no movie for the masses?

I saw the new Coen Bros. film last night with some friends at the local rep cinema - I had my doubts about seeing it, stemming mostly from my own squeamishness - I just don't do realistic violence well. It's not the blood and guts of it all - I can sit happily through candy-violence like Tarantino's questionably 'good' films - it's the representation of cruelty. In Se7en for example, the depiction that kept me awake for weeks (literally, ask Nas) was Sloth - I was horrified to the point of insomnia that someone, regardless of how deranged, could do that to someone - something - else. In passing, I hate Se7en so I'm not going to provide a link to it.

Hey, I'm a softie from way back. I've learned to live with it. RSPCA and NSPCC ads on the telly make me cry.

But this film didn't - and I believe it purposely set out to minimise direct emotional impact. I disagree entirely with this review - the suggestion that this film - or any film - is 'not for the masses' is incredibly insulting. What masses? Me? That guy over there? What the reviewer implicitly means is people who 'won't get it' - in other words, people who are not them... People who lack the singular mental capacities and experiences that allow the critic to 'get' the 'real meaning' of a film, book, piece of art ... I thought this film was remarkable in its applicability. No one is spectacularly good in this film, but then, no one is spectacularly bad. Yes, I include the enigmatic Anton Chigurh - played to a growly, menacing perfection by Javier Bardem. I'm not going to offer any totalising reads of this film cause I don't have one. I don't think that it is depressing in that nihilistic cop-out that is so often applied to McCarthy and his depictions of the collapse of 'codes of honour'. I do think that the tension in the film is masterfully handled at every level. The use of mirrors and doubling extends through every layer of the narrative - and the usual Coen Bros. densely layered homages to their own celluloid history and to American pop-culture broadly thrilled my inner-nerd (not so inner, you say?). I particularly liked the shot of Tommy Lee Jones busting through that motel door, fully expecting to meet Chigurh and his own end, and facing only his shadow, doubled in the light from the parking lot, recalling the gunslinnger pose of so many westerns and Andy Warhol's iconic Elvis-as-cowboy print.

Mostly, I loved the use of landscape and - damn - I love those accents.

I grew up with the stereotypical northern (Canadian) disparagement for (American) southern accents. They belonged to country music and questionable morals: gunslingers, cowboys, and a wildness that didn't belong (or no longer belonged) in metropolitan, progressive, liberal (central - I now know) Canada. It signified conservatism and the 'establishment', ignorance, and simplicity in men; promiscuity, lax morals, and dullness in women. Generally, in mainstream television and popular representation when I was growing up, the comic relief and the really bad baddies had those southern twangs. The 'good' example might be Uncle Remus who I only met in Disney's Song of the South - or, more recently, Firefly, in which the old South-based planets are more human, familiar, and sympathetic than the industrial-techno-complex 'modern' planets. And like most stereotypes, mine was developed in complete isolation from any real-life example. In the film, however, they are a perfect counterpoint to the acrid harshness of the landscape; even Chigurh's voice is like molasses, dark and dripping, slow and certain. I suppose that that is just as stereotypical. And really, I just love the sound the way some people like a northern English accent, or southern Scottish, or northern Irish, or German, or Quebecois, or Sydney ... or Cape Town, or Cairo ... you get the picture.