Movies and the National Psyche

Last night we saw No Country for Old Men, the new Cohen Brothers movie based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. It is a very compelling story, although very violent. The performances by Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin are exceptional. The story is of a Vietnam veteran who is out hunting in west Texas and encounters a scene of a bloody shootout but also finds a suitcase with lots of dough in it. Brolin (the vet) and Bardem then spend the rest of the film trying to catch each other. Bardem's character is a sociopath and seems to kill people for random reasons. Tommy Lee Jones reprises his lawman role but with some interesting new wrinkles. The whole movie turns on a device that Bardem's character uses twice in the film - "flip a coin, pick the side and if you pick the wrong side I kill you." In the end Bardem's character gets away only to be caught in his own bad luck.

Earlier in the week I had rented Bedtime for Bonzo on Netflix. Bedtime for Bonzo has no deep psychological underpinning. It is the story of a college professor who attempts, in order to put himself in better with the college dean - who is also the father of his fiance - by raising a chimpanzee as a child. It is an entertaining movie in the same way that Leave it to Beaver was entertaining. In the end the professor falls for the Nanny, the college is saved and he and the nanny go off in their Ford convertible with the chimp in the back seat.

But last night at dinner I wondered a bit about the two messages in the movies. No Country for Old Men seems to suggest that life is simply based on luck. Bonzo has an underlying theme of hard work pays off. I wonder how much movies of the day are metaphors for the then current national psyche. Clearly a lot of people in society today believe in the overwhelming power of luck. And just as clearly, a lot of people in the 1950s and 1960s thought hard work would pay off.

That does not mean that every movie should be the light fluff of Bonzo. But the message of No Country is at least in my opinion a negative long term message - if people are told that life is all about luck - why bother to strive?