American Film Since 2005

What expectations are set before coming into the film? Based on the actors' histories, the poster, the director. Coen brothers tend to do absurd comedy, so this is subverted in No country for old men. What do you expect from the film when you hear it won lots of oscars?

- portrays a very anomalous opening

- many enigma codes 

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Film Form

Meaning and response

Context

Spectatorship

Ideology

What is spectatorship?

How do films address individual spectators through, for example, particular shots, editing , music , and performance as well as narrative and genre to engage their interest and emotions. Films are constructed to provide a viewing position e.g. aligning a spectator with a  character or point of view. This raises questions about how determined spectators responses to a film are and how far spectators can and do resist the position they are given. How far are spectators passive or active in their responses to a film and how social and cultural factors, as well as the specific viewing conditions in which a film is seen, influence spectators' responses

• how the spectator has been conceived both as massive and active in the act of film viewing
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• How the spectator is in dynamic interaction iwht film narrative and film features designed to generate response
• Reasons for the uniformity or diversify of response by different spectator
• the impact of different viewing conditions on spectator response
• the analysis of narrative, visual, musical, performance, genre and auteur cues in relation to spectator response
• the possibility of preferred (director's intent), negotiated (compromise), oppositional (opposing director's intent) and aberrant (comepletely different) readings of film.

Spectator vs Audience

Audience is a social group or collective of people, the spectator is an individual

Spectatorship is concerned primarily with the way the individual is positioned between projector and screen in a darkened space

The audience ceases to exist for the individual spectator for the duration of the film

Although the spectator is singular, spectatorship tries to generalise how all spectators behave. The self is an abstract concept

What factors alter a spectator's response:

Mental state

Physical state

Who they watch it with

Where they're watching it

When they're watching it - anything that recently happened in society or time of day

Pre-existing ideological or cultural views

Quality of viewing

Age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, political alignment, nationality, socio-economic background

Your history with the film

Stuart Hall's Theory:3 ways a film can be read

Preferred (or dominant)

The spectator derives the meaning from a film that the filmmaker intended; these spectators are relatively passive.

Negotiated

The spectator negotiates the film’s messages, accepting some whilst disagreeing with others.

Oppositional

The spectator understands the film’s messages but rejects them.

A film's meaning can change over time, it can become outdated or irrelevant, or more relevant.

"Most often a preferred response will be associated with pleasure, if only the pleasure of reassurance that comes from the comfortable and familiar" - Nelmes

Passive reading - put your brain aside and absorb the film. Filmgoers are a homogenous mass who respond identically to a film's narratives/messages.
Active reading - analyse the film.

Films can be created with the intent of being read actively or passively, and a film meant to be read actively e.g. Fish Tank but viewed passively will have much lost on the spectator.

First viewings of films tend to be passive as the spectator is absorbing the story and experiencing everything for the first time. A passive viewing tends to lead to a preferred response as the spectator is less analytical and hasn't formed their own idea yet. Upon repeated viewings, now that the spectator is familiar with the story they can focus on smaller details and form their own opinions, a more active viewing, and thus more likely to lead to an oppositional reading.


Response draws in the whole of the self, including:

• A social self who can make meaning in ways not very different from others with a similar ideological formation
• A cultural self who makes particular intertextual references (to other films, other kinds of images and sounds) based on the bank of material he or she possesses
• A private self who carries the memories of his/her own experiences and who may find personal significance in a film in ways very different from others in his/her community of interest
• A desiring self who brings conscious and unconscious energies and intensities to the film event that have little to do with the film's surface content

Post-Structuralism takes the emphasis away form the author, and posits the notion that all meaning is derived by the person consuming it. Therefore, the messages in the film are shaped by the consumer's own perspectives which are shaped by a number of demographic factors.

A text only comes into existence in the act of reading it. In this way the reader of the text is, in a way, simultaneously its creator.

