Thanksgiving & Bloodletting

Okay, Turkey day is not the same without my kiddos. For all that 'good riddance' sentiment of divorce, having to split up the holidays sucks. I'm not saying I don't have it better than a lot of divorced Dads, because I do. And I've got them most of the coming weekend, with festivities planned both with family and friends.

And I did do some Turkey Day eating of Turkey at Mom's with my bro and his wife, which was excellent.



So what did I do with my Thanksgiving Day? Something I hardly ever do: I went to see a movie, first run, full price, in the theater.

I blogged about this one a couple months ago, when I learned it was coming out. Not since the Lord of the Rings movies have I been so eager to see a film. Maybe part of why those are among a tiny handful of films I've paid full price to see on the big screen.

I'm thinking, and aside from occasional family films like Shrek and Monster's Inc. that I've taken in with my honyocks or my once-nucular fambly, I've seen less than one per year for going on a decade. Even if you added the Pixar type thing, you'd average out barely over one a year.

Three LOTR flicks; Shop Girl (on a rare evening in the Rome is Burning stage of my marriage that I had an opportunity to see a movie, and it was the best option available at the time); the first Kill Bill (which was terrible, I tried to get my money back but they don't give refunds if you tough out the whole miserable affair); and American Gangster, which I saw two weeks ago when I thought I was going to get to see No Country for Old Men only to find out it was a 'limited' release at the time. I was so hooked on the idea of going to the theater, I went anyway, and that was the best looking offering at the time. Good flick, but not $9 good.

So is No Country worth the ticket? You betcha. Cormac McCarthy's best work to date adapted for the screen by the Coen Bros, you cannot go wrong. I caught the 12:35 showing and when I came out, I was so enthralled I counted the money in my wallet, found I had sufficient resources left to buy another ticket, got my large Diet Coke refilled (they claim it's a free refill, but when you pay $4.50 for the first one, I don't think you get to 'free' until maybe thirteen fills) and went to the 3:00 showing.

I haven't done that since Silence of the Lambs. It's that good.



It's not perfect: I understand the needs of the screen require abridgment. There are rants by Sheriff Bell in the book that could have been done in voice-over, but wouldn't necessarily have added to the film. There are plot elements that get combined for brevity, and I can dig that. But when specific scenes in the book are fine, I don't understand the need to nearly portray them on screen. Or when dialog in the book is sound, why edit it?

These are small things, sometimes. The difference between 'It made a impression on me' and 'It made an impression on me.' The latter is grammatically correct, but the former (the way it is in the novel) is more West Texas and has a ring of dry humor to it.

The book had a bit better closure, too. Especially since the man who hires Carson Wells is different from the man who's $2.4 million is in play, and there's a scene in the novel with Chigurh and that guy that I'd have liked to see in the close. I think I understand why the Coens condensed the characters, to cut out a scene and explain more explicitly the relationships and motivation, but the lack of clarity in that respect was one of the book's charms. We know, in the book, that this dope war is ultimately a game of chess between legitimate looking businessmen who stay above the fray, and we don't know who they are. Which seems to me to be perfectly true.

Still, I'm not dissing the overall effect. I not only paid to see it first-run, I did so twice in the same day. I briefly toyed with seeing something else instead, since the novelty of seeing a film on the big screen is probably part of the charm for it's rarity, but nothing else showing had the same pull.

One thing that bothers me in both novel and movie: in the initial setup, when Moss finds the vehicles and dead dudes in the dessert, he's out hunting antelope, and when he runs into the one surviving (barely) Mexican begging for 'agua,' he doesn't have any to give. Who the hell goes afoot in the West Texas dessert hunting without a canteen? That's just stupid. A sprained ankle could turn into a fatal injury with no water out there.

The performances are masterful, of course, but what do you expect from Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin and such? And Javier Bardem, with his Spanish (NOT Mexican, Spanish) accent and octave-below-Johnny-Cash voice is the perfect Chigurh.

Another thing that really sets this film apart is the lack of mood music and sonic undertones to build to what's going to happen. There is actually one scene where they use a bit of ominous drone, but for the most part, surprising violence happens exactly as it does in real life, with no warning. And yes, it is a violent story: this is Cormac McCarthy—my second favorite of his books follows a gang of scalp hunter's in 1849. But hey, Shakespeare gets pretty violent, too, eh?