No Country for Old Men (possible spoilers)

[HomeIsWhere...]

Originally Posted by Mark S.

I love the book. It's one of the best American novels published in the last twenty years.

I liked the movie. It was good, but I think it misunderstood a couple of pivotal characters pretty badly.

Thanks for the insight Mark. The next time I'm at the library I'll see if they have it or can get it for me from another library branch. I really do want to "get" what all the hype is about.

[2x3x29x41]

Originally Posted by DanArt

I really hate how the left the question if he really did kill the wife or not.

As has been noted, Chigurh checking his shoes when leaving Carla Jean's house indicates that he killed her. This is set up earlier in the film, when Chigurh moves his feet to avoid the spreading blood pool after killing Carson Wells in the hotel. Remember also, after dispatching a driver with the bolt-pistol early in the film, he explains - to the dead man - that he asked him to step away from the car so as to avoid getting any blood on it. Anton is apparently rather fastidious when it comes to gore.

Originally Posted by DanArt

It makes it look like the killer felt what he was doing was all about a game of chance and not his own doing but again I am hearing the book states that she is killed.

That is exactly what Chigurh feels. He thinks the coin - or fate - decides. This is established earlier with the coin-flip at the service station. Carla Jean disagrees, and refuses to call the flip. She points out that 'the coin got no say', and that the one making the decision is Chigurh. In the novel, Carla Jeans breaks down and calls the flip. Incorrectly, and is shot. I like the stalwart, uncompromising Carla Jean better. At any rate, fate is a major theme of the book and film, recurring constantly.

There are several differences between novel and film. The Coens tell a different story than McCarthy, partly because they have a different interest and take on the characters and partly out of necessity. The life-changing backstory of the sheriff is omitted, both because there just isn't time for it and because it would be difficult to render (as is the internal dialogue that is at the heart of much written fiction) and because it is unnecessary for the story the Coens wanted to tell. So, too, is the relatively short (and cinematically unnecessary) recent backstory of Chigurh, and the hitchhiker - which illustrates Moss' decency, and better contextualizes why he was driven to take water to the dying man at the scene of carnage. Of course, it is normal (and, again, necessary) for films to rely on the imaginations of viewers to fill in what a novel can spend pages explaining through thoughts - and which on the big screen must take the form of a voiceover or dialogue.

[AnnieA]

I read the book man years before the movie was made and it didn't make much of an impression on me, at all. I am a prolific reader and love and know good literature but, it just did register with me.

I saw the movie and it had me at the opening scene of looking out over that long expanse of desert, the hugeness, the nothingness, somehow it gripped me.

I thought the casting was excellent, except for the part Woody Harrellson played. He just didn't ring true to me and I was disappointed. I liked the part better in the book.

After saying all of that, I loved this movie.

I later saw the book in the back floorboard of my car with a bunch of other books on the way to be exchanged. I pulled it out, thinking I would reread and have never gotten around to it.

My dh saw it and didn't care for it at all.....