The Western Ideology

“The hero […] never really wants to accept civilization, as embodied by the woman (who brings with her from the east the notion of community, family and so on). Rather he is always desiring to be on the move in the Wild West. The cowboy, with his restless energy and rugged, dogged individualism, is in the Western the embodiment of American frontiersmanship, or at least the myth of that frontiersmanship.”

“The fact that the cowboy or gunman is always represented as being caught between the two values points to the ideological contradictions inherent in the myth of that frontiersmanship. The hero’s actual ambivalence reveals the nation’s own ambiguous attitude towards the West. Civilising the West meant giving up the freedom it represented, including of course the freedom of the individual, a high price for Americans to pay for national unity.” - Susan Hayward

This is why the hero never settles down with a woman but rather walks away. The west has not yet been won.

In terms of spectatorship, the spectator's expectation of NCFOM is subverted.

Active spectators develop a response through three facets:
1. We must enter into an act of recognition. We take a fictional construct and translate them into something (somebody) credible. Familiarity with the star persona/image may provide us with additional insights and expectations.

2. We then become aligned with a particular character. We see and feel parts of the story through this fictional person. Though we align with them (through, for example, cinematographic choices, mise-en-scene etc.), it is not necessarily the case that we identify with them (in a serial killer film, for example).

3. Finally, we show allegiance; and, in doing so, we make evaluations about the appeal of the character to us.

Preferred: MEdium long of struggle to avoid sympathy.

Negotiated:

Oppositional: sympathy for chigurh showing his pain, react through the kids. He is seated and they are standing

Stuart Hall’s theory of preferred, negotiated, and oppositional readings becomes a challenge to apply to a film so open to interpretation as No Country for Old Men. How can one oppose a filmmaker’s message when you don’t know what the message is? The ambiguity of the Coen Brothers’ film is evident majorly through the character of Chigurh, a walking contradiction both to the western setting in which he presides, and to himself. On one hand he seems to follow his own code, being a man of his word, as he tells Carla Jean in the final scene, where she finds him in her home. Yet, he quickly abandons such certainty of action, and leaves Carla Jean’s fate to a coin toss. His dialogue in this scene and in the gas station attendant scene give some clue as to his reasoning, that he believes he is an instrument of fate - ‘I got here the same way the coin did’,although even this is quickly discarded as an absolute truth - ‘then it becomes just another coin - which it is’. However, microfeatural analysis can give some indication of what the preferred response may be. The over the shoulder shot of Carla Jean is one of the only shots that suggest a perspective, the rest are one shots with the character looking off camera. This may illicit spectator alignment to a certain extent, as well as the sympathy one might feel for her having come home from burying her mother, thus making the preferred reading that we don’t want Chirgurh to kill her, rather than feeling indifferent (as is the case with Wells and the gas station attendant). She is portrayed as a powerful character, shot in low angle coming into the room, with Chigurh in a slight high angle. This may be due to her taking away his power when she refuses to call the coin toss, the only character not to play Chirgurh’s game. However, opposing spectators may say the tracking shot of Carla sitting down is from Chigurh’s perspective, imitating his head movement, with the camera placed where he is seated. This would be in favour of arguing Chigurh is the protagonist of the film, the only character we are supposed to align with. 

“I always felt, as I grew older , God would come into my life somehow.” This represents older people not as the wise characters or mentors we often see in film, but rather as people as confused by events as those younger. Interestingly, Carla Jean, though far younger, has a similarly resigned attitude to the evils of the world - when Chigurh visits her after her mother’s funeral, she seems almost too exhausted to show the appropriate level of fear

