Author Topic: No Country for Old Men  (Read 48724 times)

choatime

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #90 on: December 31, 2007, 10:07:51 AM »
I noticed all the bootmarks on the linoleum after the fight, which I thought was a sign of greatness, one of the film's many images of how violence lingers in a place long after the fighting has stopped.  Is he really saying that the Coens intended for the viewer to focus on the tacky linoleum rather than the brutal murder on top of it?  Kehr's cynicism is clearly not facile.     

And why is he bringing Errol Morris into this?  Apparently Kehr prefers to ignore the fact that "hicks" do exist.  While hicks may not be fed by the same food as Kehr, I think they would laugh when tickled and bleed when pricked just as Kehr does.  One would think that someone with a vocabulary that includes the word Weltanschauung should know this.

skjerva

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #91 on: December 31, 2007, 10:22:28 AM »
Is he really saying that the Coens intended for the viewer to focus on the tacky linoleum rather than the brutal murder on top of it?     

No.


And why is he bringing Errol Morris into this?  Apparently Kehr prefers to ignore the fact that "hicks" do exist.  While hicks may not be fed by the same food as Kehr, I think they would laugh when tickled and bleed when pricked just as Kehr does.  One would think that someone with a vocabulary that includes the word Weltanschauung should know this.

Without knowing Kehr's writing, the implication in that sentence is that he believes both the Coens and Morris use hicks in a problematic way - I suspect he brought Morris in because of this.  As people often do, this is merely a reference to other films and film-makers containing more information about Kehr's thoughts on hicks in film.  Clearly he does not believe that hicks do not exist.
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

philip918

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #92 on: December 31, 2007, 11:55:32 AM »
That entire article is pretty ridiculous.  I'm really looking forward to There Will Be Blood, but the other three films he mentions - Michael Clayton, Beowulf and Sweeny Todd were three of the most disappointing films of the year, so I'd have to say my tastes are quite different from his.
Seriously, condescension via linoleum?  Come on.

Yeah, I also really liked everything he wrote.  I thought his example of Jones' Sheriff "laughing it off" pretty much says it all.

Um, it at least appears that you were responding to my post and you couldn't be farther off in interpreting that as praise for Kehr's article.  It's either that or a sleazy rhetorical trick to make it appear that at least one person agrees with your take on the article.  That's the first of Kehr's writing that I've read and have to say he comes off as a pompous windbag.  His condescending and defensive replies to people who commented on his review on his site don't help this impression.

skjerva, from reading your plethora of posts on the boards I've come to feel that you're contrarian simply for the sake of arguing.  Your pseudo-intellectual rants have become quite tedious and bothersome and I would appreciate it if you put a little more thought into your writings before posting them.

skjerva

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #93 on: December 31, 2007, 01:32:07 PM »
It wasn't so much a "sleazy rhetorical trick" as a non-sleazy rhetorical trick of performing the talking past other people instead of to them.  I guess I was feeling like folks were not carefully reading stuff I wrote and attributing strange positions to what I had written.  It apparently worked as you became wrankled to the point of name-calling - not that I tried to get you pissed but I got your attention regarding talking past one another and mis-reading :)

On that point, I gotta say your calling kerh a "pompous windbag" and trying out various slurs on me is less than pleasant.  I'm not sure how to respond to your claim that I don't put thought into what I write, I think I usually do - perhaps you could let me know how my posts should look ;)

Oh, and on being contrarian, I guess I have that in me, though it is more about taking the side of the underdog.  In the case of No Country, Juno, or other films I don't like, that is not about being contrarian, I simply don't think they are all they are cracked up to be.  I suspect going against the tide with majority film opinion comes across as contrarian, but is more about wanting to insert a different perspective on a film that seemingly is getting only love.  I am probably less likely to be visibly critical of a film like Spider Man 3 that is more universally disliked; and for a universally loved film like Bourne, I'm not going to manufacture dislike when I actually like it.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2007, 01:46:22 PM by skjerva »
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

sdedalus

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #94 on: December 31, 2007, 02:40:34 PM »
That's the first of Kehr's writing that I've read and have to say he comes off as a pompous windbag.  His condescending and defensive replies to people who commented on his review on his site don't help this impression.

