Either You're In, or You're Out

Much has been said, by professionals and nonprofessionals, about self-destructive behavior. I'm of the nonprofessional party, but that won't stop me having my say. Here it is: You want to be self destructive? Do it all the way, or don't bother with it. As Yoda in another great movie said, “Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try. ”

Like any endeavor, there is no point in taking on self destruction haphazardly. Self destruction is not a hobby, it's a way of life. The keys to good self destructive behavior are commitment, style, and enjoyment. How do I know this? From watching The Mummy. Where did I find my models? In The Mummy. Who are the best examples? Two characters from The Mummy, Jonathan and Beni. They are the antithesis of the movie's heroes. Watch their antics, and you'll see.

Jonathan is self destructive in many different ways. He's a thief and a liar. He's a coward, and he's weak. He's a drunk who pretends to be a missionary. Maybe he's just a very bad missionary. (That's got to be some sort of sin, or blasphemy, or something.) Jonathan is not nearly as successful an archaeologist as his sister Evy is, or as their parents apparently were. He even has a death wish. (Remember his wish to join the dead when he brings the key to Evy at the museum.) Jonathan has all the self destruction bases covered. But he wears natty British archaeologist chap clothes and is having a damn good time self destructing!

Then there is Beni. What can we say about Beni? One simple sentence is all that's needed to sum him up. Beni is one greedy so-and-so. His commandments seem to be: Make money any way you can and save yourself any way you can. How to make money? Swindle, any and every body. Cheat, the American treasure hunters for one. Sacrifice, your friends, your enemies, any random stranger before yourself. (“You're my only friend” he tells O'Connell. Yeah, right!) Make deals with the “devil,” in this case a powerful, lovelorn mummy. And for the CYA maneuvering? First, lie, lie, lie; to your buddy O'Connell, to your living-mummy master Imhotep. Second, cover all your bases, even if it means wearing a fistful of amulets and memorizing as many prayers to the appropriate deities. Third, run away early and often. Fourth, run away fast and far!

If you're planning to pursue self destruction as a way of life, don't look to drug-addicted actors and underpants-shunning singers for pointers. Turn to the guiding example of the scoundrels of The Mummy.

Tommy Lee Jones's Texas (Spoiler Alert!)

I'll admit it: what stuck me to No Country for Old Men was nostalgia for Texas. I'd lived in El Paso; Big Bend National Park had been my home page since I left the region; I'd changed my life completely, and nine years' worth of diaries drone my angst. To hear the diaries tell it, I always knew I'd come back. And this movie plopped into the hotbed of my grief, where it sizzled, happily, no doubt hastening my return. I’d walked in all the places where this movie was filmed. I'd been to Presidio and Sanderson. I'd drunk whiskey from a flask, in campgrounds just yards from that international border, and had my clothes and all my gear soaked time after time by the West Texas squalls. Without knowing it, I left my taproot stuck in caliche, and so I came back, like badly-weeded grass. If these people will have me, I'm theirs.

So, what's this story? It's simple: PTSD meets Mexican mafia, and they clash (where else but) on the border. The enormity of evil overwhelms the locals—all but two. One, the traumatized Vietnam vet, fights back using all his soldier wiles and holds his own longer than he can be expected to, but his intentions are not pure, and eventually he succumbs. The other, the good and simple sheriff, muses, plods, has God on his side. That's the way McCarthy ends it. He might as well have said, "and God will help you."

I like everything about the Sheriff Bell character: his wry relationship with his wife, his palms-up affable nature around his colleagues, his dogged progress as he makes his way, Columbo-like, along the trail of bodies, in the direction of the demonic Chigurh. I knew guys like Bell, when I lived out there. I imagine Tommy Lee Jones had a lot of fun playing this guy.

As much as I like Tommy Lee Jones, and always have—from the Loretta Lynn story, through The Fugitive and of course Men in Black I and II—my favorite scene’s the one he does with Barry Corbett (Northern Exposure’s Maurice, himself a native Texan just like Jones). Corbett plays Bell’s Uncle Ellis, a wheelchair-bound ex-deputy, living out his last days on the West Texas plain in the company of an infestation of feral housecats. Bell pays him a visit in a moment of despair, and here’s what Ellis tells him.

Ellis:    What you got, ain’t nothin new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s comin. It ain’t all waitin on you. That’s vanity.

There’s a lot going on in the book, that doesn’t make it into the movie, here, and that’s fine. No Country, the movie; No Country, the book: the more times I watch and read, the more distinct the two become. Here, my challenge is not to define, or explain, or judge, the one in terms of the other.

But just this once, I have to type a passage from the book.

In the movie, as Ellis says, “This country’s hard on people,” Bell tips his chin and looks out the window, along the bleak, beloved horizon. It’s just an instant. In the book, Ellis goes on in this vein, for awhile. “This country will kill you in a heartbeat,” he finally adds, “and people still love it.”

I know I do.