An elegy for a particular type of American masculinity mytholigised by the western genre. The men all represent certain aspects of this: Bell being law abiding, faithful, trying to bring justice, Wells too. Moss has his own moral codes: bringing water to the criminal, not succumbing to the womans advances, going on the run to take the trail off his family. However the amorality of the modern world will overwhelm these admirable values.
Deakins was inspired by traditional westerns while also trying to capture how the west is changing. He lit and exposed the film differently for the desert and urban scenes. For the scenes in the wide open desert there is a ‘burnt’ colour palette of blanched out beiges and browns - creating a sense that in this brightly-lit landscape there is nowhere to hide. The urban scenes are more garish and often lit with fluorescent tubes to accentuate the artificiality.
Rapid change in the west the characters struggle against symbolised by the rapid change in time of day when Moss escapes the drug dealers coming back to the scene
Sound design very often used to build tension to an unbearable level, using small sounds that can be heard due to lack of non diegetic soundtrack.
Atypical to Coen Brothers films, dialogue is sparse, in particular with Moss who is mostly silent, or only says the end of an inner monologue e.g. "yeah.." "okay then..." this continues the ellipsis littered in the films narrative used to make us as confused at this modern world as Bell is.
Unusually for such a brutal film, NCFOM is quite minimal in depicting violence. Apart from Chigurhs killings in the first half of the film, most killings in the second half happen off-screen: Wells’ death is out of frame, the murder of the chicken truck driver is suggested, and the murder of Carla Jean is hinted at so subtly that many viewers have debated whether it even takes place. This subverts expectations of a western film, while also stripping the film of any violent gratification, providing it instead with a greater gravitas and maturity of focusing on the aftermath of violence

Genre can often provide a frame of interpretation for the spectator, but in No Country… the conventions of the Western are consistently challenged, surprising the audience. The landscape, mise-en-scène and character types are immediately familiar. But Chigurh is different, seeming to belong to an entirely different genre (perhaps horror?). Instead of the typical revolver or rifle that Bell and Moss carry, the assassin uses a ‘captive bolt pistol’ (reducing his victims to ‘cattle’) and even his gun looks odd.
Westerns conventionally reach their narrative and moral climax in the duel: a direct confrontation between the forces of good and evil, where good usually triumphs and closure is achieved. In No Country… the duel between Moss and Chigurh happens halfway through the film - and is inconclusive. This upsets the expectations of the audience - what will happen now? To further avoid the satisfying closure of the duel, our hero (Moss) confronts the Mexican villains off-screen, and is killed. Who is now the hero? Our attentions switch to Bell and we expect him to confront Chigurh when he returns to the hotel room. But there is no confrontation - instead Bell sits, confused and defeated, unaware that his prey stands just feet away. The silhouetted figure in his stetson is in mourning, perhaps for the stable moral paradigm the Western once offered.
Not only does the film challenge the spectator to make meaning, but how we interpret the world is a core theme in itself. The characters and audience are given visual and sonic clues to decipher exactly what is happening. These function on three levels: denotation, connotation and ‘occult’ symbolism. As hunter and hunted swap roles, there are numerous POV shots of tracks left behind. These denote what we haven’t seen explicitly - blood trails of a wounded dog, or of Moss/Chigurh after their gunfight, or scrapes in a crawlspace where the money bag has been moved. Then there are connotations: the unstated threat of the coin toss, Chigurh cleaning chicken feathers from the back of the truck, and checking the soles of his boots after visiting Carla Jean - all building on our knowledge of this character’s evil to infer violence. The final level of symbolism is ambiguous, opaque and ‘occult’. There are patterns and symbols throughout that seem to have some meaning, but which are left to the spectator to interpret. The scuff marks on the floor as Chigurh strangles the cop are lingered on by the camera as if there is some significance to their pattern. There are numerous examples of ‘twinning’ throughout: the numerous shots of characters removing or putting on boots; the buying of a shirt from a random passer-by; the way both Chigurh and Bell sit in Moss’ trailer, both sipping milk, both reflected in the television in a repeated shot.
The film also ends on a monologue of ‘occult’ symbolism, as Bell describes a dream about him and his father. The imagery is resonant with what we’ve just seen with the Western genre: a man and boy, on horseback, venturing into darkness. Is this symbolic of Bell’s journey towards his own death? (Echoing what Ellis says earlier: “You can’t stop what’s coming”) Or of Bell’s despair at the darkness of modern crime, where the memory of his father is all he can cling on to? The film ends mysteriously, provoking the audience to debate their own interpretations.

