‘‘If you can go past those awful idiot faces on the bleachers outside the theatre without a sense of the collapse of the human intelligence; if you can stand the hailstorm of flashbulbs popping at the poor patient actor, who, like kings and queens, have never the right to look bored; if you can glance out over the gathered assemblage of what is supposed to be the elite of Hollywood and say to yourself without a sinking feeling, "In these hands lies the destinies of the only original art the modern world has conceived"; ... … If you can stand the fake sentimentality and the platitudes of the officials and the mincing elocution of the glamour queens; if you can do all these things with grace and pleasure, and not have a wild and foresaken horror at the thought that most of these people actually take this shoddy performance seriously; if you can do all these things and still feel next morning that the picture business is worth the attention of one single, intelligent, artistic mind, then in the picture business you certainly belong, because this sort of vulgarity is part of its inevitable price.’
Little has changed about the Academy Awards since Raymond Chandler penned the above in March 1948.

By the way, I think the Coen Brothers, whose work I once admired for their originality, and, in fact, whose biography I wrote, have made a hateful film.

Okay, Ronald... in what sense is it 'hateful.' Don't make such a captivating statement and then leave us sitting around scratching our asses for dingleberries...

In the past, what made the Coens interesting up to O Brother, was their quirky take on genre movies and their irreverent, referential attitude. Now, maybe for box-office reasons, they have plunged into a genre in a straight-faced manner. They are now complicit with the Hollywood mainstream. Aside from a few good quips, their latest is an irredeemable gore fest, which, like it or not, colludes with the killer - a one-note performance by Bardem. Even the only character that comes near to being a recognisable human being, Tommy Lee Jones, is a cliché - we’ve seen this world-weary philosophical performance many times. The Coens lost their originality and distinct personality when they started adapting other people's works. What a falling off there has been from Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski and Fargo. The reason I wrote the first edition of their biography was that they were among the most exciting, innovative, intriguing and amusing American film directors around. They were not content to use the tools of conventional narrative, but sought to explore the supremacy of the image. In film after film, they found the appropriate visual style for the subject. They could be appreciated by sophisticated adults who got the references, as well as by those who enjoyed them on a less cerebral level.

I just love that the guy who approvingly quotes Chandler bemoaning "awful idiot faces" then takes less than two hundred words to get around to accusing the Coens of making a "hateful" film. Nice one, Saint Francis...

I don't think any of that has changed. In fact, what most have liked so much about No Country is its use of form, the visual language. There are sequences in the picture that are as good as anything I've ever seen (the opening, the dawn chase, hotel shootout), and those will become standard in film schools. Also, I don't think the movie relies on genre cliches, so much as Coen cliches -- some have accused the Coens of recycling from their previous efforts like Arizona or Fargo.

But to suggest this movie was a Hollywood sellout is unsustainable. This movie's success is a fluke. It's not commercial at all -- not with that third act. It was a success in spite of itself. And I think whatever backlash there's been is more the result of its success against the odds. The Coens were always quirky outsiders -- and the only way they could've achieved a success like this is if they'd capitulated to the mainstream (so the argument goes). Either that, or some preferred There Will Be Blood, and needed to denigrate Men to bolster their admiration.

Men isn't perfect. Not by far. But it has perfect sequences in it. And, honestly, that's all we should ever really hope for.

And if that's not good enough for you, perhaps you'll at least enjoy watching George Clooney shoot Brad Pitt in the face in their next movie.

I laughed out loud when what's-her-face won for Costume Design. The clip they showed featured Cate Blanchett looking more like Ronald McDonald than Elizabeth I. (And how Oscar-worthy is it to just let out the costumes from her previous outing as Elizabeth I?)

So, basically there weren't enough cutesy accent jokes in it for you?

Actually, it was pretty hateful. Maybe that's why I liked it so much.

Sorry if this is a naive question, but isn't there a difference between a hateful film and a film full of hate? That is, with at least one, if not two, hateful characters in it - does that make it a hateful film? Is the argument as simple as that? And while No Country is a different film technically (with larger budget and the Coens now having many more years of experience in their belt) than Blood Simple, it shares with it a neo noir worldview that alternatively fascinates and repels, but both films grab you from the get-go. I am not the first to say this, but that it reminded me of Blood Simple (even more than Fargo) in these ways was one of the many things I appreciated about it.

I'd agree with Mr. Bergen about some of the Coens' other recent films, they seemed to regress for a time, but I don't think it fair to lump this one in with the others at all. This has about as much in common with The Ladykillers as Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway has with his Alice. To each their own, I suppose, but I hardly see No Country as a sign the Coens have been fully absorbed by Hollywood. Its success there seems a fluke.

cp

Personally, I find No Country for Old Men to be the Coen's best film because it's the only one that doesn't wink all the time at the audience for being so clever. Sure, it's a bit more 'straight-faced' but it's also a bit more mature. It's also not mainstream. Sure, due to marketing and word-of-mouth [and awards] it made bank but the story structure is hardly mainstream.

Where's the Heart, or the Hateful in a Still Life, or a Landscape?

Def: Hateful: odious, detestable. Craig, if I didn't know the difference between a hateful film and a film full of hate, I've been in the wrong business for 30 years. I think I explained above why I detested the film. For instance, I recognise that The Night of the Hunter, a distant cousin of No Country, is a beautiful parable of good and evil, its bold visual style derived from German Expressionism and American primitive paintings as well as echoing the rural dramas of D. W. Griffiths. No Country has no such resonance. It is a well-trodden film country, which offers nothing new either in stylistic or narrative terms. I don't think it's non-commercial. Graphic violence usually does well at the box-office. Yes, their earlier films were 'nudge nudge' to a certain degree, but then so were many of the French New Wave films and Bunuel. The Coens haven't matured, they've become ossified. I suggest you all buy my book with the cleverly original title of The Coen Brothers (Orion. Phoenix updated version 2001) to get my views of their previous films. I will not bother to see Pitt shooting Clooney in the face in their next film, but I look forward instead to the next film by 100-year-old Manoel de Oliveira, who never 'matured'.

I think No Country was the Coen Brothers once again trying to do something entirely different than what they had done previously. With all the talk about this movie on here it seems like you forget that its quite a precise adaption of a novel. Its obviously something they both read, connected with, and wanted to see if they could take Cormac Mccarthy's story and vision and adapt it to film.

Is it a hateful film...probably. But so what? Is the world and especially America not a hateful place? Why should violence, or any subject for that matter need to be handled in a quirky or offhand manner?

I respect the coens for trying something different. I think it was a powerfull and effective film.

My use of the word 'mature' was not meant to say that their previous films were childish. It means that their focus and approach to filmmaking seems to have become stronger and more convincing. At least to me. This could be because of the material - afterall it as adapted from Cormac McCarthy rather than something they came up with in their heads.
Anyway, I too look forward to Manuel D'Oliviera's latest. As well as anything by Jean Luc Godard. Playful, beguiling and ground breaking cinema can also be mature cinema. That said, yes, the Coen broke no new ground with No Country.

I'm beginning to wonder whether the word 'hateful' has a different meaning in the USA from that in the UK. By definition, one cannot like anything that is hateful (despicable, dreadful). Another misrepresetation by Matt is that I'm against the film for its dark subject matter. Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink and Fargo were all very dark and had a less than rosy view of America. I just think that stylistically No Country has far fewer of the post-modernist, experimental and eccentric aspects which attracted me to their films in the first place. They have moved into an area of cinema that holds no interest for me. But perhaps that says more about me than the Coen Brothers. All three of us have moved on...