NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN : OPENING SCENES

 Summarise and explain the following elements about the opening scenes  of No Country for Old Men  which introduce the characters of Bell and Chigurh

                                               Opening ( Sheriff Ed Tom Bell )

                                 Opening ( Sheriff Ed Tom Bell/Chigurh ) ( low quality)


                                                            

                                                     The discovery  ( Llewellyn Moss)

                                                    

Spectatorship


What elements of film form are used  in the opening scenes to align audiences to be positioned with Sheriff Bell and Lleweyn Moss ( and any other characters )and how is film form used to avoid alignment, especially with Chigurh  ?  e.g use of closeups , POV shots , camera framing and angles ,voiceover etc.

 How much do you learn about the personality , background , ambitions ,lifestyle and fears of each character in these scenes? 

Ideological themes


What moral or social themes are introduced in the opening scenes , including binary oppositions ( e.g chaos v order?) Who does the audience feel allegience and empathy with and why ?
 

No COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN : Intro

 

Anton Chigurh

Llewellyn Moss

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell

  
Do you see any connections in the setting and the characters to traditional Western conventions ?

How do you feel their stories will be resolved ?   

                                       

THE WESTERN GENRE

Use the examples below and your own research to summarise the key conventions of the Western genre 

                                                                       CONVENTIONS :

Characters : Hero /Villain

 Sheriff/ Cowboy/Gunfighter

Narrative :  shootout/ conflict  resolves the story

Themes : 

good v evil

past v present

law and order v chaos and criminality

Film form

Setting : landscape 

Props and Costumes

Modern subversions and changes ? Links to other genres ?

                                                               Shane : good v evil gunfighters

                                                      High Noon : The good sheriff

             



                               

                       

                                                                  Stagecoach ": the landscape

                                                                    

           
                                              The Good, the bad and the ugly

                                                              The gunfight




  The Wild Bunch                        shootout

the importance of the shootout at the climax of the film

themes : past v present

New wave of more explicitly violent films

Revisionist westerns of the 1970s- 1990s became more concerned with  changing pur understanding of the tradiitional good v evil cowboy v Indians binary opposition , with films such as Dances With Wolves

                                                        Representations of ethnicity

                                          MODERN  EXAMPLES AND COMPARISONS

     
                                                                 The Proposition


                 Deadwood : 

                 Role of sheriff, lawless nature of Wild West , order v chaos.



            The Quick and the dead :  fight    

             The importance of the gunfight , subverted by it becoming an explosive action scene

                                                            Pastiche of the gunfight

 THE COEN BROTHERS HAVE USED SOME OF THE CONVENTIONS OF THE WESTERN IN A VARIETY OF WAYS IN A NUMBER OF FILMS  

                                           ANALYSIS


Scorsese on Westerns

stereotypes, subversions and more examples.