Captain Fantastic

Dinner scene:

Ben is at the head of the table, physically separating the two sides as he is preventing his kids from having a normal life. They are physically at odds and also ideologically. 

The sounds of the video game are so anomalous to the film prior that we have a reaction to it contradictory to our lives - we find it overwhelmingly desensitising. Here we see that the film has made us align with the Cash family lifestyle
Shots of everyone but Ben are mostly over the shoulder shots that feel quite crowded and claustrophobic, medium close ups. Shots of him tend to be medium shots that give some more space, making the spectator feel more at ease with him than with everyone else, and show he has dominion, so that we align with his ideology.
Awkward through sounds of knives scraping etc

Opening Scene:

Opening shots of greenery landscape, the trees completely encompass the frame - romanticises the grandeur of the natural world with lusciousness of it all mate, introduces the spectator to the setting with pleasantly quiet ambient sound -> the calming atmosphere encourages passive spectatorship, in turn encouraging a preferred reading of aligning with the environment and those who inhabit it. However, while shots that establish a setting are rather conventional for an opening shot, there are aspects to it that lean more to independent cinema: The shots are rather noticeably handheld, they swing and have a unhinged feel to them, whereas conventional helicopter shots are rather stable. Lack of soundtrack made apparent by the ambient soundscape seems rather unconventional. Reading the opening as more unconventional would encourage an active spectatorship that encourages spectators to question the ideologies
Some spectators, perhaps those more likened to animals e.g. petowners, may align with the deer as the first character they see, and subsequently see Bodafin as antagonistic.This is encouraged with fast cuts kinetic movement close up that sutures that spectator into the deer's chaotic state, and don't shy away from showing the deers neck as it gets cut. Up till now the scene has been sedatingly quiet and calm, and so the sudden rise in volume is perceived as rather jarring. A close up on the dying deers face encourages sympathy. On the other hand, some spectators may not align with the deer. The shots of the deer are all with a zoomed lens, giving the impression that we are watching from far away as we do not get a good sense of depth, thus making us feel more like an observer of the deer rather than it being form the deer's perspective. Simply the deer not being a human may be enough for some spectators to not align. There are POV shots (through use of the Kuleshov effect) of Bodafin watching the deer, although this is not consistent and we get many different angles. Throughout the film, two sides are consistently shown to Ben's ideologies, however balanced those views are presented. The opening scene is an example of how the film offers two contrasting views - you may or may not feel encouraged to view the film as an active spectator, you may or may not feel sympathy towards the deer etc.
All the kids crammed into the frame, while Ben is introduced (focus pull) singularly, posing stance. Him and Bo are the only people for which this is done as they are the main characters. The rest of the kids are initially a homogenous mass
Film opens with what is by far the most extreme aspect of their lifestyle and the most contradictory to western society: mudded faces that make them seem less normal, more tribal; no talking, makes it ceremonious; eating of raw meat elicits disgust -  , it doesn't ease you into their lifestyle, can feel alienating and discourage alignment with Bens ideologies, as is the case throughout the film with people we don't know like Noam Chomsky, them speaking . The following sequences do however show it in gleaming positivity so two responses are possible.



