No Country For Old Men

[tealin]

Just saw it.

That theyer ... that's a lawta shootin'.

No Country For Plot Structure Old Men:

Okay, I'm sure I'm going to offend nearly everyone of a literary persuasion, but what annoyed me about this movie is what annoys me about most modern capital-L Literature:¹ there's no shape to the plot. I can understand plotlessness (even if I don't like it) if it's all about the characters, but for that you need character development, and this didn't even seem to have that. I'm pretty sure the actors knew who they were, but they didn't get much of a chance to let me know. There were one or two characters who I felt I knew well enough, but most of them were just there to get shot, and one of them was just there to do the shooting. The one who narrates the beginning and gives you some of his backstory you only see for about 20 minutes and is only tangentially connected to the story; the one you know the most about is eliminated from the plot about 2/3 through, and is a frustrating mix of cunning and stupid that made me just want to smack him upside the head. Has anyone heard of a climax around here? Or a protagonist? Or even an anti-hero? Can you think of no way to pull me into the story? I'm sure there is plenty of merit to books like these and I'm being bourgeois and small-minded for not liking them, but I can't help feeling there's a little bit of emperor's new clothes happening here, much as with modern art.

My principal appraisal of this film is as follows: It is as if a pair of very talented filmmakers were doing a doctorate in film, for whatever reason, and for their thesis they were given a work of Literature to adapt. And they did so admirably, for all I know, having never read the book myself. There were many things about this film that I liked, they just happened to be exclusively filmmaking things which I wonder if any 'civilian' picked up on (though of course good filmmaking can be sensed by all, regardless). I liked how every time there was a shot down the hood of a car past the ornament, you knew it was the villain driving, even though it was always a different car. I liked how there was always background wind noise, even if there wasn't any evidence for it,² though I don't know what sort of point it was supposed to make. (The emptiness of existence? The windblown nature of the characters?) I liked how the following-the-blood-trail motif is established when Llewellyn hunts the antelope and is recalled when Segur(sp?) is hunting him. I liked the deep, sweeping vistas of the parched southern prairie. I didn't like the CG of the crow flying off the bridge but that might just be me. I did like how they didn't have to show the guy killing anyone after a while, you knew he'd done it and they didn't even have to bang you on the head with the telegraphing.

Those nice touches just didn't make the movie for me, though. It didn't go anywhere. 'Cinderella goes to the ball, marries the prince, and lives happily ever after' is not a story. Well, 'Psychopath kills a lot of people all around Texas' is not a story either. It could have been about Llewellyn but he doesn't have any sort of arc, and the story meanders for quite a while after he drops out of it so he doesn't even really feel that central. There's a cat-and-mouse thing that goes on for a while but it's really not that interesting because one party is one-dimensionally insane and the other is only in it for the money. I thought this sort of game was played out much better in Road to Perdition, which had quite a decent plot structure and character development.³ At least everyone in that movie had something to do with the central characters at some point. I don't even know the name of Tommy Lee Jones' character and he seems to have been one of the important ones, though I can't recall why. I hate being the person who calls characters by their actors' names but I'm forced to resort to that here. Is this some sort of statement on the anonymity of death? Good grief, I could BS an entire paper at this rate but that's only because I'm trying desperately to find what should have been apparent in the first place, so I have to make it up.

I suppose, if nothing else, No Country For Old Men at least provoked a reaction. Man, I hate it when things are knowingly provocative with no other hook... I wouldn't mind if the Coens won Best Director for this, because there is no doubt it's very well-directed, but I'd put both Juno and Atonement above it in my vote for Best Picture. Haven't seen Michael Clayton but I'll be seeing There Will Be Blood next week. Gotta love working for a major studio with a built-in cinema. :)

¹The kind with the title of the book printed in widely spaced all-caps on a fairly neutral low-contrast photo, usually with the author's name in smaller, humbly dignified text, with no plot synopsis anywhere on the jacket, just a few quotes from fellow authors of Literature offering their quiet but magnificent praise.
²Watch for this: in the scene where Segur(sp?) asks for Llewellyn at the trailer park office (I think that's the one), you can hear the wind, but the windmill out the window is completely still. I might rack this up as a continuity error but I know the Coens like doing stuff like this so it must be significant somehow.
³... and wicked awesome cars, sets, costumes, and score, and cinematography to die for.

