there are few things that i anticipate. a favorite bands new record. christmas. a coen brothers film. ahh yes, the coen brothers. makers of some of the finest stories ever put to film. who can not love the twisted humor of Raising Arizona or O Brother, Where art Thou or the Big Lebowski. or the just plain twistedness of Fargo. it should come as a surprise then that i just now got around to watching No Country For Old Men. but i did.
and holy crap.
it was, in the most literal sense, a hell of a ride. whatever hell is seemed to infect every minute of the movie. it was dark and cold and uncomfortable and violent and beyond brilliant. it tells the intertwining story of 3 men and their part in the discovery of a drug deal gone bad. one is the man who discovered the scene (and the money), one the cold blooded assassin out to retrieve said money, and one the sheriff trying to bring balance to the whole thing. each of these characters are presented in the starkest way possible, offering little in the way of soundtrack to tell us how to feel about each one. and the bad guy, Chigurh, is maybe the most calculated and cold and sinister bad guy i have seen in a long while.
all good movies get me thinking. and this one has me thinking about redemption. after watching a chracater like chigurh, you begin to wonder if some people are beyond redemption. llewelyn moss, the man who finds the money, certainly is a redeemable character, but is too sidetracked by money to find it. the films only conscience, and most redeemable character is that of sheriff bell, who stands firmly on the side of justice and good, but as he delivers the films last line (which i won't spoil here) almost like a punchline, you wonder if he believes that redemption is possible.
it is a film that shows the worst of some possible situations, but sadly, it feels true. i say sadly because if redemption is this elusive, then it would be easy to lose hope. but i do find hope, even just a fragment. and sometimes a fragment is all we have. joel osteen may have us believe otherwise, but i'm pretty sure he is a liar. life is messy and sometimes violent and the absence of hope and redemption might be the most frightening thing of all. but what is redemption if there is not something to be redeemed from, some evil or mess that chases us around every corner and threatens to consume us. and what is hope but the dogged belief that evil and mess is not all there is, that there is something truer and more real that is coming and will set things right. you would think that a religion like mine that is about grace and redemption and hope would not be afraid to stare evil in the eye and defiantly believe that there is something else. but too often we trade truth (admittedly uneasy truth) for jesus mints and family friendly radio stations. we only like the easy and pretty. but that is only half the truth, which is no truth at all.
enough rambling. go see the movie.
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5 comments:
since i wrote my daniel plainview post, several people have given me crap for leaving chigurh off my very short scary movie villains list. and they were right. it's hard to justify leaving the personification of evil, himself, off that list.
i can't believe you just got around to watching this, though. that's crazy.
it's interesting that you chose to close with redemption. i felt like i was stuck in a haze for a couple of days after my first viewing because of the sheer lack of it in the film. i like that you chose the word elusive to describe it, though. i think that's perfect. the journey towards redemption through christ has been and will be the trickiest path i've ever attempted to walk.
it took me a little debriefing period before i could come to grips with any goodness from the film. (goodness in the way of theme, not in the actual movie itself. even as a study of chaos and violence, it was a freakin' amazing movie). maybe i am predisposed to looking for it. i think the best stories show both sides of the coin. both the mess of life and the hope of redemption. too often, redemption is left out by many, and mess is almost always left out by the faithful. i tend to look for both sides, the bad and the good.
i hear ya. i'd like to think i try to do the same. look for both sides, that is. there are days that i am better at it than others, as we probably all are.
i still don't see much "good" in the film (or the book), but that's the beauty of anything worth considering of as art. we don't have to see it the same way.
we can just agree that it was a splendid work, indeed.
haven't read the book. that may get put on my to do list.
i think that the good that i do see maybe just comes from the fact that sheriff bell still soldiers on, no matter the odds. just the fact that he tries shows that he believes there could be some good resolution to the story. of course there isn't, but i think that there still remains a small kernel of hope. a "mustard seed" if you will.
too bad we're not having this back and forth over ribs. alas, the clemson game is only a month away. you and i need to touch base and figure out where the mass consumption of kiker burgers will be taking place.
i'll shoot you an email.
later.
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