More on No Country for Old Men
Film is a peculiar craft. You have to be authentic in order to be creative.
The first, subconscious realization of the inauthenticity of "No Country for Old Men", which I discussed in my article "License for Aesthetics in Wilders' Fitna", probably occurred to me at the very beginning when the bodies scattered all over the arid Texan earth didn't make me flinch. The Coen brothers tried to make it as real as possible, and as gruesome.The bodies just became props.
The second one, which disturbed me more than the first, was Llewelyn Moss' wife, Carla Jean, who looked like a Chinese, most likely mixed Caucasian/Chinese, to me. I would have expected a southern red-neck type wife, or even a Mexican (or 1/2 Mexican.) Someone who looked like she came from there.
Biographical information on Kelly MacDonalnd, who played Carla Jean, is hard to come by. But there is an ominous addition to her biography which states that her mother was a "garment industry sales executive" in Scotland. Could this mean sweat shops and oriental cheap labor?
Nonetheless, I'm convinced that Kelly MacDonald has Chinese background, and for me this was extremely jarring in the movie.
Inauthentic cast? Why? Partly, apparently MacDonald's agent was very aggressive in getting her this "American break." Partly, it is the new transcultural "anything goes" mentality of artists and filmmakers.
It seems that people get excited with breaking up norms and traditions. As though the anti-bourgeois avant-garde is now so much part of mainstream that anything which looks like it might be part of yonder years is to be dismantled.
Sheriffs in westerns used to track down killers. In "No Country for Old Men", they retire instead! Hitchcock's meticulously crafted scenes, where crime and violence is implied rather than spelled out, is now ignored and probably scorned by current filmmakers. Casting is more of an international strategy to secure future acting roles, and garner cult audiences. Good endings are held in contempt, but to leave the audience dangling (to make them think, is that the idea?) with unreconciled horror - well that is the best.