Comments

[tonks244.livejournal.com]

I think you just summed up the movie for me... but a lot better than I could ever do.

[lizetm.livejournal.com]

I loved it. I can see where you are coming from, I get why you don't like it, but its just too good of a film. I do NOT think Atonement and Juno are better, though I loved both.

I suck at explaining things, so yeah, just wanted to say that I loved it, its not the same for everyone, I get that. I didn't really like that it took us nowhere either, but that really doesn't bother me as much. :)

[hyel.livejournal.com]

Now, I haven't seen the movie and I dislike many books others find great, but maybe you're looking for the wrong thing. Plot doesn't have to be a task for a character to fulfil, or a character development arc; it could be an idea or a situation that develops and changes instead. Sort of like, you could have a movie about a town, and the people are only there as a part of the town's story, rather than the other way around.

The Hollywood formula is not everything either. There are more ways to draw the audience into the story than having the same sort of things happening in the same sort of sequence every time. Especially in literature that can make the novel feel so small and dull. The novel is a field where it's a good thing to have a lot of information, a lot of things happening, like an over-flowing garden, where you follow the path of one central plot but can stop and look at all the interesting stuff happening on the sidelines. (Or have several paths. You know how it is.) Harder to make a movie that way, of course, or get funding for it if you did change it.

I'm pretty much just arguing for the sake of arguing. I also think there's a lot of bull in modern art, as there is in high fashion, and some literature. Also, the only Coen brothers movie I ever liked was O Brother Where Art Thou, and that wasn't because I thought it was great - just entertaining.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Okay, let me clarify a few things. I don't think a character needs an arc to be a well-developed character, but he does need some sort of motivation, some personality, and insight into who he is by how he reacts to things or makes choices. There are many things I enjoy that are fundamentally character-driven, often without an identifiable plot. I like Our Town (admittedly a play, not a movie, though I think it would make a decent movie if anyone tried ... have they?). That is almost entirely character; nearly nothing happens at all. It's about a girl in a small town who gets married and dies young, but it's split up into three distinct acts so there is no real through-line to the plot. What is compelling about the play are the interactions of the people in it, the collection of personalities that interplay in various contexts, and the perspective one has on this all after one has died. It is immensely powerful. Even I got teary a few times in the last act. There was no plot, no rise in tension, climax, or catharsis, but it was still incredibly successful at moving the audience and driving a point home.

I love Persepolis. It goes like this: Girl lives in Iran. Regime change. Relatives killed. Girl sent to school in Europe. Various growing-up adventures. Love, disappointment, despair. Back to Iran. Depression. College. Marriage. Divorce. Back to Europe. The whole thing is entirely episodic, but the strength of her character and of the (often vast) supporting cast carry it through. And I know all of them. Even if they're only in it for ten minutes I know them. This helps pull me into a story I might not relate to at all, otherwise, and makes it unexpectedly personal.

I love, love, LOVE Copenhagen. It has three characters. All of it is just them talking. That is literally all it is. They talk in the foyer, they talk in the sitting room, they talk over dinner, they talk in the park, they talk in the future, they talk in the past, but all they do is talk. This is what happens: Man goes over to friend's house. They go for a walk in the park and have a falling-out. Man goes home. That is not a plot! And yet the depth of the characters is sufficient to supply all the tension, conflict, and catharsis of a great story, AS WELL AS illuminating the author's purpose of demonstrating the application of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to people instead of physics, which makes me so giddy I can't even describe it. None of the characters have an arc, and what there is of a central plot consists of them trying to figure out what happened that night, what was said and what wasn't ... they go over it three times, how's that for messed up plot structure? But it is awesome.

