Adapting The Sunset Limited to Film: Life, Death, and God Anonymous 10th Grade

Many have tried, but few directors have been able to adapt famed author Cormac McCarthy’s works for the screen. At best, a film like 2007’s No Country for Old Men is made; at worst, 2013’s The Counselor, which is widely regarded as one of the ten worst films ever to have been produced. 2011’s The Sunset Limited, which was adapted from McCarthy’s play of the same name, marks one of only two times in which McCarthy’s work was adapted for the screen and received almost uniformly positive reviews.

The Sunset Limited tells the rather contained story of two men: “White” (played by Tommy Lee Jones, who also directed the film) and “Black,” (played by Samuel L. Jackson) who have begun to talk after Black stops White from killing himself with the help of the eponymous train The Sunset Limited. White is a man devoid of any faith. He is a cold-hearted cynic who earns his livelihood as a university professor. White hardly has any friends and lives a mostly isolated, sequestered life as far away from other humans as possible. Black, on the other hand, is a cool, kind-hearted man who works as a mechanic for his living. He lives in an exceptionally modest apartment. An apartment which is far worse than he can afford with his salary. Black is a...