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Culturegasm: [Closed] No Country for Old Men or Their Will Be Blood?

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    • CommentAuthorsacredchao
    • CommentTimeJan 31st 2008
     (687.21)
    I just watched There Will be Blood...up until the part right after HW gets married, at which point the projector bulb blew up. Fuck. I'm downloading it so I can see the ending. Not something I'd normally do, but I consider this a special circumstance. I'll let you know after that, but right now I'm leaning towards No Country.
    • CommentAuthorMaC
    • CommentTimeJan 31st 2008 edited
     (687.22)
    I have to go with No Country for Old Men. Tommy Lee and Bardem were just really fierce.
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      CommentAuthorEli Green
    • CommentTimeFeb 1st 2008
     (687.23)
    There Will Be Blood was excellent, what with the bastardly doings and the slow descent into monsterdom and what not, but No Country was about something more, about the crushing influence of the outside world upon American mythology, about withering ideology in the shadow of cold reality, and is probably the only adaptation of a book that I absolutely adored that I would say truly does the book justice and, in fact, sheds new light on the meaning of the book afterwards.

    I loved There Will Be Blood, but No Country For Old Men meant something to me. It felt personal, and I can watch it over and over again without getting bored of it or without it saying something to me.
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      CommentAuthorEli Green
    • CommentTimeFeb 1st 2008
     (687.24)
    @ shawnclark:

    High five through the internets!
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      CommentAuthorChrisSick
    • CommentTimeFeb 2nd 2008
     (687.25)
    It amazes me how some days the gods smile a bit and the best lines wind up in the mouthes of the best actors. Daniel Day Lewis has been in so many scenes and said so many lines that just have an incredible force. They're not emotionally moving, but they can knock someone down. He has a rare ability to make a line as ridiculous as 'I drink your milkshake' into a potent and terrifying threat.

    I'd hope for more of him in the world, but then how would we know how fantastic he is?
  6.  (687.26)
    why not both??

    ps. plainview was the evil and smart version of ron burgundy.
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      CommentAuthorCyman
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008 edited
     (687.27)
    I think No Country drank the fuck out of my milkshake. Not that I was fucking a milkshake, but seriously: Javier Bardem drinks all of our milkshakes. He DRINKS THEM UP! Also, I think Tommy Lee Jones gave his best performnce in years, though I haven't seen that Paul Haggis movie he's nominated for.
    As much as I loved There Will Be Blood, I agree that the story wasn't as good as No Country. I hate that Plainview doesn't age at all between 1898 and 1927, but I also hate when they put makeup on the actors to try to make them look old (A Beautiful Mind sucked fat balls anyway). PTA definitely deserves best director (remember that shot of the flaming oil geyser? There are multiple shots of it, but you'll remember the shot I'm talking about), and Daniel Day-Lewis acts it perfectly. Brilliant, brilliant movie.
    I think of both of these movies more as horror movies than anything else. I really like the There Will Be Blood parrallels one sick evil fuck with another one (Dano is arguably more evil that Plainview scriptwise), but I think it's more powerful when the sick evil fuck is parralleled by a totally real, totally benevolent human being like Sherriff Bell. I really have to severely nitpick and get really snobby to find anything negative to say about either film. I really love how long all the shots are in There Will Be Blood; it feels like theater, the energy is just never killed and Daniel Day Lewis brings a fucking lot of it into the scenes. I love There Will Be Blood more than I liked No Country, but I think it's true to say that No Country For Old Men is actually a better movie. Though Day-Lewis' character is more fun to watch than Christopher Walken in Romance and Cigarrettes; and possibly the most fun to watch character ever made. And he's in almost ever scene. I love it all.

    EDIT: I had never seriously threatened a complete stranger with death before seeing There Will Be Blood, something No Country failed to inspire me to do. So nevermind. Give Paul Thomas Anderson all the awards. His movie is better. He provides insight and humanity into what sanity/ evil is, whereas No Country's evil bastards are just greedy. PTA's characters all have more depth, though Tommy Lee Jones comes close.
  8.  (687.28)
    I don't understand why anyone liked There Will Be Blood. Scene after scene all to the exact same purpose: show us that Plainview is a dick who pushes everyone away! There wasn't a single scene in that movie that didn't exist to say, "Hey you know that guy Plainview! He's a dick and he pushes everyone away!"

    Seriously-- we don't learn anything else about Plainview except that he's a dick and he pushes people away. And the milkshakes/Yosemite Sam voice part is kinda funny or whatever, but it's an awfully small piece of cheese to put at the end of such long, long, dark bunch of scenes of a guy being a dick and pushing everyone away.

    ps: the soundtrack nibbled some great nads as well dinnit?
    • CommentAuthorjohnkeogh
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008
     (687.29)
    Both were very well done, but I felt that There Will Be Blood was the better film.