End Scene

The final scene is all about compromise. Ben has toned down the extremity of the enforcement of his lifestyle on the kids - costume design is less conspicuous in the airport amongst others, at least in comparison to earlier scenes. There's some infusion of western clothing with Bo's denim jacket, Ben's vest, Rellien's shirt etc. We can see the films stance on compromise as a method of parenting with the final shot - a 1 minute long take of the family eating breakfast in silence. The music fades out, we only hear the faint sounds of them eating breakfast, and birds in the background. This makes the scene very tranquil, denoting of resolution, to show that the compromise has resolved the familial conflict. The sequence showing their new home mirrors the sequence with the same intent in the first act - the same music plays in the background, the kids are doing more or less the same thing - interacting and cooperating in a way that shows us their unique lifestyle. This is done so as to draw a direct comparison between the beginning and end, to show how their lifestyle is less extreme - they now live in a house rather than a shack, they go to school etc. This new life is shown with gleaming positivity - infused warm tones and overexposed sunlight, ethereal soundtrack, and a flow to the camera movement that gives the scene life without being too disorientating.
While the film throughout is shows the girls and boys performing tasks alike, the closing scene suggest that greater integration into mainstream society may change this as Zaja is for the first time feminised through her costume design.
An almost normal picture of an everyday american family. As the seconds pass, the spectator may be expecting something to happen, and the long shot highlights the complete opposite to the adventure we saw in the start of the film. We are treated with nothing but silence, as Ben looks out to the nature in yearning of his true home.
 - costume design less conspicuous amongst others in comparison to earlier scenes
breaking bad shot unifies us with the family, makes us feel as though we're part of the event. also with tight shots.
 - close proxemics/ familial event paired with aberrant setting makes us laugh rather than feel as though its inappropriate as we react through them. They mediate our response.
 - final sequence mirrors the first - same music, we see the kids interact and cooperate in this unique lifestyle, except this time its less extreme - They have a house rather than shacks. Gleaming positivity: warm tones, lots of sunlight overexposure, flowing camera movement while not being disorientating
 - one minute shot of them eating in silence - gives a sense of resolution, peace, familial conflicts of his extreme lifestyle is over.



He has created somewhat a cult, and despite his hatred for it, is a kind of religious leader. His hand gestures in the opening scene and when he comforts his children when breaking the bad news strongly infers the open hands of a priest whilst holding a book. Shown more conspicuously when they pretend to be christian - not far from the truth
The film begins with spectators feeling affection,admiration and sympathy for Ben, as its from his perspective. We don't understand why Jack hates him. As we meet more people in western culture we understand and adopt different views, they're presented fairly in balance with Ben's views, challenging spectators who are expecting a passive viewing as it forces you to go through an active process of forming your own opinion or at the very least making a decision on who you agree with in the film. 
Kielyr foreshadows how spectators may react in response to seeing the negatives of Ben's ideologies, and why the sympathy we feel for him may be a 'trick' rather than justified: "its written from his perspective, you undertsnad and sympathis iwth him which is amazing becaus ehes a child molester" "its a trick" "i hate him, and somehow i feel sorry for him at the same time"
The audience can feel alienated by Ben's and more specifically his children's intelligence. We find it intimidating that a 7 year old knows more than us. They frequently name drop dozens of intellectuals, speak in esperanto and german with no subtitiles - we regard the characters' intelligence from a distance.
At times, Ben's absolute rigidity in his parenting methods can border on inflexibility and close-mindedness that contradicts the open discourse he appears to encourage to Rellien : he tells them cola is poison water, scoffs at the idea of Bo learning anything new in an Ivy League college.
Ben makes numerous references to training and preparing the children with rigorous physical exercise, but its never clear what for, so can we understand his methods.
While Bens views are extreme, the films views on bens views are nuanced, so although the film is through his perspective, we can sometimes feel distant to him
Audience is largely independent film audience, liberal and secular. They are ready to reject with fear the mirror image of the Cash Family in the police officer scene. The idea of a film about a right wing christian extremist would be readily rejected as hearty entertainment - so do audiences come into the film with a prejudice against religion in favour of bens ideologies.
Repeated shots of ben in the rear view mirror hints that his isolationist policy is so extreme sometimes he even isolates himself from his family by enforcing something on them they disagree with.
Ben's delusions - names Bo a man at the start of the film despite us seeing him go through key moments in a teenagers life e.g. college, girls, college girls probably, as he still hasn't caught up socially. Only at the end when he goes of does he truly go through the rite of passage of leaving home, while unconventional as he's leaving for namibia, has grounds on which viewers can relate as teens leave home for university (compromise).
Ben's hallucinations of Leslie break the pattern of the film's realism, continuity editing - its other wordly, visually soft with lighting that makes her appear and reappear almost as if to imitate tired eyes. It's also one of the few moments where the film is unquestionally evoking sympathy for Ben - agree or disagree with his views, this is not nuanced - close up pov
Film's aesthetic is influenced by Simen Johan, who as of 2005 focused his work on the natural world and capturing its splendor
Handheld camerawork to, as the director claims, prevent putting you at arms length of the scene with classical manifestation of photography
Invites the spectator to consider the pros and cons of each approach to life (ben and jacks). Therefore the spectator’s own experiences and ideologies will have a profound impact on the view they leave the film with. Matt Ross - I didn’t want to vilify anyone. Jack is antagonistic towards Viggo’s character but that he is not the antagonist. His attitude to the kids’ upbringing comes from love. His love is different but just as legitimate.”
Audience expectations, that being the independent film will be liberal left leaning art house, are challenged as ideologies are balanced in their presentation