Kehr's a very good critic, and certainly worth reading, even when he is being pompous and condescending.
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sdedalus

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #95 on: January 03, 2008, 01:33:30 AM »
I finally got around to writing almost-a-response to Kehr and others' attacks on the Coens.

I was trying to write about how I didn't want to deal with it any more, but that kind of got away from me.
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skjerva

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #96 on: January 03, 2008, 01:44:33 AM »
I finally got around to writing almost-a-response to Kehr and others' attacks on the Coens.

I was trying to write about how I didn't want to deal with it any more, but that kind of got away from me.

I am just starting it and there is a typo, nt sure if you care :):

Quote
is trying to get a much of folks together
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

sdedalus

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #97 on: January 03, 2008, 02:01:05 AM »
Sigh.  I'm sure there are many more.

I think I got most of them.
« Last Edit: January 03, 2008, 02:07:22 AM by sdedalus »
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skjerva

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #98 on: January 03, 2008, 02:53:21 AM »
Sigh.  I'm sure there are many more.

I think I got most of them.

I'm not sure if you care or not, I just wanted to mention it in case you do :)

I think you raise an interesting point about what you are calling the Coens' populism, comparing their body of work to Dylan's The Basement Tapes, this seemingly as a counterpoint to the Coens' work being vacuous or heavily surface (I know you name this populism against claims of condescension, but I think this gets to both matters).

Your near-defeated exclamation is true:

Quote
I've reached the point where I think the whole thing comes down to subjective emotional responses, extraneous baggage that we all bring to the films we watch and which can't help but color our impressions of them.

except that it ellides that why we have these debates is in hope of going into our next film with a slightly different set of baggage than we might otherwise have (or slightly adjusting the baggage of others); I think your post implies this in that you do continue to make an argument.

I think there is much more to address, and I keep monkey-punching the keys and deleting as I go, perhaps I can add something else to the discussion tomorrow:)  Maybe I'll try to make time to read some of the discussion in a film by (I haven't been reading there lately).
But I wish the public could, in the midst of its pleasures, see how blatantly it is being spoon-fed, and ask for slightly better dreams. 
                        - Iris Barry from "The Public's Pleasure" (1926)

sdedalus

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Re: No Country for Old Men
« Reply #99 on: January 03, 2008, 03:25:14 AM »
I hate typos as much as the next guy.  But my terrible tying skills, plus the fact that I never really learned to reread what I write makes them commonplace on my site.  I correct them when I notice, but they always make me sad.

I don't know that the Coens are necessarily interested in something more than the surface.  Or at least, I think they really like surfaces of all kinds and I don't think that's necessarily wrong.  They're more playful than thoughtful.

If they do have a deeper level, I'm pretty sure it isn't an idea about the world, but rather an idea about cinema and/or narrative in general.  No Country is the story of how Tommy Lee Jones learns to cope with the story of Moss and Chigurh, and how we all deal with (or don't deal with) stories of senseless violence.  Miller's Crossing is more about film noir and gangster narratives than it is about any "real world" subject.  This is, I guess, the modern/post-modern distinction.

Ultimately, I think we have these debates (battles between incompatible subjectivities, not one's in which we learn something we didn't already know like, say, an interpretation of 2001 that makes you say "aha! Now I understand the brilliance of that film!") for ourselves and ourselves alone.  We read film criticism to better understand our own responses to film in the light of how other people responded.  Whether we agree or not, there is still value in the discussion in that it helps us to better clarify and formalize what we already believe.  However, at some point the argument reaches its irreducible core, which is that no two people can ever look at the same thing the exact same way.  There's no way to reconcile Dave Kehr's opinion of the Coens and mine.  Neither of us can be "right" or "wrong". 

I think this particular debate over No Country has reached that point.  It certainly helps when he starts from a position of mind-reading the Coens's opinions of their characters and audience.  How can that possibly be proved or disproved?

Funny that in writing about how I didn't want to think about this subject anymore, I've ended up writing more than I've written about anything in months.
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"He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people?"

 

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