    @ ChrisSick---way back up top:
    The character is certainly within the reach of Daniel Day-Lewis' talent, but when I imagine casting Judge Holden... only Jesse Ventura seems appropriate.
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      CommentAuthorCyman
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008
     (687.30)
    Okay... well, goodwillsidis, here we go:
    If you want to know why anyone liked this brilliant movie, you could read some of the other entries in his thread? I think the case for the film is pretty clearly stated.
    Personally, I relate to the character in that he does all this stuff "to make enough money so he doesn't hav to be around people". He doesn't like people, so why should he give a shit if they think he's a dick? He only cares about himself; he cares about his brother it would seem, but that turns out to be all lies (probably another reason he hates people). I like that he seems human the whole time because we can understand his reasoning for absolutely everything he does. The man does exactly what he wants all the time with no regard for anyone but himself, and in the end, he's still not happy. Maybe he gets some joy from tearing other people down? We see him happy a few times after doing that, but for the most part the guy is miserable, but he never does anything illogical (arguably killing Eli was a little irrational, but at that point I think Plainview's realized nothing he does makes any difference to anything, especially since he himself is close to dying of old age anyway). That's why I love this movie. An insight into the logic of extreme insanity proving that logic and money are not things that pave the road to happiness.
    • CommentAuthorDracko
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008
     (687.31)
    I'm having a time out until I can learn some manners.
    It's a trite moral, that.
  12.  (687.32)
    Finally saw No Country last night. Jesus, what a movie.

    There will be blood was a piece of shit compared to this. Fucking amazing.
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      CommentAuthormadmatt213
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008 edited
     (687.33)
    @Jonathan Hickman

    Hear, hear! Best review for No Country I've read so far.
  14.  (687.34)
    Seriously-- we don't learn anything else about Plainview except that he's a dick and he pushes people away.

    You missed the whole middle of the film? You missed that it's a film -- or perhaps a study -- about being cheated?

    I still haven't seen NO COUNTRY, but I'm poring over THERE WILL BE BLOOD, particularly the last half, time and time again. That someone actually summoned the balls to make a modernist film in 2008 warms me.
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      CommentAuthoroldhat
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008
     (687.35)
    Hopefully I'll be seeing There Will Be Blood some time this weekend. My boyfriend owes me a movie.
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      CommentAuthorEgon
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008
     (687.36)
    I'll be going on a solo mission to see Blood this weekend.

    I'll try and sneak in a milkshake.
  17.  (687.37)
    THERE WILL BE BLOOD is definitely a study of cheating..manipulation...deception. And maybe those 3 are really just the same thing or different things relying upon the others for success perhaps?

    I suppose i'm referring to the following: the schemes of manipulation, large and small...of Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday and all of the others. Looking back i probably find those layers of woven and unravelling relationships to be the most interesting aspects of the film.

    However...all of those relationships are among men. A Detail i noticed was the near void of female characters of any notable plot presence beyond Sunday's daughter.
    And one other exception...a whispered-to-self remark in the dark and dirt at the beginning.

    "There she is.....there she is....."
  18.  (687.38)
    If you wanna make a film to show me that greed and selfishness don't make one happy, you gotta use real people, not hand puppets... not even Daniel Day Lewis hand puppets with the yosemite cadence and kung-fu stride.

    At the end of BLOOD, my friend E-Hem turned to me all like, "For a writer to put his own intellectual musings, which he might sell for a low price as essays, into the mouths of artificially constructed characters which are more remunerative when issued as people in a novel is good economics, perhaps, but does not make literature." And I was like, "Well, switch out essays and novle with blog and movie, and yeah, word is bond, ern."
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      CommentAuthorCyman
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008
     (687.39)
    OctEgon: It would be an interesting experiment to leave a milkshake undisturbed in the theater during the film just to see if it gets drunk (drank? drunken? fuckin'...).
    goodwill... I guess you're allowed not to like it. I guess people are allowed to be shallow. But I think you should try allowing it some depth rather than asking, "So, he's a dick and pushes everyone away?" after every scene. There's more to him. I'm actually starting to think of him more as Iago from Othello (It's by Shakespeare... Ahem. William Shakespeare? You know of him?).
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      CommentAuthorAllan
    • CommentTimeFeb 8th 2008 edited
     (687.40)
    I enjoyed There Will Be Blood more. I can see how people might like No Country for Old Men more, but I don't understand how anyone could disparage either movie to the point of calling it shit even in comparison to the other. TWBB was more theatrical while NCOM took a more subtle route, and I think both thematic choices were perfectly valid and served their respective films well. But I just had more fun watching TWBB. Daniel Day Lewis was amazing, the cinematography was beautiful, and the ending was some of the best pitch black humor ever conceived of. It was strange to be laughing my ass off at the end of such a dark movie, but it worked wonderfully.

    It worked in many ways that NCOM's ending did not. Yes, I'm one of those people who didn't like the ending to NCOM. Or at least I wasn't wild about it. All the tension was just drained out of the movie, like a balloon with a pinhole leak in it. I didn't want to stop caring about the movie, but I kind of did. Which is a shame because the first two acts produced some great pulse pounding tension and thrills. Javier Bardem definitely deserves the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The film making itself was also very good, but after the initial scenes in the desert it wasn't quite as beautiful as TWBB. It wasn't supposed to be, but still beauty trumps subtlety for me in this case.

    As for the "meanings" of the two films, I think they both address different and meaningful themes. Neither film can be said to be devoid of meaning. However pushing forward their messages isn't the primary role they take on. NCOM is a thriller and TWBB is a character piece. That's just what they are, that's where they really excel. And I don't think it's fair to say that the themes discussed in either film objectively have more or less value relative to each other.

    @Hickman: I'm going to give your oh so wrong opinion a pass just this one time since you wrote Pax Romana, a piece of media that I would say is perhaps as great as the two films discussed here. But just this one time, don't break my heart again.

    PS - While it may not be of the shaken variety, this is some drinking of milk in No Country for Old Men.

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