No Country for old Men

Went to see No Country for Old Men http://www.nocountryforoldmen.com/ with J. Quite a good film typical Coen brothers. Lots of open country and murders. Yes murders!

But what of the plot.  Well quite a story really and a puzzling ending.  We talked about it afterwards always a sign of a good film.

What else can be done on a wet day.

What about the ending.  I think it’s courageous for a box office type movie to take on such a creative ending.
The sherif Bell tries to sort out his world as he begins his retirement.  Here is a section from the script:

LORETTA (CONT’D)

… How’d you sleep?

BELL

I don’t know. Had dreams.

LORETTA

Well you got time for ’em now.

Anything interesting?

BELL

Well they always is to the party

concerned.

LORETTA

Ed Tom, I’ll be polite.

BELL

Okay. Two of ’em. Both had my

father. It’s peculiar. I’m older

now’n he ever was by twenty years. So

in a sense he’s the younger man.

Anyway, first one I don’t remember so

well but it was about meetin’ him in

town somewheres and he give me some

money and I think I lost it. The

second one, it was like we was both

back in older times and I was on

horseback goin’ through the mountains

of a night. Goin’ through this pass in *

the mountains. It was cold and

snowin’, hard ridin’. Hard country.

He rode past me and kept on goin’.

Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just

rode on past and he had his blanket

wrapped around him and his head down. *

And when he rode past I seen he was *

carryin’ fire in a horn the way people

used to do and I could see the horn

from the light inside of it. About

the color of the moon.

And in the dream I knew that he was

goin’ on ahead and that he was fixin’

to make a fire somewhere out there in

all that dark and all that cold, and I

knew that whenever I got there he

would be there. And then I woke up. *

Black

By the way although the book is by Cormac McCarthy the title is obviously a reference to the poem Sailing to Byzantium by WB Yeats.

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees –

Those dying generations – at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

— William Butler Yeats

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