None of these follow the 'Hollywood formula,' either. What I mean by plot structure isn't a formula that you can just plug characters and places into, I mean the sort of dramatic structure Aristotle talks about in his Poetics (http://www.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html), which predates Hollywood by a good 2,200 years.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

I still think of it as the Hollywood formula because you have to be outside Hollywood to be allowed to break it, and I really hate it when books use it too. I know what you mean, though, I studied film up to a Bachelor's Degree, and it was only in my last year that my editing professor even mentioned alternative structures being worked on in Prague. (Sadly I never looked into it, being soon out of school and doing crap jobs because there were none available in my line, and getting slightly depressed. Did that for about three years. I've since moved to Belgium and I'm making a decent salary in an office at a job that has nothing to do with film, and am very happy.) Of course I knew all along that the One Structure isn't everything, though a useful tool.

Persepolis, Copenhagen and Our Town sound like something to read. I remember you recommended Persepolis before, and I saw it just yesterday in a store, but I'm not happy enough with my Dutch yet to buy it in that language... I wouldn't want to miss anything. I'm gonna have to ask about it in my comics store. Of course you can do just about anything in comics, they're serial and episodic by nature, though not bound even by that rule. I tend to expect a lot more of my comics than I do of television or even books. If a book is mildly entertaining, I read it happily enough, but scorn Marvel titles in favour of mind-blowing awesomeness like, mm, Enigma, maybe, or Heartbreak Soup.

It's not enough to have a plot without characters or something taking the place of a character that the reader can identify with, is what I think, but if you have good characters you can make it work without an identifiable or strong plot. I guess that's it. It's my theory of art that if it provokes strong emotion or thought, then it's already successful to a degree.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

On your last paragraph I completely agree with you, that's my point: No Country had the meandering plotline that could have been justified by really strong and compelling character development, but the characters were meandering as well. There was no core strength in the story.

I don't know if Our Town would have the same effect, read ... I've only ever seen high school productions but just seeing it performed at all has an impact. I was referring to the film versions of Persepolis and Copenhagen – I think the former was released a while ago in France so might be out on DVD in Europe (probably with English subtitles). The play version of Copenhagen is even less structured than the film but I'm sure no less amazing, though I suspect just reading it makes it much more cerebral and yu may not get the emotional impact. The film (a BBC/PBS co-production, you might be able to find a British DVD) has some excellent performances by Daniel Craig and Stephen Rea which I think adds a heck of a lot to the agonizing awkwardness between old friends and heightens the contrast between the characters. Also, there's a cut in what I can only call the climax that hits exactly the right emotional and mind-blowing note, which I don't know how could be hit so well on stage or the page.

Anyway, since we're comparing films here, might as well all stick to the same medium, when possible...

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

P.S. Ever seen The Hudsucker Proxy? I liked that one more than O Brother.

[hyel.livejournal.com]

I haven't! I might look into it. I've seen O Brother, Fargo, Arizona Baby and, mm. One other, name of which I forget.

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You are a good writer. A very good writer.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it doesn't count if I can only pick apart other people's stories and not write my own.

[noodledaddy.livejournal.com]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: You can be a good writer even if you don't write stories. George Will is a good writer. Rene Girard is a good writer. Thomas Sowell is a good writer. You are a good writer. Your writing is well structured, you don't write down to your audience, your writing is entertaining to read. It's a burden you'll have to bear.

[lberghol.livejournal.com]

LOL! I suppose I'm going to have to disagree heavily here, because I LOVED No Country, I think it's the best piece of cinema I've seen in a very very long while, and I suppose the reason I feel this way is for all the reasons you described..it's not your typical hollywood movie. I do understand why people don't like it/are dissapointed by it though..if you go in expecting your usual Hollywood serial killer story with traditionaly climax/character development, you are going to be let down. Personally though, I think this movie is SO much stronger and better then that!

