village voice > film > YEAR IN FILM: The 2007 Village Voice/LA Weekly Film Poll: There Will Be Consensus by J. Hoberman

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Josh on Mon Jan 7, 2008, 13:23, says:

Steve,

"No Country" isn't any more racist than any movie made in an

inherently

racist society. Actually, I think the film's about the delusions of

complacent white Anglos -- the "old men" of the title. If positing

non-Anglos as the Other is racist, then I suppose you have an argument,

but

I think you have to dig pretty hard to find racist intent, even of the

unexamined sort. Mexican drug dealers do exist in real life.

Personally, I

find the Stephen Root character, Mr. Big, the biggest cliche in the

movie.

Mike on Sat Jan 5, 2008, 00:28, says:

Hoberman is crazy! Southland Tales is like a Philip Dick adaptation by someone who doesn't understand what's interesting about Philip Dick. It's unfortunate that the critical discussion of the film has otherwise been divided into two camps: middlebrow reviewers who "don't get it" and the sharper blades who, shockingly, embrace the film as ambitious and full of ideas despite the fact that it possesses the aesthetic sophistication of a Limp Bizkit album cover and the political cunning of that loud-mouthed libertarian kid from your junior-high civics class. Also, who knew a movie about the apocalypse could be so boring?

james keepnews on Fri Jan 4, 2008, 13:30, says:

well, I'M a moron, but as overrated as it may be, i also strongly concur with jane's assessment of _no country_, particularly its conclusion. the final two scenes, and tommy lee jones' indelibly melancholy performance throughout -- unrecognized by the crowd gathered here, but to me one of his very best ever -- put the lie to mr. hoberman's claim of soullessness. as it's the coen's, sure it's expert, which is like describing snow as white. what it is not is pervasively jokey and ironic, like just about every other film they have made. for a film that's mostly one long chase sequence -- can anyone recall a chase sequence that was UN-manipuative? -- it's as implacable as its antagonist, and generally unmawkish in its emotional aftermath. we should always have such a superb film to overrate, every year.

Jane on Thu Jan 3, 2008, 17:07, says:

Josh is right. Steve is a moron. By Steve's standards he would have to find Arriaga's script for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada racist as well. That film is racist portrayal of white Americans—all of them, even Jones, suffering from a zombified affect and crippling shortsightedness—is somewhat counterset against his Mexicans, who are all morally balanced, if not always happy or nice. No Country for Old Men is rigorously formal, but these days you need storytelling engineers to raise your pulse. The Coens' movie has wit, Roger Deakins's panoramas and portraits, Javier Bardem's Dutch-Boy boogeyman, and, in Tommy Lee Jones, a dismayed soul that's uncharacteristic of the filmmakers. The ending baffled some people. For me it was a clincher. The world, by 1980, has descended into inexorable chaos - over a pile of cash - and all the wizened lawman can do is shake his head and sip his Sanka. This also was one of the few bloodbaths that didn't make me feel like a corpse while I watched it.

Josh on Thu Jan 3, 2008, 16:50, says:

Steve is a moron. So now the film is racist. First of all, Javier is white. He's from Spain. There are white criminals in the film. And many non-white critics loved it including Wes Morris and Elvis Mitchell. I guess that there isn't any bad latinos, right? I dumb, knee-jerk leftwing response.

Steve on Wed Jan 2, 2008, 20:27, says:

Josh,

You need to calm down. "No Country for Old Men" received so many accolades because it's ultimate a rewriting of that other Oscar winner "Silence of the Lambs": a dull, uninspired serial killer movie with some flashy visuals and an overrated turn by a good actor who's hamming it up, and instead of homophia, we have a film with a racist message (did CNN produce this?): the three monologues by the white men in the movie which are all precious and ramble on about the violence and chaos in the world are essentially in the world of the movies blamed on a Latino sociopath and crazy Mexican drug dealers. It's probably one of the most reprehensible films in the way that white critics fail to critique it in terms of its aesthetics and/or politics.

Josh on Wed Jan 2, 2008, 14:04, says:

You claimed in your year-in-film wrap up that this movie was soulless and manipulating. First of all, we all go to the movies to be manipulated. "No Country" is a masterpiece of apocalyptic pessimism. The Coen brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel delivers the bad news with magisterial force: Evil walks the earth, dramatic closure is for fools, human life hangs on the flip of a coin, and - the hardest pill to swallow - cowboy heroism is just a bedtime story to soothe grown men. What on paper seems a simple game of cat and mouse and cat - Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones chasing terrifying assassin Javier Bardem chasing average cluck Josh Brolin with his satchel of found drug money - becomes a nearly biblical saga, and not one of the pleasant ones. The usually ironic Coens come through with their weightiest work yet, but for all the formal rigor of the filmmaking, "No Country" is about the chaos we desperately try to pretend isn't there. Vanity, vanity, murmurs this movie in response.