Art Film Club NBO (Nairobi) continues with the Coen brothers’ Oscar-winning cinematic masterpiece based on Cormac McCarthy’s literary masterpiece.
No Country for Old Men turns American mythologies on heroes, fate, rugged individualism, and good-vs-evil upside down in riveting fashion. While in some ways it can be as pitiless as the parched West Texas landscape of McCarthy’s book, the film thrums with humanity, beautiful cinematography, and pitch-perfect, engrossing performances.
It doesn’t give you an America or a narrative that fits easy categories. I would argue you can’t understand the true complexity of America until you come to terms with this remarkable work. While true to the book, some say it even improves on it and doesn’t hesitate to challenge viewers’ expectations.
From The Independent Critic:
It's unnerving filmmaking. It's brilliant filmmaking. It's disturbing filmmaking. It's for sure NOT market-friendly filmmaking for American audiences that are all too familiar with plotlines that wrap up nice and neat, characters who get their happy endings or, at the very least, the good guys win and the bad guys lose.
Think again.
First off, in "No Country for Old Men," there are no purely good nor purely evil characters. "No Country for Old Men" opens with one of cinema's most powerful monologue's since Edward Norton's in Spike Lee's "25th Hour," and never lets up. It's a two hour exercise in nearly relentless suspense, thrills, moral decay and chase scenes that are, for lack of a better term, more psychological than physical in nature.
The film's story arc begins [with] a drug deal gone awry. What follows is […] a series of universal truths about humanity, the universe, nature, evil, fate and a few things I probably haven't quite grasped yet.
The sheriff is both soulfully aware of the evil that surrounds him and yet, sadly, rather resigned to it. He feels and exudes a sense of overwhelm at being able to even temporarily halt the evil that has crept into the underbelly of society and given birth.
As "No Country for Old Men" ended, I could hear the dissatisfied mumblings around me with people saying "That's not the end, is it?" Wisely, The Coen Brothers know the truth. The greatest films don't end as the credits are rolling... not at all. The greatest films are such a force of life and death, love and hate that once the closing credits begin to roll, the film's cinematic life has just begun.