My favorite part of this film is that the fact that the characters AREN'T characters, they're metaphors, and every action/situation they encounter has a symbol/meaning behind it..hell I think every shot in this movie means something, it's so fat and full and meaty I could literally spend hours dissecting it. I also appreciate the fact that the Coen's don't tell you this, it's up to you to figure out the Sheriff represents the past, and that Segur represents the random violence and destruction inherent in mankind, and whether or not Segure has always been there and the older generation just romanticises the world they remember...etc etc etc..

Obviously I could just go on and on and on...but I for one will be VERY dissapointed if this movie doesn't sweep the Oscars! More films need to force it's audience to think like this one does! XD

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

I didn't want a standard Hollywood stalker/killer movie, I wasn't expecting one, and I was really hoping it wouldn't be one. I was hoping it would at least take me somewhere or introduce me to some characters going through a rather extraordinary event, but I got short shrift on every count.

My least favourite part of this film, and indeed capital-L Literature as a whole, is the way people feel they can skip right to the symbolism and metaphors without bothering to set up a story or characters for them to inhabit first – it's like doing the colouring before you've drawn a picture. People make such a fuss about the 'layers of meaning' but they're only layers if you have a surface one too, otherwise it's just the one, and that's as flat as if it were only superficial!

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

P.S.
I thought the strength of O Brother Where Art Thou? was that it was a successful and clever Odyssean allegory but it also worked on its own terms, and its characters were fully realized outside of their relation to the original story.

Film (and indeed all art) is about communication. If what you are trying to say is not getting through, your communication is unsuccessful. I try looking back at the film with the metaphors you supplied and my feeble brain fails to see how they work, and also fails to see how any number of other possible meanings might not work just as well. Does the openness to interpretation indicate great art or a lack of decisiveness in the author?

I must say I don't blame the Coens for most of this, as I suspect it's inherent in the novel – if it is, I admire their decision not to overlay the text with their own interpretation of what it all means, and let the audience come to their own conclusions, however lost they may be in doing so...

[spence137.livejournal.com]

That's fair enough. I can understand why someone would dislike the film.

I liked it a lot, but I am not overly concerned with story in a film, necessarily. Occasionally, I think you can achieve something worthwhile without story or (much) character. The movie for me is transporting, and tone-heavy. It takes you to a place and a situation, and it wraps you up in a world through the tools of beautiful cinematography, perfect and mysterious acting, and sharp writing. It is a film (and a novel) comfortable with non-evaluation. Stories are less evaluative than essays, for example, but a movie such as No Country is even less evaluative than a standard story. It is comfortable enough to simply meander through the place in which it exists. It doesn't wrap things up neatly largely because there is little standard story arc or character to even rationalize much of the events.

Can I understand how that's frustrating? Oh yeah. But when it's executed so well as this... I've got to love it.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

See the response to Hyel, above ...

I like cinematography. Cinematography can single-handedly bring a lump to my throat. But if it's going to be about the cinematography, it has to be about the cinematography, not pretend to be about a story. Movies that put all their weight on masterful camera work are nature documentaries. If it's trying to tell a story, the cinematography has to serve it. The reason I like Road to Perdition more isn't because the camera work is nicer, but because the camera work supports and enhances the established strong story, making a good thing better. In my opinion, if No Country didn't have the camera work it did, it would have been unintelligible. That was its saving grace. I believe I mentioned my appreciation of the filmmaking – is was a fantastically well-made movie from a professional standpoint, it just held absolutely no appeal for the part of me that is not a filmmaker, just a person in a cinema seat wanting to go for a ride.

[kneesocks99.livejournal.com]

Completely random, but I was wondering what Sunset Boulevard Soundtrack you have? I was looking for it on iTunes and there are two different ones- The Original Motion Picture Score with Joel McKneely and Royal Scottish National Orchestra or Sunset Boulevard- the Classic Film Scores of Franz Waxman with the Charles Gerhardt National Philharmonic Orchestra?

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Email please, and I will tell you. My email address is in my userinfo. Let's stay on topic. :)