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.
