No Country For Old Men

On Friday the 16th of September my class had to watch a small extract of the beginning of the film 'No country for old men'. As a homework task we was asked to write a post on our blog describing what we saw and try to analyse it as best as we can. So this post will contain my analysis of this small extract.

At the start of the film there were sound effects of a small breeze and a series of images were shown. The images were all similar being large areas or mass landscapes. Most of these images consisted of a dark foreground and a bright background. For example the foreground being in shadow and the background in the sun. I think the effect that this gave was that what ever was coming next is mysterious but in the future it will become clear.

Over the top of these images a narration was put in place. It was a man, possibly elderly giving a description of the main character. One of the key points of the narration which I think had the most effect was a fact told by the narrator himself declaring that the main character killed a 14 year old girl just for the sake of killing someone. This adds a sense that the main character is evil by the fact that he murdered in cold blood a 14 year old girl that could only be innocent. As you can see we already get a bad image of the main character and as the film develops the image only gets worse.

An image of the main character strangling the police officer.

In the next part of the film we see the main character get arrested by a police officer. The character is shot from below which makes him physically large, giving him a authoritative nature. Moving on further into the film the main character is taken to a police station by the officer. This is where the officer is killed by our main character in a brutal way. The character leaves the station carrying a strange item we perceive to be an oxygen tank. This makes us wonder why he is carrying it around, the character now seems to appear a bit different from normal people, making him stand out from the other characters within the film. As you can see by the image on the left of the main character killing the officer he pulls a very crazed face as he strangles the officer to death.

The Main character and his oxygen tank.

Moving on through the film the main character drives a police car out of the station and makes a normal car pull over to the side. The character gets out of the car and very slowly walks over to the car in front. The fact that the character walks very slowly carrying a oxygen tank adds allot of suspense to the moment. Whilst walking to the other car the camera focuses onto the oxygen tank, making the audience think, what is that? what's it for? and what's he going to do with it now? Upon reaching the car he uses the oxygen tank as a weapon killing his 2nd victim. These killings lead to our assumption that the main character is going to be psycho and that the film is going to contain allot of violence.

In all the 1st part of this film is very effective an forces the audience to want to see the rest and wonder what's going to happen next. I would recommend this film to anyone that is reading this post and I look forward to watching the rest of the film in the future.