James Rocchi: The Moviegoer: No War for Old Men

Recently, the winner of the 2007 Oscar for Best Picture, No Country for Old Men , came to DVD, and I've had the chances to re-watch it several times since I first saw it at Cannes in May . We've also recently marked the fifth anniversary of the beginning of major combat operations in Iraq . And the one had me thinking about the other. Looking at any film for the presence of symbolism and metaphor for its times is one of those exercises so simple it can possibly slide over the line to simplistic , but even back in December (when I first wrote some of these notes below down) it was easy to see No Country for Old Men as a striking and cautionary tale about the challenges democracy is facing right now. And as we pass the fifth anniversary of the War in Iraq, I think we've all been thinking a lot, lately, about what exactly five years of this war -- a war ostensibly started to make us safer -- has actually done to eliminate the threat of terror. Over the months, my repeated viewings of No Country ... (link)