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Lessons from the Screenplay
No Country for Old Men — Don't Underestimate the Audience
No Country for Old Men — Don't Underestimate the Audience
Lessons from the Screenplay
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12:18 · Aug 24, 2018
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hi
I'm
Michael
this
is
lessons
from
the
screenplay
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hi I'm Michael this is lessons from the screenplay
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No Country for Old Men has become a modern classic filled
0:09
with great characters riveting
0:10
sequences and iconic moments
0:13
cool it but what I love most about the film is how it forces
0:17
us to participate in
0:18
the storytelling in his
0:20
TED talk from 2012
0:22
filmmaker Andrew Stanton describes
0:24
what he calls a unifying
0:25
theory of TwoPlusTwo make
0:28
the audience put things together don't
0:30
give them for give
0:31
them two plus two it's
0:33
the invisible application that
0:35
holds our attention to story no
0:37
country for old men is full of this technique in action
0:40
from how it establishes character
0:42
details to how it conveys its theme so
0:45
today I want to explore how a character can be revealed not just by
0:48
what they choose to do but
0:50
how they do it to
0:52
look at ways of moving the plot forward
0:54
while compelling the audience to fill in the gaps and examine
0:57
how dramatically breaking from storytelling
0:59
convention can create an experience
1:01
that is challenging surprising
1:03
and meaningful let's take a look at No
1:08
Country for Old Men
1:13
I've spoken before about
1:16
how important it is for characters
1:18
to make choices quoting
1:19
Robert McKee story when he says true
1:22
character is revealed and
1:23
the choices a human being makes under
1:25
pressure but part of what gives a story texture
1:28
are the specific details of the people who inhabit
1:31
it these details are aspects
1:33
of characterization returning to make--
1:37
characterization is the sum of all the observable qualities
1:40
a combination that makes the character unique physical
1:43
appearance coupled with mannerisms
1:45
style of speech and gesture
1:47
sexuality age IQ occupation
1:50
personality attitudes values where
1:53
he lives how he lives
1:55
No Country for Old Men has three distinct central characters and our understanding
1:59
of who they are comes
2:00
not only from what they choose to do but
2:03
by how they choose to do it when
2:05
the protagonist Llewellyn Moss stumbles
2:07
upon a drug deal gone wrong he
2:09
realizes the money must be with the last man standing over
2:12
tomorrow and Bray last man standing there must have been one where
2:15
to go so he
2:17
chooses to track him down
2:18
this choice reveals true character Llewellyn
2:21
as someone who'll risk his life for money but
2:24
how the wellin tracks down the money also
2:26
reveals a lot about his personality ma
2:29
stops to look out at a new prospect flatland
2:32
no cover he raises the binoculars
2:34
you stop to watch your back track
2:37
shoot man he doesn't see anything he
2:41
lowers the glass thinking
2:43
he raises the glass again what
2:46
if you stop you
2:48
stop the shade he
2:50
sets off Moss is calm and methodical
2:54
and just by watching us behavior in the sequence we can conclude that he
2:58
is no stranger to life-or-death situations
3:00
something confirmed later and dialogue
3:02
were you and ma'am yes
3:04
ma'am similarly when we meet the antagonist
3:07
Anton Chigurh we immediately see him make choices that reveal his true character
3:13
sugar has no problem
3:15
taking human life in order to achieve his goals
3:18
but it's how he kills people that
3:20
makes him so frightening the
3:22
first murder we see is careful
3:23
violent and powerful and
3:25
the second is polite and clean
3:28
sugar reaches up to the man's forehead with the end of the tube connected
3:32
to the air tank would you hold still please
3:34
sir a hard pneumatic
3:37
sound his behavior conveys his apathetic
3:41
attitude toward murder and his disturbing
3:43
efficacy suggest a long history
3:46
of taking life we
3:47
don't need any backstory
3:48
to understand how much of a threat he is the
3:52
third central character is Sheriff Bell his
3:54
monologue opens the film the
3:56
crime you see now it's hardly even Dyke it's
3:58
I don't want to push my chips far away and
4:02
go out and meet something
4:03
I don't while Sheriff Bell does choose to go after the criminal the way
4:09
he does it demonstrates
4:10
his apprehension we're going in
4:14
Wendell and holsters has gone but hesitates or
4:18
March or in particular bells
4:23
dialogue is peppered with dry wit that masks his fear a agent
4:27
called again you don't talk to him I'm gonna try to keep from it
4:30
much as it can he's
4:32
