The uncertainty principle

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: In Sally Potter’s Yes, there’s a scene in a restaurant kitchen in which a Lebanese chef and a young Brit-punk dishwasher get into fierce confrontation (you can’t really call it an “argument”) over politics and religion. The kid grabs a frying pan and goes after the chef. The chef picks up a knife. Standoff. The manager arrives. Summarily, he fires the chef.

In the Q&A after the screening at Ebertfest, some people said they thought this was clearly a race-based (or racist) decision on the manager’s part. Others debated the choice of weapons: didn’t a knife appear more threatening than a pan? [View image online].

Back up two weeks to the Cinema Interruptus screenings at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado: we’re looking at the scene in No Country For Old Men [hyperlink] in which Sheriff Ed Tom Bell returns to the scene of the crime at the motel. [Spoiler alert—although why you would be reading this blog if you haven’t seen NCFM is beyond me.] The way the scene is constructed, we expect Chigurh to be standing behind the door when Ed Tom enters the room. The door opens flat against the wall. Ed Tom steps over a pool of dried blood in the doorway, looks around the room, checks the bathroom window (which is locked from the inside) and, relieved, sits down on the bed. He notices an air vent that has been removed. Four screws and a dime are on the floor.

What more do you need to know? I’m not saying it’s unreasonable to want to know. But take a moment to look before you start jumping to conclusions. What is there and what is not there. Does the movie provide the answer(s) to your questions, or does it not? If not, what does that decision tell you? That the Coens are sloppy or forgetful? That they’re interested in something else, like the experience Ed Tom has just gone through? That maybe you’re asking the wrong questions? What else?

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