New Year--No Country for Old Men

So I'm watching No Country for Old Men, a Coen bros. movie, and thinking mystery writing is experiencing a seismic shift. We all are experiencing a quantum change. The information age is upon us, and nothing will ever be the same. [exageration for effect.]

No Country for Old Men--a line from a Yeats poem--is the title of a "period" piece set in 1980s Texas. So I'm talking back to the screen and saying why don't they call on the cell phone? Why don't they google the information? What we are begining to take for granted, did not exist in those days.

I predict the mystery writer who can capitalize on this shift will be successful. Now is prime time to create the new wave. 20th century mystery writing will be an anacronism, will be a period piece with historical limitations.

No County for Old Men, the title means old timers have nowhere to go, no where to fit in. They are from another place entirely.

"That is no country for old men," begins Yeats' poem, Sailing to Byzantium. He talks of dying generations, and sailing away from young summer. An old man sailing to find answers from sages. Singing of what is past, passing, or to come.

Passing is the 20th century--a great century--but still passing. "Modern" hasn't been modern for a long time. Children now will say, "Don't be so 19-hundreds, daddio!"

In the movie, a Texas sherrif talks about his long career. His father and grandfather were also lawmen, back to cowboy days. The experienced sherrif doesn't understand the villain he's after, doesn't comprehend the increasing violence he sees encroaching his world. He is one step behind.

In this movie, evil is competent, youth is determined but doomed, and the elder is following behind. The old knowledge is enough to keep him showing up after the action has unfolded. In this movie, there is no savior, either from tradition, from knowledge, or from divine intervention. There is no goodness to compare with the ultra-violent, uncaring, incomprehensible evil. Only fate. Only death. Sooner or later.

It's a good movie, otherwise. But lots of blood.

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Second Thoughts:

Another motif throughout is the idea that one's progenitor, a mother or father, has gone ahead, into the dark and cold, to build a fire. That person will meet us in the black, inpentetratable afterlife.

So the only thing we know for sure is that death is inevitable, and people who love us have gone through death. We are following into the incomprehensible.

Now that's a tragedy.

P.S. Christ brought us a better end, if you're interested.

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Third Thoughts:

A great work of art inspires second and third viewings, and second and third thoughts. This film will make you think. Even if you don't "like" it.