Two Films and Remembrance

Checking in with a couple links and a movie or two... First - Armistice Day is over, but there are a few more hours of Veteran's day - there's a great post on the Great War on Making Light, with links to film footage and much more, and a nice link from Lawyers Guns and Money to a list of the remaining surviving veterans of the war to end all wars. There's much to be said for Farley's comments about the specificity of this holiday: WWI was a pretty sharp and decisive break with something - you can trace a direct line from damn near anything that's happened since back to it. From modern art to WWII to the end of colonialism to horror movies...

...including prohibition, and after prohibition, the "war on drugs" in all it's stupid variations... and thus, American gangsterism, the tradition of American crime fiction, and the Coen Brothers! And Sidney Lumet... two new takes on that venerable genre came out this weekend... Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is a new version of the ever popular heist gone wrong picture - in this case, Philip Seymour Hoffman (as a dope fiend embezzler) lures Ethan Hawke (as his loser little brother) into an ill advised scheme to rob a mom and pop jewelry store... heh heh heh... I hope it doesn't spoil anything to say it goes spectacularly wrong. It's a fine little film - it reminded me somewhat of Exiled: a pure genre picture, made for the pure pleasure of going through all the paces of the genre - not quite up to Johnny To's technical chops, but similarly blessed with first rate actors biting into meaty roles... None of it adds up to a thing, except the plain pleasure fo the style, the genre, the craft of it, which we are invited to share without illusions...

No Country for Old Men starts somewhere like that: a genre tale told with full attention to the specific pleasures of the genre itself. But it keeps going. First - because the Coen brothers have filmmaking chops that surpass Johnny To - partly since they bring the same command to everything, not just the set pieces, but even on the merits: they are better story tellers - much of this film is virtually silent: men running, chasing, searching, sometimes fighting... dialogue when it comes up is almost incidental (especially in the first half) - though it can pack a punch... The story itself is as generic as anything in the Lumet film: a schmoe finds a suitcase of money, various bad guys are looking for it, he has to lam, the bad guys come after him (and each other), a trail of bodies ensues. Good enough and well told on the face of it, it slides toward something more as it goes... Peter Keough at the Phoenix talks about Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem, magnificent, while sporting an unfortunate late 70s page boy haircut) as Death, and the film as being about Death: which is just about right. The film is, basically, a hideous and intolerable allegory about Death: random, inescapable, the end of every story. It is to their credit that they do this, incorporate a walking symbol into the film, and make him fit, make the story work on its own terms. And - because they find new ways to tell the story: they can surprise you, even when you know what's coming, and how, they find a way to tell it that can take you unawares. It's impressive work. They've had a bit of a down run lately - I like The Man Who Wasn't There a good deal less than a lot of people - and no one defends their next two films. This is a nice return - maybe not up to their best films (Fargo, The Big Lebowski and O Brother Where Art Thou? - that's a damned impressive stretch; plus Raising Arizona, I say) - but close.