going back out there wouldn't
4:33
know if you wanted to go with him that's cordial
4:36
allowing the audience to glean this information
4:38
about the characters through behavior is more engaging than simply relying on dialogue
4:42
to describe them in this
4:44
way it's a variation of enter Stanton's 2+2
4:47
theory showing us the details of how the characters
4:50
pursue their goals and letting
4:51
us determine what it says about them but
4:54
No Country for Old Men doesn't
4:55
just use this technique for establishing character
4:58
it also uses 2+2
5:00
to reveal plot there
5:04
are several moments in No Country for Old Men when
5:06
the film refuses to acknowledge a plot event directly and instead
5:10
relies on the audience to put the pieces together and deduce
5:13
what has happened one
5:14
example is when moss now
5:16
on the run first
5:17
leaves his motel room Moss
5:19
pulls back one curtain to look out at the lot nothing
5:22
bear disturbs him he
5:24
closes the curtains crossing
5:25
one over the other at
5:26
first this seems like he is simply checking for danger and making sure no
5:30
one can see into his room but
5:32
when he returns later the significance
5:34
of this moment becomes
5:35
more clear the cab rolls slowly up the lot his
5:39
pivoting point of view of his room the
5:41
window shows a part between the curtains you've
5:44
grown old style if we're
5:45
paying attention we can conclude that someone has been in his room without
5:49
any lines of dialogue to directly explain it take
5:52
me to another motel the
5:54
gap in time between these two moments
5:55
is only two pages of screenplay
5:57
but another example of the 2+2 technique
6:00
plays out across the entire span of the
6:02
before sugar bursts into mossis motel room he removes his boots initially
6:08
this simply seems like a way for sugar
6:10
to approach the room silently
6:11
but later when sugar kills the man sent to stop him Carson
6:15
Wells we see that there is more to this sugar
6:19
Cox's head noticing something on the floor he
6:23
just to sit back and raise his boots onto the bed on the floor
6:26
where his feet were blood
6:28
is pooling out from was his chair sugar
6:30
is concerned with the cleanliness of
6:32
his boots so toward the end of the film when he has come to
6:35
kill Carla Jean and were unsure what her fate will be you
6:39
don't have to do this rather
6:40
than providing the answer with yet another grisly
6:43
murder scene the screenplay
6:44
simply cuts to exterior
6:46
house the front door swings open and sugar
6:50
emerges he pauses with one hand on the jamb and looks at the soul
6:53
of each boot in turn we're
6:55
left to put two and two together if
6:58
we know that he cares about his boots being clean and he's checking to
7:01
make sure there's no blood on them then
7:03
we understand what happened to Carla Jean but
7:06
is particularly powerful about this technique in this instance is that it changes how
7:10
her death affects us emotionally per
7:13
murder doesn't happen within the distant boundaries of the movie screen it happens
7:17
in our imagination and meaning
7:19
is always more powerful
7:20
when it can be synthesized
7:21
in the mind of the viewer instead
7:23
of spoon-fed through on the nose dialogue
7:25
which is why one of the most remarkable
7:27
aspects of No Country for Old Men is how
7:30
it lets the audience synthesize
7:31
the moral of the story
7:34
from a structural standpoint the
7:36
film seems to follow the conventional
7:38
three-act structure I outlined
7:39
in my video on the Avengers there's
7:42
an inciting incident a first
7:43
plot point a break
7:45
into Act two and a
7:47
midpoint that alters the momentum of a story and as
7:50
the film heads toward the end of the second act everything
7:53
seems to be building to the ending that we've come to expect
7:55
Ethan Coen said the
7:58
convention is ingrained that the good guy is going to meet the bad guy
8:00
and they're going to confront each other most
8:03
stories end with a showdown between the protagonist and the antagonist and
8:07
for most of No Country for Old Men that
8:09
seems like a reasonable expectation
8:10
for the audience to have
8:12
but instead every convention is thrown out the window as
8:15
Llewellyn Moss our protagonist is
8:18
killed off-screen and not
8:20
even by the film's main antagonist
8:22
this abrupt turn as one of the puzzle pieces were given to synthesize
8:26
the moral of the story the
8:28
other puzzle piece is the stated theme of the film and while Moss is
8:32
the protagonist of the
8:33
story the theme is explored
8:35
through sheriff Bell the only central character to actually change over
8:39
the course of the narrative in his
8:40
opening monologue bel talks about the old days when
8:43
he feels that life was simpler and made sense some
8:47
of the old times there's never a more gun but
8:49
now he can't comprehend
