Last night I went to see
No Country for Old Men, a critically acclaimed film by the Coen brothers based on Cormac McCarthy's novel of the same name. I knew it was going to be rough. I hadn't read the book, but I've read
The Road, and an author with that sort of insight is unlikely to pen anything resembling a rom-com. I can still see Javier Bardem's eyes boring through my skull. It was a chilling, truthful, deeply disturbing film, as so many good ones are.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure many of the others in the theater agreed with me. As the final scene played out and the credits began to roll, I heard people around me laugh.
"Well, that was random," one said.
It's a subtle film, to be sure, but anyone with even basic skills of interpretation should have been stunned by some of the large questions posed so lucidly, questions of good and evil, questions of what humans can do to keep their souls when the waves of violence break. Random it was not.
I nearly stood up in the front and said, "Okay guys. Let's just talk this through..." But I suppose one has to take off the teacher hat sometime.
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