Kids are dumb, No Country for Old Men was not

According to USA Today.

Apparently 17-year-olds don't understand references to books or historical events associated with important references (the examples they give are big brother, McCarthyism and the patience of Job). Given, I am six years older than the kids taking this survey, but I am 100% sure I could have - at age 17- explained the concept of Big Brother if asked (and I didn't even read 1984 until freshman year of college). At some point in my public education those ideas seeped in and stuck.

Some stats from the survey:

Among 1,200 students surveyed:

• 43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900.
• 52% could identify the theme of 1984.
• 51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.

In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Whew, well I'm glad they got a few things right. I haven't been out of high school that long, Pearl Harbor and MLK were drilled into our brains. Unless you were taking something that left out US History, they were repeated every year in every history class and MLK was usually represented in English class as well. I remember having to analyze "I Have a Dream" at least once if not more.

No Child Left Behind is to blame for a good chunk of this problem. Children are trained to parrot facts so they can pass tests so the school can stay out of hot water. When a teacher has to spend all their time trying to get students to pass tests, they suffer. They learn facts, yes, but they don't obtain knowledge. They stay at the surface and never explore the depths.

How this relates to No Country For Old Men: (spoiler alert!)

I loved the film. It blew me away. I thought it was incredible, up to and INCLUDING the ending. Several people disagree. I have heard several people grunt and moan over the end of this film, claiming it to be stupid and lame. Hell, when I saw it there were audible annoyed grunts when the movie ended and cut to black. Case in point: because of a technical glitch at ABC affiliate WKBW, the anchor's mics were on when the Coen Brothers won the Best Picture Oscar and they called the movie bullshit. Right.

No Country is a literary adaptation of a book by the same name by Cormac McCarthy (who was at the Oscars - awesome!), but not only is it an adaptation of the book, it is a faithful adaptation of the book. That is the important part. I am not going to lie and said I have read the book, although I kind of think I need to now. Themes in books - especially in good books - are often like undercurrents. They lie beneath the surface and you have to look for them. Adapting a novel to the big screen often makes the book's audience angry, they inevitably leave out or change things to fit 400 pages into 1 hour 35 minutes.

In my opinion, the main character in No Country is not Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin). The main character is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The movie is not THERE IS No Country for Old Men it is THIS IS No Country for Old Men. While the story shows the Llewelyn coming into possession of a case full of money and trying to evade Anton Chigurh, the story is ABOUT Sheriff Bell feeling and fearing his own mortality. This is made evident in the final scene.

The Coen's know what they are doing - do you really think the guys behind The Big Lebowski and Miller's Crossing would end that way just cause? Like they ran out of film stock or got fed up and just decided "Ehh eff it, print it, we're done. Let's go get burritos." No. Thankfully, the Coen's do not edit films like I edited news pieces at the end of the semester.
 
The final monologue by Tommy Lee Jones nails the point and firmly establishes that this movie was about him all along. He is an old man in a new world, a world where his morals and methods are irrelevant. He can't compete within this new amoral, violent world. He vowed to save Llwelyn and Carla Jean, his friends or at least acquaintances for sure in such a small town, but he couldn't help them. They died, he failed. In the second dream he speaks of riding horseback in the dark with his father. His father goes up ahead to make a fire and Bell knows his father will be waiting for him when he gets there. "There" is death, something of which Bell is afraid and has come very close to, in the police-taped hotel room he narrowly avoids death-incarnate (Chigurh) and gets to go on with his life. Fate is a huge theme in this movie, and when Bell finds Chigurh's coin on the floor he has been spared (like the gas clerk much earlier on). He was unknowingly betting everything, and he won. He beat death.

"And then I woke up."

He didn't meet up with his father, not yet.

It's poetry. It's excellent writing. Its meaning had to be sussed out and ruminated upon. It did not smack like a hammer between your eyes like so many of the other films you see today. This angers people who wander into the theater expecting to see an action film and getting something different, something all together more powerful and brilliant. You can't stay on the surface to appreciate the film, you have to explore its depths. We don't see the final second's of Llewlyn's life because he didn't see it coming either. We see Sheriff Bell come across the aftermath, death. It is his story.

Note: After writing this in looking for other analyzations of the film I found this one - which I thought was excellent and deserved to be shared. If you disagree feel free to let me know, I can't say I'll debate it with you, but I'd love any other interpretations.