Notes 2 & 3

Notes 2 &3 (Video/Youtube)

Note 2:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uFarFM9sow- Open Range

This clip from the movie Open Range takes a different look at the country and the Western. It moves in a different direction than McCarthy's highly stylized imagery about the country and life in Mexico. This clip follows two cowboys as they take revenge against sinful murderers in a small country town. As the men line up and face one another there is a deathly silence that pierces the hearts of the men, all the while the beautiful mountains and rolling hills in the background. It provides a sanctuary for the dead, even if the men are killed, they die in a beautiful place among the Southern country. The wind whipping about as the men reach for their guns and then shots are fired. In contrast to McCarthy's take of the country, Open Range takes a violent approach, letting one know that death is always lurking about, even in places of boundless beauty. As the men sweat in their cowboy garb, looking down the barrel of their own feeble lives they wonder how they will die and if they can escape death one more time. Fading in and out of the scene, the mountains loom over the men, a monolithic symbol, a beacon of the afterlife. The snow gently falling at the top while the hills and prairies, green with life at the bottom. Not a bad place to die, and for many of them, the dirt becomes their final resting place, The snow-capped mountains reaching out with their fingers to take the lives of the men and laying them down in the valley, they provide a contrast to the death being dealt by the hands of the cowboys. The scene takes a much different approach to the countryside, a more violent appearance does nature have and the people in it. Death, creeps around each house and each valley, an end no one can escape from; for many of the men, the countryside and mountains becomes the last vision they ever see.

Note 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kqoJevTIIQ- No Country For Old Men
The opening of No Country For Old Men embodies all that the countryside can really be. While McCarthy was focused on the positive aspects of the countryside and nature along with the violence and harshness of it in Open Range, No Country For Old Men contains both views of the country. As the sun softly rises in the sky, the silhouettes of the vast mountains appears in the foreground. The massiveness of the mountains gives off a feeling of beautiful insignificance in the sense that the mountains make someone look so small in comparison but highlight the beauty of life in general. As the sun creeps more slowly illuminate the entire valley and mountain range, the whole scope of the world seems to come into view. Flat, arid plains go on for miles until finally giving way to the base of the mountains that stretch out toward the sky, all the while the ominous narration in the background letting one know that perhaps, something bad is coming. The blood red sun beats down hard upon the land scorching it with heat, paralleling the death that is yet to come. As the scene progresses it lifts upon a lone road with a lone car traveling through the arid desert land. Again, making the human look so small in comparison to the open world around them. Vegetation is scarce and the occasional tumbleweed rolls on by, an absence of life, of even death. The beauty of it all is tied together only by the sky looming in the background, a deep pool of blue that sits gently above the surface of the mountain range, holding up the peaks with immense strength. Only is this scene of beauty broken by the blood that is spilled when the deputy is taken brutally by the neck and strangled to death by a seemingly massive individual. This big man looks like the mountains, tall and large, standing straight among a crowd of people, letting them know by his eyes that he is the king, that the world belongs to him. And for a short while as he beings to slaughter, the world is his. This scene encompasses both the beauty in the landscape and the natural world, and the harshness of man and what he can do within this land. This place of beauty, all the mountains, once again, become the final resting place for many unfortunate people.