Explore some of the reasons why spectators may respond in very different ways to the same character. Refer in detail to at least one character from each of your chosen films [40].

The phrase “independent cinema” has built a reputation in its lifetime amongst general audiences, as well as the art house moviegoers one would expect to see Matt Ross’s Captain Fantastic. There are a set of expectations when a film is given such categorisation: it will be liberal left leaning, anti-establishment, artistic and unconventional. Hearing the synopsis of Captain Fantastic would not discourage such assumptions. However, where Ross excels in making a thought provoking film is in the balanced presentation of opposing ideologies: one being very fitting for an independent film, but the other, presented with equal validity, being atypical for the genre. From the second act onwards audience expectations are subverted in a way that results spectators coming out of the film with very different views of characters Ben Cash, and Jack, his father-in-law.

Post structuralism in application to cinema takes the emphasis away from the author as the creator of meaning, instead posing that this derives solely from the spectator. Spectator response draws in the whole self, consisting (amongst other things) of the private self, who carries the memories of their own experience into the film. This would be chief for the response of a film which is otherwise ideologically balanced. The opening scene of Captain Fantastic is an example of where spectators may be divided in their response. The film opens with establishing shots of the environment - the North American forest, presented with an extreme long crane shot encompassed completely by the luscious green trees that soothingly sway in the soft winds. This romanticises the grandeur of the natural world in a way that may preemptively encourage alignment with Ben’s ideologies. Influences on the film’s aesthetic, namely the works of Simen Johan post 2005, are evident here. The pleasantly  calming ambient sounds of wind, birds and insects may encourage passive spectatorship that would result in a preferred reading - agreeing with the ideology the film proposes. However, using Stuart Hall’s theory of preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings is problematic in a film which isn’t biased towards a certain view. Can one say a preferred reading would be to agree with Ben’s views and disagree with Jack’s when Ross states “Jack is antagonistic towards Ben but is not the antagonist”. Perhaps in the first act, where the spectator is yet to see integrated western society, it would be correct to say passive spectatorship encourages alignment with life outside of mainstream America. 

The cultural self, however, may bring about active spectatorship. A spectator comes into a film with a repertoire of films they’ve seen prior, which builds up a set of conventions the spectator expects to see. For example, while an opening sequence being helicopter shots establishing location is conventional, the swaying of the handheld camera is not - we expect it to be a smooth shot with minimal movement of the camera. In further evidence of this is the lack of non diegetic soundtrack - a film rarely opens with no support from a score, even subtly in the background. In noticing this through the cultural self, a spectator may be swayed to pay proper attention to the film, to actively watch it, which in turn makes an oppositional reading more likely. In an oppositional reading, spectator response to Ben would be negative, feeling that he is endangering his children as is later pointed out by Jack, with whom these spectators may align with instead.

Considering how the film would be received were it on the other end of the ideological spectrum - about a right wing Christian extremist and his family, brings light to audience prejudices, as this would be readily rejected as hearty entertainment, and is in fact more the stuff of horror films. Are audiences as a whole therefore biased against what Jack represents before even coming into the film? At times, Ross plays with the idea that despite his hatred for it, Ben has become somewhat of a religious leader to his children, and is portrayed as such in the opening scene. He opens his hands to Bo in what can be likened to the gestures of the Pope. He does this again later to console his children upon breaking the news, while holding a bible-like book in one hand. The comparison is most overt when the children pretend to be a religious family. 