Zingers

You know that one friend of yours that always has a clever comeback for any quip? You know the one. We all have that friend with the gift of precision use of the zinger. What’s the perfect one-liner for the surly morning barista? Your buddy drops it like the coins he won’t drop into the tip jar. And the sarcastic reply to some inane question? Your pal delivers it like a sweet song from honeyed lips.

Zingers are a handy tool for urban living. See the above examples if you’re in doubt. And they’re another tool for life that I’ve learned from The Mummy. Wondering what to say to the librarian who has knocked down every bookshelf? “Compared to you, the other plagues were a joy!” Hell yeah! And after her apology? “When Ramses destroyed Syria, it was an accident. You are a catastrophe!” Why can’t I ever think of good comebacks like these!?

I love a good zinger, but I can never think of one at the right moment. Maybe it’s that strict upbringing with no “talking back.” *sigh* Something else to blame on my parents. But I digress.

One of my favorite features of The Mummy is the zingers. From the very first scenes, the movie is filled with zingers.

“My body is no longer his temple!” –Anck-su-namun
--
“Your strength gives me strength.” –Beni
--
“Have you no respect for the dead?” –Evy
“Right now, I only wish to join them.” –Jonathan
“Well I wish you’d do it sooner rather than later[...]” –Evy
--
“You lied to me!” – Evy
“I lie to everybody, what makes you so special?” –Jonathan
“I’m your sister.” –Evy
“That just makes you more gullible.” –Jonathan
--
“You’re gonna get yours, Beni! You’re gonna get yours!” –O’Connell
“Like I haven’t heard that before.” -Beni

Zingers are fun; no question about it. But sometimes you don’t need to speak to zing. Your actions can do a lot of zinging all by themselves.

“What does a woman know?” asks the Egyptologist. In response, we are shown Evy explaining all sorts of nifty tidbits to O’Connell and the rest of her treasure hunters. Asked and answered. But Evy knows so much more than those tidbits.

Regardless of the Bembridge scholars’ complaint that Evy hasn’t spent enough time in the field—a detriment swiftly remedied as the film progresses—Evy is a fount of information about ancient Egypt. Pay attention; you’ll see. Who identifies Jonathan’s find? Evy. Who gets O’Connell out of prison? Evy. (Okay, not until after he’s hanged, and the noose doesn’t snap his neck.) Whose plucky camel gets to Hamunaptra first and wins the $500 bet? Evy. (Alright, that was more luck than knowledge, but who cares?) Who thinks to dig at the foot of Anubis instead of in his chamber? Evy! Need I go on?

Is the entire film the answer to “What does a woman know?” Maybe. And that is one good zinger.

Moral Violence?

I said in the last post that I studied this movie. In fact, I couldn't have done a better job of thinking about it, if I'd taken a class in the subject. But that's my point: I didn't take a class. I've never taken a class in cinema, never wanted to.

I watched, noted, read, noted—and all this was so far off my customary moviegoing behavior that I decided what I needed to do was "branch out"—into other similarly violent movies, and into Cormac McCarthy’s other violent books—but I failed, on both counts. I watched the Coens' famous Blood Simple exactly once, and spent a good portion of that viewing, making muffins in the kitchen, away from the blood on the DVD player. I did get all the way through McCarthy’s border trilogy (All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain), underlining and scribbling as I went, pretty much as I had when reading No Country. Also, I stumbled through The Road, but it was hard to keep the thread of that dark tale, and often, I wanted to quit. In all four of those books, the dark topics overwhelmed the story lines, for me, and I found myself skipping whole scenes in search of a bit of nourishing verbiage about West Texas and Northern Mexico. I’ve not yet found a need to return again and again to any of those books the way I did, to No Country.

The Coens made No Country for Old Men vivid. They brought the violence home, even to people like me, who don’t especially want to watch it, and they demonstrated its point. That’s no mean feat, when half your audience wants to excuse itself forever at the first entrance of the stunbolt gun. I respect the film and trust the filmmakers, because, though they don’t flinch from the grisliness of the tale, neither do they make a fetish of hideous close-ups.

The Coens’ role, here, is even more delicate than McCarthy’s, for, when we read, we set our own boundaries. If we don't like what's happening, we can go get a glass of water. Since we are building the image, we can build at our own pace—in fact, every reader builds a different one! The writer just facilitates the image-building process. Where the writer is triggering images in us, the filmmaker is...picking one for us. As such, the Coens must’ve held their collective breath a lot, walking, as they were, that fine line between ‘ineffective’ and ‘overkill.’ I’m gonna be honest. I think they nailed it. In No Country for Old Men, the violent episodes are unforgettable, and yet they are hedged ’round with real dialogue, real people: small-town West Texans. The painful parts are shocking, indelible, then gone. We have both McCarthy and the Coens to thank, for this restraint.

Gess reminds me that darkness is sometimes a part of the tale, saying, “You don’t set out to write the dark parts of a story. You let it take you where it takes you.”

No Country for Old Men is … quite a ride.