The striking thing is their brilliant nullity.
They are so good you view them again and again, asking what they are saying, what do they mean.
They feel so much like they ought to mean something.
But every time you are forced to the same result.
Nothing.
These boys have not one damned thing to tell us.
On the other hand, what was Shakespeare trying to tell us with Hamlet?
Anything at all?
I read somewhere that someone once said a poem should not mean but be.
I would suggest that 'No Country for Old Men' has an enormous amount to tell you concerning the decline and fall of America but then you're living it where-as I am just watching it - with deep regret, I might add.
ReplyDeleteI saw the film and missed that, or any, lesson.
ReplyDeleteI often miss things in films and literature that others claim to see.
Those visionaries seem to me like the Christians seeing Jesus on a piece of toast, or like Buddhists seeing Bhodisattvas in passing clouds.
But on the other hand, the very best critics (and I am definitely not one) can sometimes open your eyes to facets of a work of imagination that hitherto you have missed but, of course, you need an open mind to appreciate it. In my poor opinion, 'No Country ...' is an elegy for an older, better America and the romantic Cormac McCarthy knew whereof he wrote.
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