No Country for Old Men

 

No Country for Old Men

Writers & Directors ~    Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

Novel ~ Cormac McCarthy

2007,USA

Stars ~ Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Kelly MacDonald

There is nearly always a sense of an in-joke with the Coen brothers’ most heartfelt output, something to be decoded, which turns out to be totally alligned with Cormac McCarthy’s approach. Adapting McCarthy’s novel, the Coen’s capture the mood with great success, forgoing their usual verbose style but continuing the precision of aesthetic and delight in chaos that are familiar from ‘Blood Simple’ through to ‘Fargo’, but perhaps less dark humour. ‘No Country for Old Men’ philosophises where you would expect a showdown and preserves the riddle-like nature of the novel. The film often stops for the ruminations by and angst of the characters, rolling on the meaning of life and nostalgia in Southern mumbles. Not to say it doesn’t have the thriller joys of walking around the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong or a shoot out, but it also comes on like an Ingmar Bergman Western Noir.

A rugged hunter type (Brolin) finds the cash at the aftermath and sets off a chain of slaughter. Seasoned Sheriff Tommy Lee Jones aches for a rose-tinted cowboy past that really never was, lamenting that the modern world has gone to hell; meanwhile the men he’s chasing are embroiled in a search-and-destroy that seemingly proves him right. Josh Brolin proves a fair quarry for the man relentlesly hunting him down, committed to his role of acquiring all the blood money for the future of he and his wife. As Anton Chigurh, Javier Bardem is an ultimate badman, seeing himself as a force of fate, and angel of death, killing on the spin of a coin. He’s scary with bad hair (apparently inspired by an old brothal picture that Jones’ possessed), terrifying with his skill and mind games, believing himself working to some personal cosmic code. In 2013,  psychologist Dr. Samuel Leistedt’s team, analysing 126 film characters, concluding that Anton Chigurh to be cinema’s most realistic portrayal of a psychopath. Indeed, his penchant for philosophical debate doesn’t get in the way of his killing, isn’t an excuse for scenery chewing and narrative device for delaying the inevitable.

When the present and modern experience punctures a favoured view of the past, the inclination may be to object with misty-eyed and mistaken nostalgia. "This is the world as it has always been, not how we like to remember it," the Sheriff is told by his cousin. But then there is another colleague that has the opposite opinion. No one gets what they want and it ends in accidents, haggling and reciting dreams of grief and death. Always just catching up, Sheriff Bell is just left bemused. Seemingly warning against too much projecting meaning, Chigurh may insist that the coin has traveled decades to decide a man’s fate on a toss, but he also notes that ultimately it’s just a coin. It is a tale that dismantles the tidy narratives of thrillers and commits to its chaos theory.

‘No Country for old Men’ translates McCarthy’s stripped-down yet eloquent prose with stark landscapes (the same desert location as ‘There Will be Blood’) and Roger Deakins’ excellent cinematography, with Carter Burwell’s score reduced to a barely perceptable Buddhinst singing bowl ambience. It is an excellent thriller that offers smart characters pitted against eachother, the suspense coming from silence, immersive editing and flashes of smart dialogue taken from the novel for colour. Like ‘A History of Violence’, or even ‘Henry: portrait of a serial killer’, it dissects cinematic violence and tropes whilst also delivering the goods.There is less humour at the expense of the folksy characters, as if the Coens have decided to forgo their genre pleasure and take an even deeper look at the real consequences of their thriller world. Never have they laid bare the hurt and fallout from the chaos they enjoy investigating and playing with. It chills by forgoing the Coens’ penchant for farce and indeed would be in the hat when choosing their best.

What’s coming gets us all in the end.

 

DJ Ahmet

DJ AHMET
Writer & Director ~ Georgi M. Unkovski
2025, North Macedonia-Czech Republic-Serbia-Croatia
Stars ~ Arif Jakup, Agush Agushev, Dora Akan Zlatanova

One of those minor bildungsroman that leaves you life-affirmed and takes up a small corner in your affection whilst the mainstream is mostly bombast and performative emotions. Its worth is in showing a small far away community and highlighting that the emotional simularities between cultures aren’t so conflicted at core. Ahmet is a typical fifteen year-old, a Yuruk teen from a remote Macedonian village, trying to cope with the loss of his mother and a difficult father who takes him out of school to work sheperding, as well as looking out for a younger brother that hasn’t spoken since their loss. Ahmet isn’t even really an odd-one-out, an outsider, just coping with domestic and social circumstance and first love. The pink sheep may symbolise otherwise, but it just needs time to find its way back.  

What is perhaps enlightening is the portrayal of how the contemporary TikTok age reaches such a relatively isolated and traditional community. Indeed, if anything, it is almost conventional for these stories that the enemy here is tradition and the patriarchy. While the mosque is broadcasting prayers from a PC (some of the film’s best laughs come from this), the men are still trying to marry off teenage daughters to their adult sons. The location offers many, many gorgeous vistas, making this, as Daniel Eagan says, “both wildly exotic and completely down to earth.”  He also says that

Jakup, who's in almost every scene as Ahmet, gives a solid if occasionally stiff performance. He can be charming, especially with his younger brother, but his character is too withdrawn and hesitant for much of the movie.

Jakup’s performance offers an unpolished natural niceness and sudden expressions that charm in their spontaneity. But not everyone is a go-getter or fiery or a traumatised lover, and if there’s anything the coming-of-age genre is good at it is showing how the ordinary is extraordinary to someone, how dilemmas are melodrama. And how limitation inspires invention: with the right motivation – music and love – Ahmet turns his tractor into a sound-system, for example. There’s a maintained sense that he is just on the verge: of being music-obsessed, of defying his father, of falling in love. Incidentally, Arid Jakup comes from that very village. 

It is Dora Akan Zlatanova as Aya that steals the show, rightfully so to knock Ahmet off his feet, sparkling with a worldiness that this town has little idea about. Yes, there are secret festivals happening just outside, but the patriarch aren’t truly aware or consenting, so they are not about to agree to her dance routine with which she hopes to sabotage her arranged marriage. The music itself appropriately goes from EDM to traditional, bursting out and blurring in but never quite dominating the set-pieces until it needs to.

It is not a film that feels angry or unsympathetic to any of its characters, but one that broadcasts empathy and the generational struggle between what is coming and what is already happening. If its simple message is to be brave, that’s powerful enough for a little funny film. We know he’ll be okay.