This Is Not A Love Song

There was a time when I would have gone to see No Country for Old Men at the movies with friends. Or by myself. Or as part of a class in college.

And perhaps I'd think about it, talk it over with people.

The fact is, I'm intrigued by it.

For one, I love Cohen Brothers movies. Raising Arizona remains one of the funniest movies I've seen of all time.

But I've also heard how violent it is, even from people who watch violent movies.

I was so intrigued that I watched the first five minutes of it - just enough to watch to young Sheriff (so young, apparently, that he doesn't put his detainee in the prison, he leaves him sitting behind him, so he can't see him) get snuffed in under 20 seconds.

And then I took the movie out.

I'm done with these movies.

I don't know about you, but I have a ton of hatred in my heart. There's bad guys I want to see strung up by their thumbs... And not just the bad guys you'd think of, but those politicians, businessmen, and rulers who lie and cost people their lives financially or physically.

Watching a mass murderer doesn't mean anything to me, except that I'm watching an aberration of society. Fact is, I don't really care to have a look at how Hitler became the colossal madman he'd become.

I just had to start asking myself, "Why"?

When there's so much work to be done in the world, with famine, hatred, intolerance, and disease, it seems myopic to stare at these glaring man made errors in a darkened movie theater.

I know I'm sounding a hell of a lot like those Sally Do Gooders I used to abhor so much in high school and college. But I'm able to admit I'm wrong. There's some art for art's sake, which doesn't make much sense to the cognizant, thinking person.

Maybe this in fact is a great Cohen Brothers flick. And all I have to do is make it through "strong graphic violence" to get to it. But I'm not going to do it. I've seen torture scenes, then had to listen to the description of how we treat men in Guatanamo Bay. Or how the Japanese treated Asian Comfort Women. When I hear such stories, of how humans brutalize one another, it breaks my heart for all of humankind. At that point I don't know if we are above dogs, bears, or even the lowest of the animal kingdom. At that point we have debased ourselves, we've lost control of what someone has given us which could only be called a soul.

There are better, higher things to do than watch this movie. Lest we all forget that this is entertainment.

I would suggest to you that instead you listen instead to Father Boyle, who lifts up men from streets of violence and gives them something so much more.

That's here.

And I bid you goodnight.