I very rarely have my intense love for movies and my intense environmentalism meet.  Great post!  I think you should be commended, not committed!  Of course, maybe that means we are both ready to be shipped out.

-Mary

Yeah, like those Coens are so much the new generation

Joel Daniel Coen
b. November 29, 1954  (age 53)

Ethan Coen
b. September 21, 1957 (age 50)

Reminds me when a 30 year old acquaintance of mine called Johnny Depp "the best actor of HIS generation..." (!)

John Christopher Depp II
b. June 9, 1963 (age 44)

"Hamlet" is a 3 -- we do not do justice to the brilliance of Hamlet, and his amazing ethical development, and the acknowledgement of his virtue by Fortinbras, with Horatio as witness, if we grade the play lower -- , as is "Macbeth," and "Romeo and Juliet."

"King Lear" is a true, unredeemable 1.

"Antony and Cleopatra" and "Julius Caesar" should both be 1, but let us reflect the beauty of the love, however misguided, of Antony and Cleopatra, and the odd friendship of Brutus and Cassius, and raise them to 2.

"Richard III" is probably more a 1 than a 2, but I am uncertain, he is so very very bad/cute!

"Henry V" is tentatively a 7.  But the jingoism is tiring.

"The Tempest" can skip from 4 to 8, even 9, depending on the interpretation of the particular production.

On the other hand, I would prefer to grade "A Wonderful Life" a 9+, and reserve 10 for those Julie Andrews classics, "Mary Poppins," and "The Sound of Music."  Evil is indeed present in "The Sound of Music," but it takes the form of readily demonizable characterless Nazis and Nazi-sympathizers.  In "A Wonderful Life," the evil is clearly recognizable as systemic in American society.  Also, the crucial recurring decision of George Bailey always to remain at home, never to follow his dreams to go away, is never altogether resolved.

On the allegorization of "No Place for Old Men": Well, it would leave me cold, were that the only "correct" way to interpret this fine existential drama.  But if the usually frigid critical device of allegory is the only way some otherwise occupied people have of gaining entry into art, then more power to it.

Also, a problem with the allegory: Javier Bardem's character is intentionally given an ethnically indecipherable name: Anton Chigurh.  That suggests, he is the complete Other, who is like none of us, nor like anyone in the theater with us as we together view this spectacle.  So, to say that Chigurh somehow symbolizes American politics and the consequences of global warming would seem to alienate both of those things from us, and to put both of them outside our responsibility.

The stuff about Dunne's bell and clod is cute.  Sure, why not.

But "Moss" also is a step away from "Moses," a name with all kinds of interesting connotations.  So the story might be open to a rather different allegorical interpretation.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

Thanks for an interesting if occasionally insane reading of the movie.  re: the above post, I'm not sure "It's A Wonderful Life" can be said to be a 9 based purely on its ending, it's a pretty dark movie about suicide.  I was slightly taken aback by a reading of it recently which said that there is no angel, that George kills himself, and the last act of the movie is an existential contemplation of why George's life is and was worth living.  I'd also disagree with The Sound of Music, the only WW2 movie which makes me want the Nazis to win, but maybe that's just me.  Singin' in the Rain might be a more pure 10.

No Country I think is open to all sorts of interpretations; not sure about the Moses thing because he was a leader, and I don't know who Moss is leading, other than his own interests.  An intelligent and intriguing response though.

The sunshines bores the daylights out of me

I always thought the 1997 movie Titanic was a much more straight forward tale of environmental gloom and doom, than Romm's analysis of No Country for Old Men. His piece reminds me of some soul and mind killing post modernist PhD thesis.

In the movie you had both class and technological hubris and arrogance propelling humanity towards disaster. The Titanic represents civilization. The elite have the best cabins and facilities, they even have life boats. Meanwhile the majority of humanity is locked down below decks in steerage. The ship's captain and engineer assume that their creation in unsinkable. All civilizations are incapable of imagining the world without them.

The iceberg represents the environment, the environment that civilization assumes it can ignore and take for granted. When the iceberg and the Titanic meet, it is civilization that goes to the bottom.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

"I'm [get it up there!] SINGin' in the rain,
Just [a pretty fourth] singin' in the rain ... "

Gene Kelly movies do indeed tend to be 10-ish.

