Sunday, January 20, 2008

No Country for old Men


Went to see No Country for Old Men http://www.nocountryforoldmen.com/ with J. Quite a good film typical Coen brothers. Lots of open country and murders. Yes murders!
But what of the plot. Well quite a story really and a puzzling ending. We talked about it afterwards always a sign of a good film.
What else can be done on a wet day.
What about the ending. I think it’s courageous for a box office type movie to take on such a creative ending.
The sherif Bell tries to sort out his world as he begins his retirement. Here is a section from the script:
LORETTA (CONT'D)
... How'd you sleep?
BELL
I don't know. Had dreams.
LORETTA
Well you got time for 'em now.
Anything interesting?
BELL
Well they always is to the party
concerned.
LORETTA
Ed Tom, I'll be polite.
BELL
Okay. Two of 'em. Both had my
father. It's peculiar. I'm older
now'n he ever was by twenty years. So
in a sense he's the younger man.
Anyway, first one I don't remember so
well but it was about meetin' him in
town somewheres and he give me some
money and I think I lost it. The
second one, it was like we was both
back in older times and I was on
horseback goin' through the mountains
of a night. Goin' through this pass in *
the mountains. It was cold and
snowin', hard ridin'. Hard country.
He rode past me and kept on goin'.
Never said nothin' goin' by. He just
rode on past and he had his blanket
wrapped around him and his head down. *
And when he rode past I seen he was *
carryin' fire in a horn the way people
used to do and I could see the horn
from the light inside of it. About
the color of the moon.
And in the dream I knew that he was
goin' on ahead and that he was fixin'
to make a fire somewhere out there in
all that dark and all that cold, and I
knew that whenever I got there he
would be there. And then I woke up. *
Black
By the way although the book is by Cormac McCarthy the title is obviously a reference to the poem Sailing to Byzantium by WB Yeats.
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees -
Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
-- William Butler Yeats

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