Subjectively speaking, you have the pairing of two of my favorite artists: Cormac McCarthy and Joel and Ethan Coen - one of the greatest living writers paired with the Coens, one of the greatest film-making teams around. This is a match made in heaven; I'm not sure I've ever seen an interpretation of a novel as fitting and wise as this one. The Coens faithfully translate McCarthy to the screen: his land-scapes, narrative pace, the rural characters and their speech. They avoid trying to do the impossible, which is to completely reproduce the longer speeches of the Sheriff in the book. The casting is perfect in the cases of Moss and Sheriff Bell; but Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh is a visual incarnation of the kind of mythic evil that shows up so often in McCarthy's fiction.
The ending is stunning; again, captures McCarthy about perfectly.
Go see it.
(Warning: it is violent).
1 comment:
Wow! Now I am excited. I listened to the book via Audible.com earlier this Fall and was eager to watch the film. But then I read a review or two that were a little lukewarm, I was afraid it would ruin it. (It's sort of odd to say "listening to the book.") It's sort of distracting in conversation, because you then usually have to explain why you only "listened" to a book.
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