AT THE MOVIES WITH CORMAC McCARTHY . . .

Two of the highlights of my summer reading last year were novels by Cormac McCarthy—No Country for Old Men and All the Pretty Horses. I found the former so “dark” and “grim” and yet so “gripping” that I had to admit: “I’m not sure when I’ll be ready for the movie. . . .” I think that at the time I didn’t even know there was a movie of All the Pretty Horses.

Well, finally I got up the nerve to watch No Country for Old Men this past weekend . . . just a couple of hours after I whetted my appetite by watching All the Pretty Horses. The former was just as I expected it would be—“dark,” “grim,” “gripping” . . . and also just wonderfully made: no surprise to me that it won four Oscars—for best supporting actor (Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh), best director (Joel and Ethan Coen), best adapted screenplay, and overall best picture. I found it remarkably faithful to both the spirit and the letter of the novel: it was thus both riveting and disturbing, as the violence is graphic and relentless in McCarthy’s vision of what amounts to a moral apocalypse. Neither the movie nor the book is for the faint-of-heart—but I have now survived both!

As for All the Pretty Horses: well, the movie channel that I watched it on gave it only 2 stars (out of a possible 4). To my mind, that’s a serious underrating. In fact, no less than No Country for Old Men, the film is wonderfully true to the novel that I admired so much when I read it last summer. And perhaps that is why I would give the film a 4-star rating: a viewer unfamiliar with the novel might find the adaptation a bit meandering—“leisurely,” the blurb on the TV listings described it—but for a horse-centered quest narrative, that is the nature of the beast (as it were). And, believe me, I don’t give that rating lightly, as I had to overcome my general coolness toward actor Matt Damon, who plays the lead role of John Grady Cole. From where I sat, he was perfectly cast, as was Penélope Cruz as Alejandra, his love interest and (near) femme fatale. This film was a fine first half of a great Sunday double bill of Cormac McCarthy at the movies . . .