No Country

No Country for Old Men, adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen from Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-Prize winner novel, is plain, scary and brutishly violent. Though the title appears neither in the book nor in the movie, is part of the first line from William Butler Yeats' poem "Sailing to Byzantium”:

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

The film was honored with numerous awards, garnering Three British Academy of Film awards, Two Golden Globes, Four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem).

No Country for Old Men is a wild cat-and-mouse drama, with a purebred psychopath (Javier Bardem) at its center. Instead of an expected resolution, the movie turns into one man (Tommy Lee Jones) understanding himself and the new world. The film takes place in a small Texas border town in 1980. Sheriff Bell has ruled the land for years, as his Grandfather and father did without a gun yet the new kind of evil and brutality flow has seeped into the world-to his world and made it impossible for him to fight without the use of a gun. Llewelyn Moss, a welder and a Vietnam veteran who lives in a trailer with his devoted wife, Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald) is an innocent common man. Through Llewelyn the themes of fate and circumstance, pessimism, nihilism, motifs of chance, free-will, & predestination, which are familiar territory for the Coen brothers in their earlier movies Blood Simple and Fargo

is examined when he “comes across” a drug deal gone deadly and finds two million dollars which he is determined to keep for himself. But there is a problem: one of the most evil psychopaths that the white screen has ever seen tracks him down! Anton Chigurh using a pressurized weapon that’s used to murder cattle, keeps on his mission to return the money to its rightful owners to save his own life. Whereas the chilly sensation created by Chigurh is a sign of terror, it is also a symptom of delight. As the tension rises, the number of the murders begins to rise, confirming Sheriff’s inability to battle this new wave of modern brutality.

More attention should be paid to Anton Chigurh to make his mentality clear: Anton the killer lives under a simple discipline- if your “fate” brings you to see him then you’re destined to die just like how a coin comes to your possession. Thus he does not feel guilty, he thinks that it is destiny not him to put the blame on. The best he could do for you is an appeal to the destiny of the coin- a coin toss.

The movie is not a simple face-off between the good and the evil. It does not justify only one deed. It just tells you that things are complicated and interpenetrated.

“No Country” is unexpected not because of its abrupt end but because of its every minute, every little nimble shot and faultless sound design. What impresses me most, generally speaking about all kinds of art, is that the work of art should not say or show what feeling it aims to have on you but rather it should make you feel in the way. Instead of saying “the whole summer was so boring and dull”, it should bore you with its narration and it should establish such an atmosphere that you would hardly finish “the summer”. And “No Country” does it exceptionally good. Many modern films today use bombastic music or tatty “tricks” to create tension or to impress. The Coens, contrastingly, know how using little or no sound drums up a scene’s anxiety and tension level. It stretches your senses out but not with. The silence and the slowness make you feel “home” as if you are in the hotel room with Llewlyn watching tide from the closet and the only thing you hear except for your vigorous heart beats is the creak of floorboards and the beeping of a transponder. This silence awakens your senses. Your attention is absolutely absorbed and you do not want to image what is going to happen even if you know what will happen. Another astonishing scene appropriate as an example for the “silence technique” is towards the very end. After we witness the tension between Anton Chigurh and Mrs. Moss, everything seems ordinary, children are riding their bicycles, we are relieved, Chigurh crosses the road slowly when the green light is on and suddenly he is hit by a car. Thus your relieved nerves are suddenly tense again! This is perfect.

Upon watching the film you are not just struck by what you have just witnessed but also how faithful the film is to novel. Therefore, it does deserve the Academy Award for the Best Adapted Screenplay. Yet there are still some differences:

The book is clear about the end of the confrontation of Mrs. Moss & Anton but the film is. She also doesn't refuse to call heads or tails on his coin: She calls it incorrectly. The first hotel confrontation between Moss and Chigurh plays out very differently: In the book Llwelyn holds Anton to ransom at a gun point and then the tale of stalker vs. prey starts. A hitchhiker, a teenaged girl who Llewely befriends in a way in the novel doesn’t exist in the movie but the same impact is given the movie, too. There is a lot of Ed Tom Bell narration that isn’t in the film. For a film I think it was just enough of Bell’s thoughts and i believe it was cut on purpose.

