‘No Country For Old Men’ Still Rips
13 years later, the Coen’s No Country For Old Men remains a darkly poignant farce for our times.
If you’ve been on the sosh meeds the last few days, you’ve likely seen this viral video of some weird, borderline indescribable shit going on at a hotel:
The Ringer’s Jason Concepcion put it best:
“I have watched this video 500x. Every still frame is the best comedy I’ve seen in 2020.”
The vid is undeniably whack, and painfully indicative of the absolute shitshow that is COVID-19 life. It’s like a Quarantine-2020 version of this scene from No Country For Old Men where everyone is like, “WTF happened at this motel???” (SPOILERS):
When something really wild happens at a place right before you show up, the aftermath just looks like an absurd kaleidoscope of blood and chaos — which is really the crux of No Country For Old Men, and every other Coen Brothers film for that matter.
To some extent or another, every Coen movie is a dark comedy — not in the traditional -LOLZ- sense, but in the way the two filmmakers always seem to tap into the central vein of life’s dark, often violent absurdities. It’s the reason most of their movies are timeless, and it’s why No Country still rips hard a decade and change later.
Like the video that inspired today’s ESH rec, No Country feels both fantastical and true to life in its unrelenting nihilism. It’s both a delight and an affront to the senses, imbued with the fever-dream quality of Cormac McCarthy’s original novel and infused with a staggering sense of real-world danger. The slow, steady rhythm of the movie, periodically marked by flashes of horrific action and endlessly amusing dialogue, also makes it a surprisingly comfortable, dare I say, comforting rewatch. Once you know where this train is going, it’s kind of a twisted joy to sit back, take the ride, and say, “Damn, ain’t life a clusterfuck.”
Since we’re still getting started, it would help if you told your friends about us.