The Counselor

One more down in the Year of Cormac.

I am not surprised to be less than pleased with The Counselor. In my Letterboxd review of Ridley Scott's adaptation (https://boxd.it/5bor6n), I lament the film's incoherence. The screenplay is certainly more coherent, but I think it has some problems.

Reading this let me understand why The Stonemason didn't quite work for me, either. In Cormac's novel/prose work, the entire construct belongs to his language. All facets of the world are crafted by it. The dialogue is enmeshed in the narration, thought, and description. All blends, and he is fantastic in this form. In a screenplay, you have stage direction and dialogue. Nothing else. It lacks a dimensionality on which McCarthy's work depends.

For me, this is evidenced by the strange merging of Cormac's dialogue with a rather contemporary world. Outside of his screenplays, I've never read a line from McCarthy that rang any less than perfect true. Yet, in this, some half the lines read strangely. Part of this is the curse of casting, having seen the movie first I must imagine Cameron Diaz say the final lines. Some of these lines, where McCarthy decides to talk about routers, VPNs, encryption; source code, compilers, machine-readable language, simply not in his element. They do not ring.

There are very good lines. Some examples:

-CAFE MAN — No. Of course not. All my family is dead. I am the one who has no meaning.

or

- JEFE — Yes. An understanding that the world will not take you back. I have no wish to paint the world in colors more somber than those it wears, but as the world gives way to darkness it becomes more and more difficult to dismiss the understanding that the world is in fact oneself. It is a thing which you have created, no more, no less. And when you cease to be so will the world. There will be other worlds. Of course. But they are the worlds of other men and your understanding of them was never more than an Illusion anyway. Your world—the only one that matters—will be gone. And it will never come again. The extinction of all reality is a concept no resignation can encompass. Until annihilation comes. And all grand ideas are seen for what they are. ...

This mere pages from the Diaz character speaking of Sequel servers and remote access Trojan Horses, Zrizbi or Torig... I don't think so!

I wish I'd have read this before watching the film. I wonder if my approach would be any different. I don't think so — but we'll never know. I think Cormac's work is at its best when it is in novel form and when it has space to really muck around in ideas. Something about the screenplay format hollows it out.

The movie was laughably bad and the screenplay itself was just as much of a mess. I read it hoping to gain some insight from the many philosophical monologues but even in print, these passages came off as staking out some profound meaning where not exists. And it all was made worse by being stuck picturing Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt in these roles. Cormac McCarthy is a genius, but it doesn't show here.