What the film does better: The film is richer and less “desert” with more of an oppressed dread. And also without really changing anything, the movie stretches out some of the book's quick-sketch processes, turning them into little mysteries. At several points in both the book and film version, characters gather ordinary objects and use them step by step to a suprising end. McCarthy tends to spell it out in bare sentences while the Coen Brothers strech it out thus raising the ongoing question "What is he up to?" and emphasizing the innate cleverness and creativity of the two leads in particular.

What the book does better: Mostly, it's more thematically consistent. You hear more from Sheriff Bell who opens, ends and spaces out the book, making it more clearly about him and his conviction that America is falling apart, becoming the kind of place where fellows like him just don't belong anymore.

After he finishes telling his dreams to his wife, he says that “Then I woke up”. He awakens, he opens his eyes to reality and he knows that he cannot handle this bare brutality thus he realizes that there is no country for old man. See? The movie achieved what I mentioned: Without literally saying “there is no country for old man” it says that “there is no country for old man.”

The dreams have symbolic meanings, the sheriff had two dreams: First Dream: The sheriff lost the money and is accused by his father. Second dream: He follows his father to the warmth of the fire in the midst of a cold world. The former refers to the legacy that the sheriff received from his father - he was a lawman. The sheriff lost this heritage. In the beginning of the film, the sheriff marvels over lawmen who didn't wear guns. The meaning is that lawmen, even with guns, are rather impotent in the face of evil. These lawmen of the old days knew that a gun couldn't protect them - the sheriff realizes this when he's in the dark motel room with Anton.

Hidrofil Pamuk

Amélie

Amélie is 2001 French & Germany made film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet who is the cowriter with Guillaume Laurant and starring Audrey Tautou. Nominated for five academic awards and Amélie won best film at the European Film Awards; it won four César Awards (including Best Film and Best Director), two BAFTA Awards (including Best Original Screenplay).

The original title is foreshadowing; “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain” which means “The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain" as it really is about fate and her surname is a symbolic one; Poulain is French for foal, a baby horse which reflects her standing in life.

Amélie is a story about a girl whose childhood was suppressed by her antisocial ex-Army doctor father’s mistaken diagnosis of heart defect. Like all little girls, she’d like to be hugged by her daddy but he never touches her, except for a monthly check-up. The thrill of this rare contact makes her heart beat like a drum. As a result, he thinks she has a heart defect. Amelie is then taught by her mother who is a schoolmistress and has always had shaky nerves. With these concerns she gets hardly any real life contact with other people and deprived of playmates, Amelie retreats into her own imagination, fantastical world and dreams of love and beauty and the situation became more intense with her mom’s sudden death. She later on becomes a young woman and moves to the central part of Paris, Montmartre, as a waitress. One day she discovered a lost treasure belonging to the former occupant of her apartment and at four o’clock in the morning she had a dazzling idea; she decided to find the owner of the box and if he was touched, she would become a regular do-gooder. After seeing his reaction and his newly found perspective, she decides to devote her life to the people around her. Such as her father, the woman abandoned by her husband, the man who is obsessed with his ex-girl friends, a hypochondriac, and the old man whose bones are as brittle as glass, the grocery boy, a failed writer and the love of her life. While trying hard to fix other people’s messy lives, Amelie, little by little with the help of Mr. Dufayel, discovers that she has to overcome her shyness and take a hold of her life to pursue her own happiness and then capture the beauty of love she has always dreamed of.

This is basically what happens but the real beauty lays in details which is another richness in narration since it matches with Amélie’s sense of taste; she likes to notice details that no one else sees. That is also why I chose a detailed way of analyzing. At the very beginning, we see a blue fly capable of flapping 70 beats a minute landed in Montmartre, at that moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth. Meanwhile, in his fifth-floor flat in Paris returning from his best friend’s funeral a man erased him from his address book and at the same moment, a sperm with one X chromosome belonging to Raphael Poulain made a dash for an egg in his wife Amandine. These opening scenes depict amusing coincidences. However, it turns out that coincidence does prove to be a so important factor in Amélie’s life that there can not be anything like coincidence and this perception is proven throughout the film by revealing the games and details… Then the movie goes on to show Amélie’s childish childhood games. She puts on cherry as an earring, she paints her chin a face etc… but there are two things that captured my attention; one is her hair style which has a soft looking of her later sharpened-striking hair style, indicating that she is the same Amélie but who is more innocent and naive due to her childhood and the second one is that she drops domino blocks which apparently again refers to coincidences in means of each life has a significant importance to the others.