As the opening scene continues, the spectator is introduced to a deer walking through the forest, who Bodafin then kills. Here again, spectator response is divided. Those likened to animals such as petowners may align with the deer as the first character they see, as empathy is encouraged with fast cuts,  kinetic movement and close ups that sutures the spectator into the deer's chaotic mental state. Ross stated his conscious decision to shoot the entire film handheld is as he sees the classical manifestation of photography a method that puts us at arms length of the scene. The camera doesn’t shy away from showing the deer’s neck get cut, evoking disgust and subsequently seeing Bodafin as an antagonist. We see this aspect of their life as savage and thus would also antagonise Ben for being the representation of such a lifestyle. A close up of the dying deer laying on the ground anchors this. Another way spectators may feel emotionally distant from Bodafin and the rest of the family in the nature of this ritual. It is by far the most extreme aspect of their lifestyle and the most contradictory to western society: mudded faces that make them seem less normal and more tribal; no dialogue between the characters which makes it seem like a sacred ceremony; the eating of raw meat. The scene doesn't ease you into their lifestyle, and can feel alienating and discourage alignment with Bens ideologies. This is the case throughout the film, where the audience can feel alienated by Ben's and more specifically his children's intelligence. We find it intimidating that a 7 year old knows more than us. The children frequently name drop dozens of intellectuals (“Only a Stalinist would say Trotskyite. I'm a Maoist”), speak in esperanto and german with no subtitles. This makes us regard the characters' intelligence from a distance. Other spectators may interpret the opening scene differently. The shots of the deer are all with a zoomed lens, giving the impression that we are watching from far away as we do not get a good sense of depth, thus making us feel more like an observer of the deer rather than it being from the deer's perspective. There are also POV shots, through use of the Kuleshov effect, of Bodafin watching the deer, although this is not consistent and we get many different angles. The opening being so extreme may result in spectators responding in relief at the following scenes where the children have fun with their father, something viewers can relate to globally. In comparison, all other displays of their bizzare lifestyle seems less extreme.

Parallels can be drawn with audience expectation between CF and the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men. Where one builds expectations with its genre, the other does the same with its credits, namely it being a Coen Brothers film. Their name on the poster is given equal weight to the actors. Prior to NCFOM, they dabbled mainly in quirky comedies, with films such as The Big Lebowski and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and so audience expectations are promptly challenged from the very beginning of the film. The entire film manages to challenge the spectator in its contradictions, as well as its ambiguity. The plot does not unravel like a traditional western nor does the antagonist act as such, and the entire film is full of ellipsis with its editing and with Moss’ sparse dialogue (also atypical for a Coen Brothers’ film) often being the end of an internal monologue. There are patterns and symbols throughout that seem to have some meaning, but which are left to the spectator to interpret and may in fact be meaningless. In this way, the film manages to become an interactive experience for the spectator, who is constantly encouraged to keep their engagement.

In the opening of No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers challenge the spectator’s expectations of genre; specifically, the western. A series of static establishing shots chronicle sunrise over desert landscapes: arid hillsides, parched flatlands, desolate vistas. These immediately evoke landscapes familiar to spectators of westerns. Cinematographer Roger Deakins lit and exposed the film differently for the desert and urban scenes. For the scenes in the wide open desert there is a ‘burnt’ colour palette of blanched out beiges and browns - creating a sense that in this brightly-lit landscape there is nowhere to hide. The urban scenes are more garish and often lit with fluorescent tubes to accentuate the artificiality. The diegetic sound of wind adds to the sense of emptiness indicative of old frontiers; coupled with this is Bell’s voiceover narration, his thick southern drawl linking the film to southern US states such as Texas. The sunrise coming over the hills imparts strips of light over broader swathes of shade, suggestive perhaps of the dawning of hope; though also, of a landscape wherein darkness is prevalent. At odds with this notion of the western, though, are features of the landscape that seem anomalous: telegraph poles and, in the final panning shot, a police car parked on the side of an asphalt road.

