do it- but perhaps the idea is that it’s so batshit stupid- sometimes emotional acts are.

I like AuntiePam’s idea as well- that he is curious and fascinated by what happened and uses the water as an excuse to go back to the scene of the crime. It’s unquestionably a dumb move, and the filmmakers make sure to tell us that they know it is dumb- so it must have some higher storytelling purpose.

Watching this movie again with knowledge of the ending, it is even more gloomy- Moss never had a chance once he went back to the scene.