Yes, CharteredStreets, I know how you feel about "Sound of Music."  The Von Trapp family go "climbing every mountain" at the end, to run off to build a popular Austrian-style resort chalet in Vermont, while the nun who sabotaged the Nazi pursuit car, and all her convent, are in fact put to death, though we are not told that.

Toward the end of her life, while she was an invalid, a great aunt of mine was shut up in the TV room with her daughter, my godmother, who has a fixation on "The Sound of Music," and would play it almost daily.  When she would start it playing, my great aunt is reported to have commented, "Ah!, ancora una volta!"  If the poor lady deserved any time in Purgatory at all, she certainly prepaid much of it.

And I am not at all serious about the Moss=Moses thing.  The point of that quarter-baked suggestion is, if you are clever enough, you can probably manage to make it work, and end up with an allegory no more interesting, really, than one with the Moss=clod thing.

Randy baby,
yes, you are brilliant on "Titanic," especially on the issues of class, and competence of the authorities.  But it is not lower than a 2.  There is the aged Kate Winslet character, and her diamond, after all, and that Celine Dion song.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

LONDON

I wander through these chartered streets
near where the chartered Thames does flow
and mark in every face I meet
marks of weakness, marks of woe

in every cry of every man
in every infant's cry of fear
in every voice, in every ban
the mind-forged manacles I hear

how the chimney-sweeper's cry
every blackening church appals
and the hapless soldier's sigh
runs in blood down palace walls

but most, through midnight streets I hear
how the youthful harlot's curse
blasts the new-born infant's tear
and blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

I wander through each chartered street
near where the chartered Thames does flow
and mark in every face I meet
marks of weakness, marks of woe

William Blake [1757 - 1827]

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

LONDON

I wander through these chartered streets
near where the chartered Thames does flow
and mark in every face I meet
marks of weakness, marks of woe

in every cry of every man
in every infant's cry of fear
in every voice, in every ban
the mind-forged manacles I hear

how the chimney-sweeper's cry
every blackening church appals
and the hapless soldier's sigh
runs in blood down palace walls

but most, through midnight streets I hear
how the youthful harlot's curse
blasts the new-born infant's tear
and blights with plagues the marriage hearse.

I wander through each chartered street
near where the chartered Thames does flow
and mark in every face I meet
marks of weakness, marks of woe

William Blake [1757 - 1827]

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

How did that happen?

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Wow!

And thanks, CharteredStreets!

It just goes to show, I do not know Blake as well as I should.

Or Whitman.

Or Yeats.

"Songs of Experience," I am guessing.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

I feel deeply sorry for your great aunt.  I think if Dante had been writing his Inferno now, repeated viewings of "The Sound of Music" would be somewhere around the 7th circle.  Or maybe a constant looping double bill where it plays with "Titanic" (with the action scenes cut out).  Was Jim Cameron, King of the World, warning us all about the danger we are placing the Earth in?  'This is where we met!' 'Uh yes Rose that's nice, kind of busy here what with dying and trying to still look pretty.'  Give me A Night To Remember any day.  

Sorry, went on a tangent there.

spaceshaper, 5 points to you and a special prize for, as far as I can recollect, being the first person online to point out where my username (which I've had for about 7 years) comes from.  The fact that you misquote the first line (it's 'I wander through each chartered street') suggests you quoted it from memory, which is doubly impressive.  Either that or you left in an intentional mistake to make it look like you did, which is frankly just as impressive.

The sunshines bores the daylights out of me

but it's undeserved. Laziness alone is to blame for the misquote. I cut and pasted the text from an unreliable online source without bothering to check it except against my also unreliable memory. Here's a more authentic text - without the moderniz'd spelling:

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow,
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.

How the Chimney-sweeper's cry
Every black'ning Church appalls;
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlot's curse
Blasts the new born Infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.

Though anything but upbeat, it's a compelling poem with great imagery. I like the suggestion that our suffering comes from the weak acceptance of our own 'mind-forg'd manacles'. And you gotta love that marriage hearse!

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.