PREVIEW: Backer Bonus Episode on 'No Country for Old Men' (2007)
Become a backer of Daniel or Jack to get exclusive access to a new bonus episode. Becoming a patron also brings access to all other bonus episodes. At least one new Patreon exclusive bonus episode every month. This time we talk about the Coen Bros. No Country for Old Men (2007). No Country for Old Men Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper/posts Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618&fan_landing=true Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month. IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper Jack's Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_ IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1
IDSG bonus episodes are a regular extra just for Patreon backers of myself or Daniel.
Here's a preview of the new one.
He's an agent of chaos.
You know, that's, that's what the film means.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which no, he's the opposite.
Yeah.
Like also something that people say about the Heath Ledger Joker, you know?
Oh, yeah.
He's an agent of chaos who has, you know, plans within plans.
Clearly, if you spend 10 minutes thinking about the film.
Yeah, no.
Yeah, there are some similarities there.
Actually, if Javier Bardem wanted to play the Joker, I would totally be on board for that, by the way.
He would be good.
I mean, there are bits in No Country for Old Men where he looks like the Joker.
He's doing that long faced smile and he really does.
Yeah, no, very much so.
I read an interview, I read some like background material and apparently, you know, he would like he had just a blast on set and he was just showing up and he would ask, you know, whichever Coen brother was there, like, so who do I get to kill today?
You know he's a very like he's this phenomenal actor and he's like absolutely mesmerizing and terrifying on screen but apparently he was just a giant cut up on set so you know you gotta love that you just gotta love that feeling of you know it's just absolutely he knows what he's doing you know he's a consummate professional basically.
Absolutely, but you can't help, it is a little bit sad watching the movie now and you're thinking there's this incredible performance here and what it's going to lead to for Javier Bardem is years of playing cheesy villains in Bond films and Pirates movies and etc etc etc.
I'm sure he got a paycheck off of it.
So, you know, you know.
Oh, yeah.
No.
Yeah.
Weep for the man.
Right.
You know.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
The poor guy, the paycheck you must have gotten for doing Pirates of the Caribbean 17 or whatever it was.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's doing he's doing terribly badly, of course.
I stopped after the first Pirates movie, and I feel very happy with that decision.
Yeah, let's not talk about that.
Clearly, that's a whole other topic of conversation.
Yeah, I could opine at length on this subject, but let's not do this.
So, what's your background with the films?
Did you see them theatrically?
Sorry, no country.
Did you see it theatrically?
It's funny, it's just occurred to me as we've been talking, I am a pretty big Coen Brothers fan.
I would call myself a fan of their movies.
I've seen pretty much all of them.
But I don't think I've ever seen any of them at the cinema, which is a bit weird.
I don't think I've ever actually seen any of them theatrically, which is interesting.
So no, yeah, I didn't see this theatrically.
And I read the novel after I saw the film, definitely, because I read the novel because I saw the film.
And it's the only Cormac McCarthy novel that I have so far gotten around to reading, which is a bit of an oversight, I'm sure.
You would have definite feelings about Blood Meridian, I'll just leave it at that.
Yeah, yeah, it's on the list, you know, that's what I consider to be his masterpiece.
And I would probably, you know, I'm not I haven't done the deep dive into Cormac McCarthy, but, you know, yeah, for sure.
That's the masterpiece for sure.
Yep.
Anyway.
So, yeah, I mean, it's difficult to know where to start, isn't it?
This film.
What I mean, just just tell me, just tell me your take on it.
Well, sure.
I mean, I think that, you know, interestingly, I think how you feel about the film ultimately comes down to how you feel about it.
And by the ending, I don't just mean sort of the kind of later Tom and Lee Jones, you know, that kind of last scene that sort of baffles people, you know, because it is slightly more abstract than, you know, Tom and Lee Jones just stating out the themes of the film.
And then it turns out Javier Bardem was a cage of chaos, you know, or something like that, you know.
He doesn't look to camera and say, this is the theme of the film.
It's a little bit more nebulous, but also all the stuff that leads up to it, you know, up to, you know, arguably the death of the Llewelyn Moss character, you know, kind of forward and sort of the circumstances that lead to that.
It's interesting that the film tracks with the book, largely, you know, up to about that moment and then like there are the greatest divergences seem to be like kind of after that point.
And I think that, you know, we talked when we talked about Fargo about like, well, is this film kind of conservative or reactionary.
And I think we kind of come to like, no, it's humanistic.
And it's often seen as being reactionary or conservative.
But that's a misreading of the film.
I think you could argue, I think that it's very easy to argue that the book No Country for Old Men is a deeply right wing film, deeply right wing book, right?
But I think the Coens actually managed to sort of transform it into something
