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First things first – I am a huge Coen Brothers fan. Fargo is one of my all time favorite movies and I even own the snowglobe that came with the VHS back when I purchased it. I don’t know how many times I have watched it, or Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Raising Arizona, or The Big Lebowski. I even liked Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers – their dark humor running amok in both of these films. So it came as a surprise to me when I watched their newest offering of “No Country For Old Men” that their renowned humor and wit was no where to be found in this film and that in general the movie for us was a flop.
Josh Brolin plays Moss, a Vietnam veteran who seems resourceful and inventive but at the same time, acts like a complete idiot. I don’t know about you but if I found $2 million dollars at the scene of a drug deal gone bad and I actually decided to steal the money, I would have gotten the hell out of dodge, pronto! I would have grabbed my better half and headed any direction that was away from any one who might come looking for that money and not returned to the scene a few hours later. Doesn’t that always trip people up? You would think that people would have learned by now, you never, ever go back. The second thing I would not have done is checked into a crappy hotel five miles down the road and waited for someone to come along to kill me. What was up with that? Let’s see, I have $2 million dollars in drug money and I check into the local Hotel 8? Huh? He was smart enough to know his wife was in trouble but he thought he’d hang around and see what would happen? Come on!
I enjoyed Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin but felt no real connection with the characters and their dialog left me, and the folks I was watching this movie with, scratching our heads. The characters could have been really great and better developed but it never quite got there. I have no idea why they didn’t end this movie but end it, they did not. We kept wondering where disk 2 was. The fact is, every story has a beginning, middle and an end. Every story, every life. This movie had a non-ending, it just seemed to stop, mid-thought, mid-sentence. I have to admit, I have not read the book and in reading some of the reviews, it seems the book was primarily about the sheriff, his life and how he no longer fits in. If this is true then that is how the movie should have been done, not put Brolin and Bardem out there as the central characters and Jones as an insignificant side story. You can actually do that you know, develop a character and see the violence portrayed through his eyes but it always felt like Ed Tom Bell was a second thought in the film, not the main character who finds himself in the middle of a whirlwind of violence and mayhem. Jones was nominated for Best “Supporting” Actor only so obviously his character was not the lead in that movie to more people than just me.
I don’t know exactly what the problem was with this movie – it just seemed to be missing something. Kind of like buying a delicious looking Dunkin Donuts jelly doughnut and finding nothing but an empty hole in the middle where the jelly was supposed to be. Perhaps the Coen brothers should stick with original screenplays that are written with their strengths in mind. Or perhaps it was an editing problem, I don’t know. The movie for us left us shaking our heads and repeating “THAT won Best Picture?” I wish I would have waited until it came on television and saved my rental for something better – like Fargo – yah know.
A short time ago I cared about what I imagined was important stuff. I cared about world affairs, politics, and who will be our next president. It all seemed important and I had an opinion on every topic, which I voiced quite often. Then I found out that I am going to be a Grandmother to a little girl and everything else in the world immediately took a backseat to this upcoming event in my life.
Gone is arguing over who will make the best candidate for each party. Now my only conversation of primaries consists of: are primary colors or pastels better for the nursery walls? And the only debate I am interested in is the debate regarding breast-feeding vs. bottle-feeding. I’ll vote of course, it is my civic duty to do so – I don’t live in a vacuum.
I had forgotten all the real important stuff since it has been years and years since I had babies. I knew that nothing was more important then my children when they were small but somehow I forgot all that as they grew up and began moving on their own lives. I still worry about them as every mother does but I lost the edge, that certain tickle in the back of your mind when they are young and are not in the house by curfew. How your heart jumps every time you hear a siren and your children are out somewhere. What do you do when you worry about a child that doesn’t live with you? I wonder if I will be able to sleep, worrying over my grandchild. My daughter and son-in-law are wonderful people and they will make the best parents ever. I know this and yet I can feel myself being drawn back into worrying about daycare and who is going to take care of her when her parents are at work. Do I really want some stranger touching my granddaughter? Caring for her on a daily basis? I think not.
I cry tears of worry along with my tears of joy. I thought all the really intense worrying would be over once my children were grown but I was wrong. I wished someone had warned me it was going to be this hard to be a grandmother. Not that I would change a thing mind you but perhaps I could have been better prepared. I guess I still have more to learn.
So I’ll leave the arguing and debating to others for now because once again I am reminded that children and family are two of the most important things in life and I would do well to remember that.
I wanted to write something different this time, along a different vein if you will. This is not an article about God or religion but about something I have come to understand in recent days after reading the newest Oprah Book Club offering – Eckhart Tolle’s book, “A New Earth.”
I am not a religious person, per se. I have various problems with structured religions of any type, but I am what you would refer to as “spiritual.” I believe there is a God or Higher Being, or whatever you wish to name this entity, I have seen too many things in my lifetime to believe otherwise. But one thing in this book resounded loud and clear to me, regardless of my personal beliefs – the ego is running rampant.
There was a news story on the other night about three teenage girls that were teasing another young girl. The newscaster asked “what would you do if you saw this happening” and showed two adult woman standing toe to toe with the young girls, accusing them of being mean and nasty. The argument became quite heated on both sides, neither one backing down. I stopped watching the story at this point, it disturbed me so, but I did wonder what would I have done had I been there.
Before reading A New Earth, I can say, without a doubt, that I would have felt the need to take action against the teasing girls. I would have confronted them and probably would have gotten into a rather nasty argument with the entire lot. But watching the two women do exactly what I would have done, proved to me that this is definitely not the way to go. The argument between the women and the girls kept escalating, each adding fuel to the fire of their own egos. I don’t know what happened in the end but I can’t imagine it ended well for anyone. It was really a prime example of what happens when the ego takes over and it was truly eye-opening. It was a no win situation on both sides.
I watched another news story about a teenage girl on a school bus arguing with the bus driver. That argument escalated into name calling, hair pulling and shoving. The girl ended up with a ten-day suspension and a spot on “The Early Show.” (If that had been my daughter, there would not have been an interview on TV but rather a two month term in her bedroom, minus her television and telephone – but that’s another story.) I watched this horror being played out for the entire world to see, a teenager and an adult going toe to toe, and I wondered how did our egos get so out of control? Another scary aspect about that story was the other kids on the bus, urging the situation on, the mob mentality, a very dangerous thing indeed.
Was there a way to react or possible not react in these situations that could have been beneficial for all the parties involved? Hasn’t it been the same for all of history – especially in religious wars – where egos take over and leave common sense far, far behind? I guess I never thought of history that way, that it is simply ego behind every man-made disaster that has ever befallen this world. “My religion is better than your religion” or “My race is better than your race.” Isn’t that simply ego at its worst and most extreme?
So I will try and keep my own personal ego in check from now on. When someone offers their opinion, I will remember that it is their ego speaking, the total sum of their past experiences that have lead them to this conclusion and no matter what I say, I will not be able to change their opinion and it would only be serving my ego to try.
I will re-read A New Earth time and time again – taking something new from its pages with each read but I don’t know if anything in there will ever speak to me as much.
