Movie morality.(Letter to the editor)

SIR: Frank Devine shows a good display of optimism about today's society (May 2008). He finds much to criticise in films which deal with the battle between good and evil, but it's hard to know if he's picking on movie-makers or audiences. Hollywood happy endings lasted for an awfully long time, and in 1996 Fargo had a happy ending. In 1996 audiences didn't need any guidance on where to aim their scepticism, but now we are told to suspend our disbeliefs for all sorts of reasons. Either that, or it has been lost in a passion for entertainment (of any sort), even in stories supposedly based on reality.

I went to see No Country for Old Men because Tommy Lee Jones was in it, and I remember his famous role in Double Jeopardy where he switched his allegiances in spite of being a man of the law. In No Country for Old Men he is again a law enforcement officer, but at the end he says the title line of Yeats' poem. The poem has some lines which say, "Whatever is begotten, born, and ...