Not Being in Mexico

So, along the lines of The Best Cruise I Never Took I give you The Best Film I Never Saw: No Country for Old Men.

Or, as my dad mistakenly termed it, No Room for Old Men. Which captures the literal meaning, of course, but really skimps on the poetics. Unless it's a eccentric allusion to the birth of Jesus.

Also known as No Country for Cold Men.

Finally, No Tree for Old Men.

Okay. I'll shut up on the doppelgangers now. Promise.

My dad pointed out that the film had gotten only the best reviews from the nation's top critics. Which are, of course, men, but that's obviously beside the point.

Then I found out that No Country for Old Men is a visual representation of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Since most of All the Pretty Horses was comprised of a baffilingly post-modernist lack of quotation marks, untranslated Spanish, and landscape descriptions that each contained the phrase "And the grass, and the trees, and the horses...", I wasn't expecting much.

I watched the trailer.

I watched the trailer and read one of the [male] reviews, which describe it as "bleak, scary, and violent." I have come to terms with the fact that I can only face one of those three ghouls at a time, so I decided not to go. I did appreciate the author's description of Javier Bardem, something along the lines of a Beatle gone wrong.

My fanatically intelligent film professor says that The Diving Bell and the Butterfly really got snubbed. I totally agree.