We are changing faster than ever. 21st century is just learning to speak but it has already managed to transform our very core and wiring. Everything around us has become ridiculously dynamic, immediate and unstable. Every next ipod and every new edition of Windows comes to the market finding a brand new, unreliable version of us. We want everything here, now and fast whether it’s food, news, entertainment or investment returns. The national attention span can now be measured on the nanoscale as our fragile concentration is routinely assassinated by universal remote controls, short Internet videos, over the top Fox news graphics, and microwavable entertainment.
May be this is why movies like “No Country for Old Men” are almost impossible to make anymore. The very lexicon of this stunning picture goes against our newly acquired identity. How in the world did Hollywood even allow Cormac McCarthy’s incredible novel to be adapted so faithfully for the big screen? There’s no snappy editing, no easy answers, no hip and no hop. This is one slow-developing, deliberate masterpiece that will linger and quite possibly stay with me forever. There is a hypnotic, visual rhythm to this film – a kind of panoramic contemplation typically reserved for the canvas and not the celluloid.
We’ve been conditioned by Hollywood to process everything with linear simplicity. Give us beginning, development and end, throw in a bucket of popcorn and we will find a way to digest and get rid of both the junk food and the junk story in 24 hours or less.
“No country…” is different. It doesn’t offer loudly – it demands quietly. It wants YOU to decide not only what the movie is about but also who the characters are. While doing so, the picture challenges conventions and acrobatically inverts clichés. This movie has no soundtrack! No patronizing Danny Elfman staccato strings, no swelling John Williams stereotypes –just natural sounds. This actually achieves a chilling and powerful effect. The conversations are scarce, the action sequences equally laconic and the camera incredibly patient in its long, silent dialogues with the majestic Texas landscape. I love this film because it provoked me. It made me think about fate, aging and transition. There is such overwhelming, timeless sadness in the realization that growing older also means gradually letting go of the things that have defined you for so many years. And who exactly is the fascinating, scene-stealing killer played so brilliantly by Javier Bardem? Is he really a one dimensional, Terminator-like assassin with the simple agenda of moving forward or is he Father Time himself – merciless, inevitable, emotionless and inescapable in his pursuit of that exact same agenda? The beauty of the film is that it allows us to find our own answers.
Later today, the Academy Awards ceremony will take place in Los Angeles. We will be treated to the usual variety-style kitsch, rambling acceptance speeches, and an ocean of Botox. Someone, of course, will make a fool of himself, someone else will wear a scandalous dress and the host Jon Stewart will most likely mention John McCain and “No Country for Old Men” in the same sentence. The Oscars are usually quite trite and predictable.
But unlike many other years, this time I will be watching until the very end, hoping that the members of the Academy felt like me and recognized that one of the nominated movies is an instant classic that challenges us to send our minds beyond the plotline and into the idea that sometimes in order to reach our destination we really need to slow down.