'No Country For Old Men' emobodies cinema in a way that no other film has for me. Some basic facts - it is based on a book of the same name, it has been made by the Coen brothers, it has an excellent star cast, it is one of those movies that gets pegged as an Oscar forerunner the minute it comes out and is waved like a flag at all the major film festivals it graces.

Apart from all of this, it truly is something to be studied as a brilliant piece of film making. When you watch a movie made by the Coen brothers, you may expect dark humour and a keen insight into the simple yet complex question mark called life. But this film creates an aura that pulls you in. You are aware that the movie is grounded in reality becuase of the concepts of morality, eventuality, death, cynicism and sadness that envelop it. However, at the same time, the directors seem to create a parallel universe with this film, and while watching the movie, you are aware that it's a movie, but more like a separate world created especially for the characters in it, that it is rooted in realism but not real, but it's so all-encompassing that you have to get affected by it. If it's possible to create a film that transports you and yet leves you to stare at it from afar, this one's it.

I can't think of anything to say about it's major characters that hasn't been said already. They are simply superb. It is Tommy Lee Jones who really does it for me, as an ageing Sheriff who is watching the world go by and lamenting the state of things as they are, with the knowledge that the time when things were within his comprehension has slipped past him and there's nothing he can do about it.

A landmark film and a favourite for a long time to come... It has left me speechless. Hence this one's probably my shortest post to date.