the passing of time

Rating: 8/10 (4 April 2008)

It is a pity to read comments that ask "have i missed something" after watching No Country For Old Men. The movie, whose title was taken from Yeats' Sailing To Byzantium poem reflects none of the optimism that the poet displays about youth..."That is no country for old men. The young / In one another’s arms, birds in the trees." The movie, as i interpreted it, is about the passing of time, of generations, of things changing and how people deal with times that they do not, or even want to, understand. Yes, the movie is a crime thriller...there is the thrill of the chase, the Coen brothers' artful control of suspense...but it is also about a country that is on the verge of changing dramatically and, since the movie is set in the 1980s, it reflects a point when the nation is becoming what it is today. But hope is not held out to us in any way..the youth (the future generation then, the present one now) portrayed in the movie are not in any way better human beings than the grown ups..it is, as one of the lines goes, "all about the money." No Country For Old Men captures a small slice of American history, a time in-between. Similar to the way the movie Network predicts how Television would become an extremely powerful (and not always beneficial) medium, this movie appears to offer a prophecy on how gun culture and money will indeed be what rules America in the future.