After she decides that she will be the person to make people’s lives better, she meets her own guardian angel for the second time; the old blind man to whom she helps crossing the street. I said it was the second time since he was the man at the metro who was playing a gramophone record. The moment she bent to give some money to the blind man, her eyes met with Nino’s for the first time. And the lyrics of the song playing is very noteworthy; when I’m in your arms, I’m under your charm, how could I live without you?! Actually it was the song led her walk to for this side of the metro which is again a glimpse of coincidence games. The blind man shows up again on the news that Amélie created on her mind. She helps him once more by washing his feet. We come across him yet again while he leaves the café Amélie works in while she was away searching Dominique Bretodeau.

I have not seen any other film of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’ s but he is described as who always manages to make each film of his look distinctly unique and Amélie is one of them for sure. It is full of originality. He has a rather dark and twisted sense of humor. Here, Paris looks warm, beautiful, inviting, pleasant, and welcome, matching to Audrey Tautou though she has a non-traditionally beautiful beauty yet still elegant.

Mr. Dufayel is known as the glass man because he was born with bones as brittle as crystal. All his furniture is padded. He has stayed inside for twenty years. He has painted the same piece each year for twenty years since he, after all those years, still cannot capture the girl with the glass of water. While Amélie is taking care of other people, Mr. Dufayel observes her and they repeatedly discuss the meaning of this girl and it is never apparently said but she happens to represent Amélie and her isolated life. Through their discussions, Mr. Dufayel becomes her confidante and he makes Amélie examine her own life and her attraction to Nino. He becomes her confidant. He helps not just Amélie but also Lucien, the grocery boy. He is also an outcast and because Amélie assumes herself as the godmother of the outcasts, she takes him on her helping list. He takes painting classes from Mr. Dufayel after work and there is something interesting about him, too. He loves Lady Diana and talks about her all the time that the situation irritates Mr. Dufayel. His love for Lady Di matches with Lady Di’s standing in the society since she was known as “people’s princess”. This connotation appeals to our senses.

There is another detail I would like to point out; Amélie does change people’s life to some extent but not thoroughly. She just does a precious favor to them. She does not change their personalities or their manners but maybe she opens a new window for them. We can sense that it is true when we observe the lives of those she helped. Dominique Bretodeau is the best example to start with; after carving the legs and wings of the chicken, he loves picking the hot carcass with his fingers starting with the oysters and after being helped-changed by Amélie, he does not quit buying or loving to pick the hot carcass with his fingers but he starts to share it with his grandson. Another example is the sick-minded man who stalks his ex-girlfriends, with Amélie’s matchmaking he gains a new one but he continues to spy on his ex and new girlfriend.

Photographic style and magical realism draw the movie into its own little world and out of reality while having strong ties to real world. Camera angels and shots are used as complementary elements to the meaning. For example; Amélie was nervous and worried in the metro tunnels since she was not able to find Dominique Bretodeau. Dizzy and sudden moves of camera shots help to establish the inner feelings of hers (00:27:14). In addition, music is one of the great things about Amélie. The melody just fits into the theme. It features fantastic music, especially the piece played at the very end. They are all composed by Yann Tiersen; a French musician.

The end of the movie is ironically not an end but a start. It is a response to her goodness. One more excellent thing about the end is that it is one of the most sensual and erotic –not in a flashy and a cheap way - scenes without having any nudity or dialogue or even hardly any physical contact.

Finally, I would like to end my comments by pointing out some mistakes of the movie. Though there are mistakes, they are not recognized easily. I could not capture them by myself since they are not so distinct in the course of action but I found people who did;

1. Young Amelie is taking pictures with her camera. The only button on the camera is on the top right. However in the behind shot of her, the button is on the left. (00:07:17).

2. The film is set in 1997. There is a scene where Amelie knocks on a house door and in the background is a new model VW Beetle. These weren't available until early 1998. You can also see several scenes with various new models of Fiat Punto and VW Golf which weren't available until 1999. (00:20:07).

3. When Nino goes to 'Les deux Moulins' for the first time, we can see Amelie writing the menu on a glass right behind him. A few shots later, we see the glass again and the handwriting is quite different. That's easy to see if you look carefully at the 'd'. Later on, we see the glass once more, and the handwriting has changed again. (01:37:07).

   Hidrofil Pamuk