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 (112307-original
pub date/091522-reformat date) Until now, the films of Joel and Ethan Coen have been explorations of cinematic genres and sub-genres that
were often as much about the quirks and stylistic touches of their
respective narratives–the true-crime melodrama of “Fargo,” the road
movie of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” the screwball romantic fluff
of “Intolerable Cruelty,” the pointless “director’s cut” of “Blood
Simple, The Director’s Cut” and the even-more-pointless remake of
“The Ladykillers”–as they were about the stories that they were
ostensibly telling. This is not a complaint by any means–at their
worst (which pretty much remains “The Hudsucker Proxy”), they are
still more inventive and entertaining than most current filmmakers
working at the top of their game and when they are firing on all
cylinders (such as their underrated gangster epic “Miller’s
Crossing”), the results can be breathtaking–but it does mean that
there is an unmistakable remove to their work that can be
interpreted by some as a certain degree of chilliness, as though
they were making films only from the head and not at all from the
heart.
One of the biggest shocks of “No Country For Old Men,” their latest
work, is the realization that this remove is nowhere to be found
during its 121 minutes–instead of being a movie about a certain kind
of movie, it is a simple and straightforward movie in which none of
the elements seem to be contained within self-aware quotes. This is
exceptionally strange when you realize that the film isn’t a
self-created work like the majority of their previous films, but has
been based on the 2003 novel by acclaimed author Cormac McCarthy.
Despite being their first literary adaptation (or maybe because it
is their first literary adaptation), they have left all their tricks
and ironic jokerie behind and the resulting film feels deeper and
more personally felt than anything they have done before. The result
is an astonishing work of popular cinematic art that is not only one
of the very best films of 2007 but is also one of the very best that
the Coens’ have ever done–it is easily their finest work since
“Fargo”.
Set in 1980, just at the time when the drug wars that had previously
been contained south of the border were beginning to explode into
heretofore unimaginable levels of violence in these parts, “No
Country For Old Men” kicks into gear as amiable sad sack Llewelyn
Moss (Josh Brolin) goes out hunting one bright, shiny day on a bit
of desolate West Texas panhandle. He isn’t very successful along
those lines but he does come across something else–five 4x4's and a
number of dead bodies left out in the middle of nowhere. When he
goes down to investigate, he realizes that he has found the remains
of a drug deal gone bad and while poking around, he discovers one
badly wounded survivor, many pounds of heroin and $2 million neatly
stacked in a travel bag. Ignoring both the wounded man’s pleas for
water and, perhaps, the voice of common sense, Moss takes the money
with him and squirrels it away underneath the trailer that he shares
with loving wife Carla Jean (Kelly McDonald).
Moss does this not because he is a bad man or a greedy man–he is
just an ordinary man who finds an opportunity for him and his wife
to start a newer and better life literally at his feet and he
decided to take it without thinking of the potential consequences.
Hell, he even covers his tracks so well that even if there were
potential consequences, there would be no plausible way to link him
to the money anyway. However, Moss feels some pangs of conscience
and later that night, he decides to return to the area where he
found the bodies and money in order to help the one survivor. This
is not a particularly smart decision for a man who has just made off
with that much money to make–something that even he acknowledges–and
it is this decision that more or less seals his fate. When he
arrives at the scene, the survivor is gone but before he can leave,
Moss is ambushed by a truckload of unseen gun-toting guys, not to
mention one extremely tenacious dog, that chase him to the Rio
Grande before he is able to make a getaway. Realizing that he is now
in trouble, he convinces Carla Jean to go visit her mother while he
gets out of town with the cash until things blow over.
In his haste to get away, however, Moss leaves his vehicle behind at
the scene of the original crime and this sends two very different
people on his trail. The first is Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), the
low-key county sheriff who has become increasingly disenchanted with
what he sees as a world gone increasingly wrong (“When you don’t
hear ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ anymore, pretty much everything else goes”).
Upon surveying the scene of the massacre, he realizes that Moss
likely had nothing to do with what happened but he also realizes
that the people who did will most likely be in pursuit of him as
well and that they are people not to be trifled with. (“He’s seen
the same things I’ve seen and they’ve certainly made an impression
on me.”) He doesn’t know the half of it. It turns out that the
people behind the deal have hired one Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem)
to retrieve the money. Chigurh is the kind of man who sets out to do
a job and will not stop for anyone or anything until he is done..
After violently escaping from jail after getting picked up on a
silly traffic violation, Chigurh begins to cut a bloody swath
through the area in his pursuit of Moss and eliminates those who get
in his way with a nasty compressed-air gun. Sometimes, just for fun,
he will meet a complete stranger and have them call a coin that he
flips in the air, not realizing just how much they are unwittingly
laying on the line.
Based on the above description, devotees of the Coen Brothers oeuvre
might be expecting “No Country For Old Men” to play as sort of a
fusion between the neo-noir trappings of their electrifying 1985
debut film “Blood Simple” and their cheerfully goofy Southern-fried
1987 comedy “Raising Arizona.” Almost from the start, however, it
becomes clear that the Coens are not interested in demonstrating how
clever they can be with their idiosyncratic dialogue and elaborate
stylistic flourishes. Like the terrain that most of the film takes
place upon, the look and the feel is spare and unyielding and while
there are laughs to be had, they are the kind of nervous ones that
occasionally come up in an otherwise tense film in order to allow
the audience to let off a little steam. This is something that they
will need because once the unstoppable Chigurh sets off in pursuit
of Moss, the Coens create and sustain a mood of almost unbearable
tension that is occasionally punctuated by moments of genuinely
shocking and startling violence. Although “No Country For Old Men”
is by no means a horror film, there are scenes in it that are as
nerve-wracking as any that you could name–one set-piece that takes
place in and around a virtually deserted motel is a symphony of
light, shadow, sound, movement and out-of-nowhere shocks that is so
skillfully and tensely executed that it should stand as a template
for horror film-makers in terms of both the consummate filmmaking
virtuosity on display and its overpowering visceral impact.
