Tuesday, January 06, 2009

No Country for Old Men

I saw No Country for Old Men on DVD. A few thoughts:

First, don't watch it. Yeah, it's a good movie, but it's depressing as hell. Spare yourself the assault on your mental health.

As a technical matter, Josh Broslin is a little old for his role. If his character was 18 years old on enlisting in the army in 1965, he would be only 33 by 1980, not the 39 that Broslin was when the movie was released.

I can't help comparing the movie to A Simple Plan, another movie about how the discovery of a suitcase full of money can ruin your happiness. But there are differences:

In A Simple Plan, Bill Paxton and his pretty, younger (by nine years) wife (Bridget Fonda) are happily living a lower-middle-class life (he's a clerk, she's a librarian) when he discovers the suitcase in a plane wreck. As their efforts to conceal the discovery lead them to ever-greater acts of evil, it is her greed and ambition as much as his that spur them on.

In No Country, Josh Broslin and his pretty, younger (by eight years) wife (Kelly Macdonald) are living a lower-working-class life -- in a trailer park no less -- when he discovers the suitcase at the site of a drug deal gone horrifically bad. "Happy" would be exaggerating their level of contentment with their circumstances; "resigned" might be more appropriate. But they love each other in a quiet been-married-awhile way, which is where, as a man, I would assert that true happiness lies. Interestingly, although she has less, the prospect of great wealth delights her less. Indeed, her immediate reaction is fear for her husband's safety and loosing the little she has.

Obviously, between the two, I would rather be married to Kelly Macdonald's character, but I'm mainly curious about which, if either, character could be generalized as representative.

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