No Country for Old Men (2007)

I chanced upon a television promo of this film, about four months ago. A ten second glimpse of a barren landscape; followed by a short burst of a shotgun from another scene, and then a tight close up of the anti-protagonist’s clean shaven face that defined the movie for me. “From the makers of the critically acclaimed Fargo and The Big Lebowski" came the announcement.

I’d already watched Fargo by then. I could recollect faintly that I’d also seen two other films of the same duo- Joel and Ethan Coen. And I won’t deny it. The ensuing curiosity that engulfed me was almost deafening. It was not long before I'd gotten my hands on the DVD.

Watching a Coen Brothers film is like watching a lunatic with a paint brush in his hand and a 24x36 inch perfectly blank canvas laid out in front of him. You could just turn around and start walking within the first ten minutes of his getting to work saying to your self, “What? Ninety minutes of this? I’d go mad.”

I repeat myself- you could turn around and start walking ten minutes into his wild stroke making and paint splashing glee-spree...  but you don’t. Because somewhere inside you, there’s this voice telling you that ‘after all every genius is a lunatic’.

‘It could also be the other way around’ you retaliate, but you don’t know for sure. So you wait and watch...

And I’m not saying that what you get at the end of the ninetieth minute will make you jump up and holler with satisfaction (I sure didn’t feel that way). Nor am I assuring you that you’d have watched a cinema of epic proportions (because it isn’t). What I can assure you is that you would’ve seen something as unexpected as ‘unexpected’ can be. On the whole, you could like it or not like it; but it’ll have its moments.

As I was saying earlier, I had already seen ‘Fargo’ by then and the film wasn’t a satisfying watch to tell you the truth. It felt more like a brief preview of things to come; things we could safely expect to be delivered to us in future by this uniquely talented pair. And after watching ‘No Country...’ my belief has been corroborated, atleast into a hundredfold.

I ask you- how many movies have you seen till today? Of those few hundreds (Assuming of course that the people who read this blog are cinema lovers; & frankly speaking who isn’t) how many films have made you ‘feel’ an emotion? To be particular, how many of those have made you feel really tensed?

And the mother of all questions- how many of the films that are crossing over your brains at the moment do not have a background score?

It’s a fact that cannot be denied, most of the top rated films are top rated, one of the key reasons being that they heavily rely upon music as an emotional back drop for the audience. I doubt whether the awe inspiring opening sequence of ‘Inglorious Basterds’ would be as menacing as it appears now devoid of the horrifying clatter of saxophones, trumpets and bells. Chistopher Waltz does walk and talk evil, but the icing to the cake is, in the end, the background score.

Name any cult movie made by the blood-n-gore friendly Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill Volume I & II, Inglorious...); or the noire/neo-noire specialist Christopher Nolan (of Memento, Prestige and Inception fame); or larger-than-life storytellers Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg (L.O.T.R & Indiana Jones series respectively); or moving back to the 60s,  70s and 80s: Stanley Kubrick (Dr. Strangelove-How I learnt to stop worrying and love the bomb, 2001 Space Odyssey, The Shining, etc), and the ‘baap’ of all criminal suspense dramas Alfred Hitchcock (no need to prove his credit worthiness by naming his creations). Each of these had a top notch music department.

Well I won’t deny the power of silence that classic movies make use of either. They are quite effective, but are scene specific, not lasting throughout the movie. And here I find this psycho thriller, that has, might I say, a laid back feel to it with barely anything close enough to be called as background music. Yet it makes you cringe; you feel as if you are a part of each and every scene, the screenplay being terrific and the camerawork spotless. The dialogues have been adopted verbatim from the novel by Cormac McCarthy and I found nothing to complain on that as well. Javier Bardem, as the killer with principles, is at his nerve-racking best.

I could go on (till next Thursday).

The best part of the film is that almost everything is left open for the audience to interpret... including the end. Some might find that dissatisfying and inconclusive. I don’t care if they do. Because by the time three fourth of the film is behind you, you’d have already seen more than your money’s worth.

A forewarning to anyone intending take my view seriously, disclaimer implied; this is definitely not for the squeamish!

Adieu

As I sit today on my PC, I count that I am only months away from my CA Final (circa 3 & a half). 

There is not one lie in my statement when I type that I badly wanted to sneak in another post before I disappeared into my cocoon of self-banishment for the aforesaid interlude. 

But as I’ve come to discover about myself, the more my brain wanders into fiction, the harder it gets for me to revere the other half of my life; that half which shall earn me the freedom to be what I am without every other civilized bloke pointing a finger at me and sniggering his heart out that ‘this boy whom we thought to be so mature was stupid enough to throw away a bright prospective career and look at what the fool is doing now when everyone else of his age have thoughts on their mind that can actually be termed as goals- like earning prestige (read- moolah), flooding the corporate, becoming head honchos and single handedly controlling companies. Look at the idiot, he’s writing gibberish!’

Anyways, no point in discussing something that is generic amongst human beings; finding solace in the tranquility of repetition and the known.

I have made up my mind. The next time I open my blogger shall be in the last week of November; not for anyone else but for my own good.

But I must warn you this moment itself, come December you shall feel the full blast of what a man who dwells within language is capable of conjuring when he’s gone months without pouring out his ideas and has no constraints to put up with.

See you on the other side.

The PROBLEM with having a brain that thinks too much

Have you ever had that moment in your life where you keep having this gut feeling inside you that you might have said or done something in an inappropriate manner and ended up hurting someone who is essentially a person whom you don’t want to hurt? 

You feel dead sure that something or the other is not right and that you yourself are at fault. Yet, not having the courage to take initiative, you keep brooding over the issue, waiting for things to clear by themselves and wishing that there’d be a sign, just one sign that everything has gone back to normal.

And when you feel that nothing is happening, you muster up all the courage that you are capable of conjuring at one moment and get up to face that person with the intention of clearing the guesstimated misunderstanding that exists between you and him. You catch him unawares of your visit, then come straight to the point and blurt out nervously-“Excuse me Sir, I just wanted to ask you. Have I said anything wrong to you lately?”

Believe me it takes a heck of a lot of nerve to do such a thing. But wait... let me finish.

Has it ever happened to you that you do exactly what I’ve typed, in the exact same sequence, and the reply that you get from that person is -“What? What the hell are you talking about?”

How would you react? I’d really like to know... not because I am keen on learning human behavioral patterns and other allied sciences. The reason behind me asking is simple- today was the day when I had that moment.

And I have to say, I was DUMBFOUNDED. I merely sat there, not knowing what exactly to clarify, having realized all of a sudden that the only person who wasn’t thinking clearly was “me” and that the entire misapprehension was inside my brain and no place else. Truly awkward I tell you.

But on a merrier note, I add that even though it eventually turned out to be a dud and I know now that I was plain stupid, the person in question was kind enough not to highlight this fact and instead he went on to say that I did the right thing in approaching him. What more, I’m relieved now that the supposed animosity never even really existed.

I’d rather like to be a fool, than being an intelligent man filled with doubt.

PS: I know how weird all this might seem coming from a person who two posts prior to this had declared so pompously that he does not like to share his emotions with anyone. I’m sorry for not having mentioned back there that I am also very moody and I’m now in one of those write-your-heart-out-until-you-feel-relieved moods.