As the camera pans to the police car, Chigurh enters the frame in a medium, back-to-camera shot with the sheriff’s deputy leading him to the car. In terms of costuming, he wears dark, unremarkable denim clothing that is nevertheless discordant with the western genre, thereby demarcating him as an outsider. We then cut to Chigurh’s profile, though due to the blocking of the scene, with the deputy in the foreground, much of him is obscured, creating an enigma code around his character that makes any sense of character alignment problematic for the spectator. This is further exacerbated by the final two shots of the sequence. In the first, the deputy places Chigurh’s weapon of choice in the front seat of the car: a captive bolt pistol unfamiliar to most spectators. Genre can often provide a frame of interpretation for the spectator, but Chigurh is different, seeming to belong to an entirely different genre (perhaps horror). Instead of the typical revolver or rifle that Bell and Moss carry, the assassin uses a ‘captive bolt pistol’ (reducing his victims to ‘cattle’) and even his gun looks odd. In the second, seated in medium long shot in the rear of the car, with the deputy in front, a shallow depth of field is used to render Chigurh blurred from view. In effect, he is reduced to an anonymous silhouette. The grille in the police car creates a barrier both literal and metaphorical: between Chigurh and the law; and between spectator and character.

In terms of spectatorship, the casting of Javier Bardem in the role of Chigurh again creates problems with regard to character alignment. Bardem will be known to most cineastes through his roles in European and arthouse films, such as Biutiful and Live Flesh. However, his persona as an actor is rather obscure, so there is little scope for spectator alignment based on pre-existing expectation.

Stuart Hall’s theory of preferred, negotiated, and oppositional readings becomes a challenge to apply to a film so open to interpretation as No Country for Old Men. How can one oppose a filmmaker’s message when you don’t know what the message is? The ambiguity of the Coen Brothers’ film is evident majorly through the character of Chigurh, a walking contradiction both to the western setting in which he presides, and to himself. On one hand he seems to follow his own code, being a man of his word, as he tells Carla Jean in the final scene, where she finds him in her home. Yet, he quickly abandons such certainty of action, and leaves Carla Jean’s fate to a coin toss. His dialogue in this scene and in the gas station attendant scene give some clue as to his reasoning, that he believes he is an instrument of fate - ‘I got here the same way the coin did’,although even this is quickly discarded as an absolute truth - ‘then it becomes just another coin - which it is’. However, microfeatural analysis can give some indication of what the preferred response may be. The over the shoulder shot of Carla Jean is one of the only shots that suggest a perspective, the rest are one shots with the character looking off camera. This may illicit spectator alignment to a certain extent, as well as the sympathy one might feel for her having come home from burying her mother, thus making the preferred reading that we don’t want Chirgurh to kill her, rather than feeling indifferent (as is the case with Wells and the gas station attendant). She is portrayed as a powerful character, shot in low angle coming into the room, with Chigurh in a slight high angle. This may be due to her taking away his power when she refuses to call the coin toss, the only character not to play Chirgurh’s game. Perhaps in a film in which semiotics are so enigmatic, the high angle shot of Chigurh is included precisely because the Coen brothers are challenging the spectator's relationship with film codes - we're used to low angle shots being empowering, and vice versa ... so when we're presented with the opposites, it creates problems with alignment and decoding. Opposing spectators may say the tracking shot of Carla sitting down is from Chigurh’s perspective, imitating his head movement, with the camera placed where he is seated. This would be in favour of arguing Chigurh is the protagonist of the film, the only character we are supposed to align with. In this scene elliptical editing is again used to subvert expectations. Unusually for such a brutal film, NCFOM is quite minimal in depicting violence. Wells’ death is out of frame, the murder of the chicken truck driver is suggested, and the murder of Carla Jean is hinted at so subtly that many viewers have debated whether it even takes place. This subverts expectations of a western film, while also stripping the film of any violent gratification, providing it instead with a greater gravitas and maturity of focusing on the aftermath of violence.