8:51
the senseless violence of contemporary
8:53
crime wondering how they operated
8:55
these times during the first two acts of the film the plot is simple
8:59
and follows convention in a way that makes sense
9:02
but when Moss is killed before we've even gotten to the third act it
9:06
makes us uncomfortable this
9:08
is not how stories are supposed
9:09
to go so in a way killing
9:11
the protagonist suddenly and off-screen
9:13
puts us in the same headspace
9:15
as sheriff Bell unsure
9:17
of what to make of this senseless violence the
9:20
third act of the film then becomes about following Belle as he continues to
9:23
wrestle with the theme ultimately
9:25
choosing to end his
9:27
Loretta tailed me you're quittin feel
9:30
overmatched and realizing that the fear of changing
9:33
culture certainly isn't something he invented
9:35
what you got ain't
9:37
nothing new this country's
9:39
hard on people they
9:41
know waiting on you
9:42
that's vanity so instead of a shootout with the antagonist
9:47
the film quietly ends with Belle describing
9:49
a dream of what he perceives as a simpler time concluding
9:53
with no and this
9:56
way Belle accepts his fate the
9:59
world is changing and his time is nearly up and we're
10:02
left to decide but the greater meaning is in the story of the sheriff
10:05
realizing that this is no country
10:07
for old men as I've
10:11
said many times before
10:12
I appreciate films that respect the audience No
10:15
Country for Old Men is one of the greatest in that regard it
10:19
relies on our knowledge of film language allowing
10:21
us to connect the dots and inviting
10:23
us to participate in
10:24
the storytelling by doing so the
10:26
surprising and unsatisfying death of the protagonist challenges
10:30
our notions of how a story is supposed to play out it
10:33
is certainly not movie watching on easy mode the
10:36
bat is exactly why it stands it's one of the best examples
10:39
of how to consciously
10:40
depart from storytelling convention
10:41
in a way that enhances the
10:43
story's meaning of how to create a textured
10:45
world with simple but rich characters
10:48
and how to design a story that is more than simply the
10:52
sum of its parts
10:56
No Country for Old Men was the first film edited with a completely
10:59
digital workflow on a Mac to invest picture at the Academy Awards it
11:04
was edited by the Coen brothers on
11:06
the old version of Final Cut Pro and
11:08
in 2013 they switched to using Adobe
11:10
Premiere Pro for their films the same software are used to edit these videos
11:14
if you want to learn the ins and outs of professional
11:17
video editing software I suggest
11:19
beginning with some of the great classes available on
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Skillshare Skillshare is an online learning community with
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over 20,000 classes and design filmmaking
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technology and more Premium
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Membership gives you unlimited access
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to high-quality classes such
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as Jordi van de puts class video
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editing with adobe premiere 2018
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for beginners this class provides a clear and complete overview
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of all the things you need to get started with editing
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and Premiere Pro and
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you can get two months of skills here for free by clicking on the
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link in the description below or
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heading to sk l sh
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slash l.f.t.s 6 so
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head over to skill chair to start learning today thanks
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to skill share for sponsoring this video hey
12:01
guys hope you enjoyed the video there
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will be another new video next week so if you want to make sure
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you don't miss it click on the bella icon to enable notifications
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for the channel thank
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you as always to my patrons on patreon and my supporters here on YouTube
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for making this channel possible thanks
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for watching see you next time
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