About Old Man Country

Post 744:

            There are movies that you don’t see for a long time, and when you get around to watching them again, they’re a completely different thing.

            We reanimate and change and degenerate and grow cynical or hopeful and thus our frame of reference is not the one we had when we saw it the first time.

            In other words, we’re watching a different movie.

            So let’s talk about No Country For Old Men. Now that I’m an older dude, this movie makes a lot more sense to me. Maybe that’s ironic. Or maybe it’s just funny the way the words fall.

            The overdub monologues are wonderful, a blend of Cmac and the Coen brothers, so pretty much a recipe for top-notch, powerful and distinctive writing.

            The plot is spare, but very detailed. Ultimately though, it’s theme over plot. I believe the line of the movie is delivered by the old guy in the wheelchair who’s been shot himself in the line of duty many years back. He’s talking to the tired and beleaguered sheriff, a man wrestling with the senselessness of the violence he’s forced to face on the job. The wheelchair guy tells him that the hard and the cruel keeps on and on and doesn’t abate. He says something (like) you can’t stop what’s coming, and it’s vanity to think the world will wait for you to get your head around it.

            Some of the movie is really open for interpretation, but in the end I think the story points out that we all get a little tired and thin-skinned at the constancy of life’s struggles, but maybe it’s our ability to adjust and cope that enervates more than the nature of life.

            It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but one has to respect a piece that says more than one thing. The final scene is probably the most open to interpretation, where Tommy Lee Jones is talking about his dream. I believe his father riding ahead into the storm to make a fire is an allegory for the natural order of things. It’ll be his turn to ride ahead one day, then the next, then the next. Life doesn’t wait, and we all get our turn in the storm. To think otherwise is vanity. Maybe it’s a stretch but I feel some serious Ecclesiastes in the wording of the script.

            Like I said, open to interpretation. Maybe I’ll do better when I’m older.

            Cheers and see you after.