I Hated "No Country For Old Men"

It's getting lots of Oscar buzz and all that, but I hated it.

I saw it several weeks ago, and at the time I didn't quite have the words to describe what I didn't like about it.

Jonathan Rosenbaum is a movie critic, so he gets paid to be able to articulate what he doesn't like about movies. So he has the words to describe what's crappy about it. Basically, it's a narrative that doesn't really go anywhere. The story has no natural trajectory. And it has no redeeming message, either. Just lots of gratuitous violence.

Is it well acted and beautifully shot? Sure. But it's kind of hard to sit through a movie for a couple of hours and walk out totally unmoved, unchanged, and without anything real to show for your two hours.

So, no, it's not a good movie.

Comments

[dude]

Think of it as one step beyond a Western in all respects. In the mind of Sheriff Bell, there was a sort of order, pride, and sense to the world before. In Westerns, we so rarely see the lawmen and gunslingers grow old and outlive their time. The Sheriff is the eye of sensible people who find themselves baffled by modern atrocities and the minds of those who commit them. He is literally taking the stance of you, the viewer, who is disgusted by the violence. Before the plot even begins, he, himself, lays out exactly your complaint - in his mind, it goes nowhere and he doesn't understand it.

Once you understand the movie as a Western just sadly and strangely aged, a lot of it makes more sense. And Sheriff Bell's point of view lobs the concept right at the story to be hit out of the park. And that story revolves around Anton Chigurh being Death incarnate. He is not a psychopathic human. In fact, the movie goes to great length to establish that he is not. Sheriff Bell himself even describes how actual psychopaths kill for money, torture for pleasure, or both. Chigurh never does this. It's always allegorical in nature. First the clueless officer who turns his back on a prisoner, then the motorist who blindly submits to authority despite absolutely absurd requests. The "brush with death" scene in the gas station. Moss comes to his death because of greed. His wife finds death because of her husband's greed - and possibly because of her love for him.

In fact, there's so much dialogue about fate and how one's path leads each person to death that I almost felt like the film was shouting its meaning at me. So the reaction that the story went nowhere or was just about gratuitous violence or glorification of a psychopath...it's like you and Rosenbaum watched a completely different movie from the one I watched.

If you didn't enjoy the movie, that's up to you. You mentioned that you couldn't put your finger on it, so perhaps there are still other things that got in the way for you. And that's fine. However, it seems that you missed some things that are so critical to every step of the film - things that seemed obvious when I watched, however, I understand that even the best of us miss the most obvious things from time to time.

If this comment tweaks your perspective and motivates you to watch the film again, then stop reading and read the rest afterwards.

If you need even more to help you make sense of the story that seemingly "doesn't really go anywhere," consider the scene between Sheriff Bell and Ellis. Bell is convinced that the world has fallen into madness, as though the violence of the past somehow made more sense. But Ellis explains to him that his grandfather was killed just as "senselessly" over seventy years prior. If anything, the film carries an air of criticism for people who are simultaneously disgusted by violence of the present, but nostalgic for violence of the past.

The point is that Death comes and it so rarely "makes sense," so the idea that some death is sacred and other death is pathetic is just as absurd as flipping a coin for your own life vs. 25 cents. When you come to death, no matter what you have done, your path has led you there, so that's what you must face.
There's a lot more layered meaning in individual characters and scenes, but I think you need to catch just a bit of it to appreciate the film a whole lot more.