The other aspect of the film that may remind viewers of a horror
film like “Halloween” is that it offers us, in the form of Anton
Chigurh, one of the most indelibly terrifying characters to ever
grace the silver screen. Right from the start, when he manages to
kill a prison guard and escape from jail despite being in handcuffs,
we realize that he is a virtually unstoppable machine who knows what
he wants–the two million dollars–and will quietly and methodically
go to whatever violent lengths that he needs to in order to achieve
that goal. And yet, and this is an aspect of his character that is
perhaps even freakier than his way with his compressed air gun, he
shares with Sheriff Bell, his unknown rival in the search for Moss,
a certain courtliness and purity of purpose. He may be a monster but
he is at least upfront about it and when he learns that the people
who have hired him in the first place have hired a second man, the
unwisely self-confident Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), he is
quietly outraged that the people who brought him in now seem to have
such little trust in him that they would actually dare to bring in
another man to ensure that he doesn’t simply kill everyone and keep
the money for himself. Of course, that is exactly what his ultimate
plan appears to be, but they don’t know that for sure.
Because Chigurh is such an overwhelming force of monstrous nature
without any visible signs of humanity or conscience, it would appear
to be a difficult role to play but Javier Bardem slips into the part
so completely and effortlessly that it is a little scary to see just
how completely he has transformed himself simply through his
performance. On the surface, he seems fairly bland and nondescript
but there is always an uneasy feeling about him and when he lets the
beast within suddenly rise to the surface, it is a frightening sight
to behold. Early on, there is a messy strangulation scene and while
it is a sequence that is filled with blood and pain, the most
unsettling aspect is the look on his face as he dispatches yet
another obstacle. In the past, Bardem has given some incredible
performances in films like “Before Night Falls,” “Collateral” and
“The Sea Inside” but his work here eclipses them to such a degree
that I suspect that it will soon go down as one of the great screen
performances of recent years. Certainly on a par with and indelible
as Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter.
Although Bardem’s turn is likely to receive the lion’s share of the
praise, it is by no means the only standout performance in the film
by a long shot. As Moss, Josh Brolin has a role that is almost as
difficult to portray as Bardem–for the vast majority of his scenes,
his character is constantly on the run and isolated from the other
cast members–but he pulls it off beautifully with an oddly
compelling combination of cunning, determination and the kind of
intelligence that suggests that he is simultaneously smart enough to
understand how much trouble he has gotten himself into and dumb
enough to believe that he can somehow reason his way out. Woody
Harrelson is very entertaining in his few scenes as the brash bounty
hunter who knows full well just how dangerous Chigurh is but makes
the mistake of thinking that possessing this knowledge alone is the
key to survival. In smaller roles, Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald
(perhaps best known here for her roles in “Trainspotting” and
“Gosford Park”) is virtually unrecognizable as Carla Jean, Garret
Dillahunt plays Sheriff Bell’s deputy and gets off most of the
funniest lines in the film (surveying a couple of well-dressed
corpses at the massacre sight, he observes “These boys look
managerial”) in a manner that makes them feel less like laugh lines
and more like what his character might actually say in that
situation and Gene Jones has one indelible moment as the gas station
proprietor whose bland pleasantries towards Chigurh inspire a tense
standoff between the two in which only one fully knows what exactly
is at stake.
However, the other real keeper here is the performance from Tommy
Lee Jones, an always-reliable performer who just seems to be getting
better and better with age. Although he may not have the most screen
time, his Sheriff Bell is essentially the laconic heart and soul of
the film but the surprise is that he doesn’t approach the role in
the brusque, no-nonsense manner that you might expect. Jones brings
a vulnerability to the part that is surprising–instead of coming
across as the determined type that Jones has played so well in the
past, his Bell basically admits that he may be over his head in
dealing with criminals whose savagery is beyond his
comprehension–and after the main action has come to its conclusion,
he has two final scenes, one with his former deputy (Barry Corbin)
and the other with his understanding wife (Tess Harper), that are
among the finest that he has ever played.
Recently, there has been a lot of talk in film circles about the
majority of the serious-minded movies that have come out this season
haven’t fared very well at the box office. While this is true, most
of these analyses seem to conclude that people aren’t going to see
things like “In the Valley of Elah” or “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
simply because they are dramatic films and not because they are, as
it turns out, movies that aren’t very good in the first place. “No
Country For Old Men” may be as dark, bloody and fatalistic as
anything that you will see this season but it has been made with
such consummate filmmaking skill and grace that even the most
Pollyannaish of viewers are going to find themselves coming away from
it deeply impressed with what the Coens have accomplished this time
around. From the performances to the screenwriting to the
cinematography (long-time Coens contributor Roger Deakins lends the
film a visual style that is beautiful and haunting enough to rival
his other great achievement of 2007, “The Assassination of Jesse
James By the Coward Robert Ford”) to the inspired choice for a
musical score (which I will leave for you to discover), there is not
a single flaw with the film that I can think of and it is one that I
am certain that I will return to over and over again. Under normal
circumstances, I am loathe to use the word “masterpiece” in
discussing a new film on the grounds that it takes years for such an
appellation to be honestly earned. In the case of “No Country For
Old Men,” however, I am comfortable in waiving this objection. You
will not see a better film this year.
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