It took me two times to see No Country for Old Men all the way through. I wanted to watch it all in one sitting, don't get me wrong. I was actually completely engrossed in the movie during the first screening of it that I attended. And it had almost gotten to the final 15-20 minutes that everyone has been talking about in terms of how confusing they are, and I was becoming increasing fascinated as to how the filmmakers would resolve some of the issues in the plot. That's when it happened.
I went to see No Country for Old Men at the Arclight. I know I've talked elsewhere about my distaste for other moviegoers. Since I've been going only to the Arclight or to the Landmark (both feature reserved seating), I've had almost no reason to complain. That is, until last Sunday, the day before Presidents Day, the last Monday holiday we'll see for a while at school. I had decided that I would try to catch up a bit on my moviegoing experiences, and since I was doing The Oscar Project on my other blog, it was time to see the Coen brothers' movie. It wasn't too crowded, being early Sunday morning and all, but that didn't mean there wouldn't be impediments. If you've seen the film, we had made it to the part where Tommy Lee Jones's sheriff is sitting on the bed in the motel room when the film stopped. Just stopped. Black screen. No sound. Then lights started flashing, and alarms started to sound. I've been through enough emergency drills to know when it's time to evacuate, so I got my jacket off the seat next to me and walked to the lobby upstairs along with several hundred of my closest friends from all of the other screening rooms. We were then hustled outside where, thankfully, it was not raining for once. After about half an hour, ushers appeared with complimentary tickets for future screenings. I took mine, paid for my parking, and left feeling very disgruntled. I realize there was no point in staying. The fire engines were there, the "fire" was apparently put out in the kitchen, but the firefighters had to inspect every single screening room (and other rooms) to be sure before anyone could have been let back in. The next screenings would have started by then (although I suspect they too were delayed or canceled).
I managed to return the following day, Presidents Day itself, and used one of my complimentary tickets to find the exact same seat that I was in the day before. This time I watched just as intently (it's a very engrossing film, I tell you) until the scene began that had been interrupted. I looked at my watch to check the time remaining. Nothing happened. The film continued on, and I got to see all of the rest of what the Coen brothers had created.
I tell this story only because it illustrates just what a true movie lover might do. I would have been willing to wait that Sunday if the folks at Arclight would have only guaranteed us that we could have seen the end of our movie. I would have returned the next day just to watch the final 15-20 minutes by themselves if I had been allowed to do only that. Instead, I watched the entire thing all over again, just because I love movies that much and wanted to see how it ended.
This is not my first encounter with such problems in a theater, by the way. The first time a screening was interrupted by outside forces was back in 1978. I had gone to see Death on the Nile with my grandparents during some Christmas shopping in Alabama. I always loved the Agatha Christie mysteries, and I always enjoyed the film adaptations of them too. Just as Hercule Poirot (played by the grand Peter Ustinov) had assembled the potential suspects and was in the process of explaining how he had deduced the identity of the real killer (you know how he does that if you've seen any one of the films), all of the power went off. Seems like a thunderstorm had knocked out all of the electricity in the area. The people at the theater were nice enough to offer us free tickets to return another day to see the film again (or some other film), but no one in the theater--not even my elderly grandparents--took them up on their offer. We just wanted to find out who the killer was, so we all stayed until the power came back on about 45 minutes later. We ran from the lobby back into the theater, and they restarted the film a few minutes before the part we had seen before. Nice of them to do that. Satisfying, really.
I should admit that I've had the opposite reaction as well. My mother and I went to see A Fish Called Wanda in 1988. There was a big storm that night too, and we were left in the dark before that movie ended as well. However, this time when we were offered free tickets, we took them and went to get some dinner. I think there was also pie involved. I don't know how long after that it was before I found out how that movie ended. Needless to say, it wasn't quite as fascinating to me as Death on the Nile or No Country for Old Men.
Lest you think it's only the endings of movies that are ruined for me when something like this happens, I should tell you about going to see A Passage to India, that marvelous David Lean epic of 1984, still one of my favorites. This time, the film broke during the beginning of the screening, during the opening credits, to be exact. What we missed was the scene with Judy Davis as Miss Quested buying her ticket to India and seeing a drawing of the caves which will play such a significant part in the film later on. Now, that wouldn't seem to be such a big deal to have missed such a small moment early in a movie, but one of the its great themes is first raised there. I recall taking a Film and Literature class the following semester and having the professor ask if anyone had seen A Passage to India during the one week that it played in Starkville. I raised my hand, alone, apparently, in my love of Forster novels and Lean films. When the professor asked me about the opening scene, I was, of course, unable to answer. You can never really know what the consquences of an event might be, can you?
Here's to no more interruptions in the moviegoing experience, whether at the beginning, middle, or end.
1 comment:
Semi or maybe quasi related:
We're going to be reading Cormac McCarthy at the end of the semester in American Lit, and the required reading is Outer Dark. I have read a few pages, and liked them immensely. Earlier this week I was at the local used bookstore, Acres of Books, and found a good bunch. In this bunch was a first edition Thomas Driesler, maybe not too hard to find, but I was pleased, and a copy of McCarthy's The Road. I think this book won him a Pulitzer. Well, egged on by the satisfying aftertaste of Outer Dark, I started reading The Road without even reading the back cover, thinking that his writing was that easy to get into, and indeed, I finished the book in two sittings.
I bring this up because, as you may remember, I'm a little wary of violence in movies. Not for purely moral reasons, but because witnessing violence on the screen, however aware I am of "make believe", gives me anxiety. So I have been avoiding No Country for Old Men, due solely to the chilling trailer and the thought of death by cattle gun. I have been toying with the idea of seeing it, you know, like in the broad daylight on a very sunny day, but then one of my oldest, dearest friends, who is of a similar disposition, told me that it was awful (conerning the violence), and that she sat through most of the movie with her eyes closed. This didn't give me any confidence in braving the film myself, and in the wake of an unstable decision not to see it, I picked up and began reading, The Road.
I don't know if you have read it, so I'll try to avoid any spoilers, but I'm still reeling from the horror of it. Of course I can go back and find all the shimmering humanity that brings a glimmer of hope to the eye, and there are several aspects of it that are now emerging in my conciousness that are very interesting, but the horror...and I'm wondering if No Country is similar in it's ability to terrorize. Because an image in a book has a life of it's own, it's got it's own dynamic, if you will. My brain will shape it and twist it and rewrite it. But a moving picture is much more substantial, and there are images from movies that almost seem mentally indelible -- along with the sensory memory of the terror they invoked.
I guess all this is to say that I'm still debating whether or not to see No Country at all, much less have the opportunity to complain about the circumstances surrounding the experience. And every time I see Josh Brolin, all I can think is Goonies never say die.
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