After taking a weekend to recover from the hangovers we got celebrating Otis’ most recent trip around the sun, we’re back and this week we’ve got a BANGER film on deck. It’s Otis’ birthday pick and we’re super stoked to be talking about one of our favourite films of the last twenty years, The Coen Brothers’ neo-noir western crime thriller “No Country For Old Men”. This movie is excellent in so many ways… Technically, thematically, visually, as an adaptation, and on and on. It just rules.
Based on Cormac McCarthy’s book of the same name, “No Country” was released in 2007 to critical acclaim, eventually winning many awards. Tt the 80th Oscars, the film took home wins for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor Javier Bardem’s clinical performance as psychopathic murderer Anton Chigurh. The cast and their performances are pitch-perfect. Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, and Javier Bardem are excellent. The cinematography (shout out to Roger Deakins) and sound design are out of this world. The lack of non-diegetic sound for most of this film just heightens the tension and serves the themes and ideas behind the film, much like the outbursts of insane violence. There are so many good things that we can say about this movie… and we do!
We start things off by discussing some topics that are completely from the film itself. First, we look at the rest of the releases in 2007 and films released in the late aughts. What was it that lead to so many interesting and violent films that feature no real hero in the general sense and were so critical of the Western World? We have some thoughts. This leads to a conversation on the current nature of critical and cultural discourse around art. Is social media crippling the experience of cinema itself? Why is everything critical made to be clickbait? Why can’t an artist just swing for the fences and make something unique to them? And why does the audience feel entitled to all movies/music/tv to be catered to their taste? Otis points out a Twitter review of Ari Aster’s new movie “Beau Is Afraid” and, just like that, we’re off on a tangent. People, and studios, should be able to deal with something different. Especially since at its core, cinema is a form of art, right?
After that, we discuss what we think a good adaptation really is and why “No Country For Old Men” fits that bill. We also talk about the technical side of this movie and the choices the filmmakers made that took the film to a whole new level. We discuss how all aspects of the film’s production work in tandem to create something really special that speaks directly to the novel’s themes and explore them in nuanced ways. We break down the film’s plot, revisit some of our favourite scenes, and talk about the tremendous performances from the cast. We also explore the use of violence, the realism of the film’s themes, and so much more. It’s a long episode and we get pretty deep into it. Of course… it wouldn’t be a “No Country” pod if we didn’t talk about Bardem’s iconic performance as Chigurh and why it’s the scariest, and most realistic, on-screen psychopath we’ve ever seen. The dude is a menace.
We don’t want to make this too long of a summary so believe us when we say that we dig really deep and try to talk about all aspects of this incredible movie. We end this episode by talking about PALMREADER’s theory of “True Mid” which leads to more conversation about one-line reviews on Letterboxd, how rating systems should actually work, and the problem with people looking at reviews the same way they looked at their school grades.
See you next week, homies!
INITIATE BIRD PROTOCOL!
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