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SeekingBlood
1yr ago
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I feel that people often praise movies that call out or subvert expectations of their genre solely because they do that, even if execution of the subversion itself is not good.
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Notes -
Might be good to note that, in the case of No Country For Old Men, Moss' death occurring offstage is true to the source material, the novel by Cormac McCarthy. The film was notable for very tight adherence to the book, almost scene-for scene, and using McCarthy's dialogue line-for-line in many places.
Not showing Moss' death, as part of that keeping to the source, does very much go against "standard" movie storytelling and audience instinct, leaving the viewer with a weird sense of incompletion. Something in our brains likes resolution, a phenomenon we can see in music as well, where chord progressions "return home" and conflicting passages resolve into harmony. McCarthy's subversion of that internal expectation is absolutely intentional, another iteration of the themes of the novel, that our pasts are inescapable and our futures subject to influences beyond control: we don't always, or even most of the time, get things wrapped up tidily with a bow on top, even if they're things we don't like (sad endings for protagonists), and the world moves whether we are paying attention or not. It's a "brave" choice by the filmmakers to stick with the script perhaps, but I don't think Moss' offscreen death is the, or really even a, reason the film is highly regarded.
One thing I would like to add with regard to the climax: the film actually pisses me off a bit in that regard. It's been a while since I've seen it, but as I recall in the film Moss, at his final hotel, is sitting outside drinking a beer when a pretty girl walks by, and he whistles at her or some such. In the novel, Moss picked up a 15-year-old hitchhiker runaway girl headed to California, who offers herself to him for sex, more than once. He books them separate rooms at the ultimate hotel, and the absolute last word we hear from him is him turning the underage runaway down once more:
The climax is Moss' internal struggle, really, and it's emphasized again in the description of the gun battle: the Mexican has a gun to the girl's head, and Moss has him in his sights. Moss, being the ultimate Good Guy, puts his gun on the ground. At which point the Mexican shoots the girl, then shoots Moss. The whole hitchhiker subplot (and it's gorgeous dialogue) are all excised, and we end up seeing a lecherous Llewellyn, an ugly representation of our Hero, as the last interaction with him.
Chigurh getting hit by a car is manifestation of, no matter how badass we are, we really don't run shit.
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