The Counselor (Michael Fassbender) lives a stylish, affluent life, with a beautiful fiancee, Laura (Penelope Cruz), until his apparent greed leads him into a one shot foray into financing a drug deal. When the courier is beheaded and the drugs hijacked, his unknown partners turn against him. The two men who made the contact for him but advised him against the enterprise, Reiner (Javier Bardem) and Westray (Brad Pitt), are killed, as is the Counselor’s Laura, left in a rubbish heap. The heist and killings were masterminded by Reiner’s mysterious girlfriend Malkina (Cameron Diaz), who is a car lover. The Counselor, whose life has been a matter of law and order, suffers a tightening noose of tension and danger.
Written by novelist Cormac McCarthy, the dialogue seems more novelish than filmic. At times the film feels like a classic noir, only with the philosophic subtext spelled out on the surface and the nuances of the plot left buried below. The classic pulp noir spun out the characters and actors but left only implicit the existential currents below.
Questions
How/why does this film shift from noir to horror? What does it say about our times?
Novelist Cormac McCarthy’s script has been widely criticized for being wordy, unrealistic, literary. How might those apparent problems be justified?
Why does the Counselor go unnamed?
What do “Malkina,” “Reiner” and “Westray” signify?
How does the film relate to screenwriter Cormac McCarthy’s other work, e.g., No Country for Old Men and The Road?
How does it relate to British director Ridley Scott’s major films, e.g., Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster?
How does the film draw on our associations with the main actors’ other roles? The DEA brother-in-law from Breaking Bad appears when the drugs are retrieved from the sewage vats.
None of the characters get any back-story, any outline of their previous lives. Why? Hint: “You are the life you created. When you die your world is no more.”
What do Reiner’s leopards signify? How do they connect to Malkina’s spot tattoos? To her scene in the confessional? To her hood in the last scene? To the film’s last words, Malkina’s “I’m famished”?
There are two decapitations, the cyclist’s and Westray’s. What do they connect to in the film?
How are the septic tank trucks a metaphor? How do they relate to the diamonds and the rubbish heap and the parties?
What do these quotes signify:
1.The truth has no temperature.
2. — I don't want to give her a diamond so big she'd be afraid to wear it.
—She is probably more courageous than you imagine.
3. I suspect that we are ill-formed for the path we have chosen. Ill-formed and ill-prepared. We would like to draw a veil over all the blood and terror that have brought us to this place. It is our faintness of heart that would close our eyes to all of that, but in so doing it makes of it our destiny... But nothing is crueler than a coward, and the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining.
4. In a diamond we look for the flaws. The perfect diamond would be light.
5. You don’t know someone till you know what they want.
6. You can’t live in this world and not be a part of it.
7. It’s not that you’re going down, counselor. It’s about who you’re taking down with you.
9. What’s wrong with Boise?
10. Nothing is unforgivable.
11. To partake of the stone's endless destiny, is that not the meaning of adornment? To enhance the beauty of the beloved is to acknowledge both her frailty and the nobility of that frailty. At our noblest, we announce to the darkness that we will not be diminished by the brevity of our lives.
12.—Have you ever seen a snuff film?
— No. Have you?
— No. Would you?
—I would not.
—You might want to think about that the next time you do a line.
13. — I can see you're blushing. OK, we'll change the subject.
— Good.
— We’ll talk about MY sex life.
— You’re teasing.
— Just rattling your cage. What a world.
— You think the world is strange?
— I meant yours.
14. — Greed really ames you to the edge.
— That’s not what greed does. It what greed is.
15. There is no choosing. There is only accepting. The choosing was done long ago.
16. Grief transcends value. But you can’t buy anything with grief because grief is valueless.
17. If I had time I think I’d take a small nut.
18. Westray: I’m pretty skeptical about the goodness of the good. I think that if you ransacked the archives of the redeemed you would uncover tales of moral squalor quite beyond the merely appalling. I've pretty much seen it all, Counselor, and it's all shit. I could live in a monastery, scrub the steps, wash the pots, maybe do a little gardening. Why not?
Counselor: Why don't you?
Westray: In a word, women.
18. — I fell asleep. I’m sorry.
— It is no harm.
— No harm. What a lovely thought.
19. — Death has no meaning.
— All my family is dead. I am the one who has no meaning.
20. The quarry killed with elegance is very moving.
21. The slaughter to come is beyond comprehension.
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