No Country for Old Men
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Movie Reviews of No Country for Old Men
Movie Review: has anyone considered this interpretation?
Summary: 5 Stars
***This entire review--Spoilers!**
I wont summarize the plot or the acting, as has been done in many other excellent reviews here. I just wanted to give my take on the symbolism in this brilliant movie, and in particular the meaning of the ending.
The antagonist, Anton Chigurh represents evil in the world, and after reading the book, I am pretty confident he is meant to represent the Anti-Christ. In the movie (and I'm paraphrasing all lines), Sheriff Bell talks about an evil that we've never seen before, a new breed. The book has a few lines--not included in the movie--mentioning the Book of Revelations, the signs of the times, and the lack of Jesus today in the news. In Anton's last scene, we think for one moment that maybe he's been killed in the car wreck, but he gets out and walks right back out into the world. He's not done yet. That's the resolution of his character--he's still here, the end.
An important theme of the book/movie is greed, and how we will ignore evil for money. Two parallel scenes illustrate this: Moss is crossing into Mexico; he asks one of a group of kids to sell his jacket to him. The kids know something is very wrong; one of them asks Moss several times, "were you in a car wreck?" But they take the money, their talk shifts to the money and they ignore the rest. Same thing happens in the scene with Anton at the end; the kids on bikes know something is very wrong; one of them says several times "your bone is sticking out of your arm", but they take the money, then talk about the money and ignore the rest. Also Anton says something like "you never saw me", ie, we will overlook evil for money. Moss's character illustrates this theme the best; he knows something is very wrong in the desert scene but he ignores all the bodies, including one man still alive whom he could have possibly saved, and looks for the money instead. Granted, he does come back, but too late and way too little.
The coin toss, I think, represents what we choose in life, good or evil. The gas station attendant says to Anton "I need to know what I stand to gain here", Anton replies "Everything, You stand to gain everything". We learn a little about the attendant, he is married, has a family, he doesnt want any trouble. We get a sense that he's a good man, and he choses the right side of the coin. He lives. Anton tells him not to mix that quarter back in with his other money (dont contaminate his choice to be a good man with greed).
Carly refuses to pick a side. She wont call it, and Anton kills her. Evil wins. Carly's character didnt do anything really bad, but didnt do good either. She knew her husband was doing something really shady, but never stood up to do the right thing. In the book, Carly actually does call the coin toss, she calls the wrong side, and Anton kills her. The Coen's have made at least one movie about someone who doesn't make any choices in life (The Man Who Wasn't There), so maybe they wanted to say here in Carly's character that when you just go along in life and dont actively choose to do the right thing, evil wins.
Sheriff Bell's character represents a good man; and the ending of the movie makes sense if we look at what his dreams mean. Both dreams are important to understanding the movie, especially the second. In the first dream, he says his father gave him some money, and "I think I lost it". He's saying here that his father gave him something good, the money here representing the good side, the values, the right side of the quarter; but Bell's feeling he lost his faith because he can't understand this new breed of evil. In the second dream, Bell and his father are riding along in the cold, snowy path, and his father went on ahead of him, and he knows his father built a fire and "he'll be waiting for me when I get there." His father rode beside him (in life), his father rode on ahead of him (he died), and Bell knows his father will be waiting for him (in heaven) when he gets there (when he dies). Remember the question Anton poses to Wells, something like "if all your rules lead to this, whats the point of your rules".. ie, if we follow the rules in life and we die anyway, then what's the point. Bell's second dream answers this question...heaven. Also Anton told the gas station attendant that if he chooses correctly (between good and evil), he stands to gain "everything" (eternal life.) I think it's brilliant also that the ending and the beginning of the movie are like bookends. In the first scene, Sheriff Bell talks about a man he sent to the electric chair. Bell says this man told him "I know I'm going to hell". In the end, Sheriff Bell tells us in the second dream "I think I'm going to heaven". And that, IMHO, is the point of this movie.
There's so much more symbolism in the movie(watch it again!), but those are the main points. This story was beautiful in it's simplicity, really when you think about it.
Movie Review: No Country For Old Men, A Poignant Film
Summary: 5 Stars
*Beware of spoilers within*
I was highly skeptical of this film ever since I heard of the infamous pre-Oscar buzz, because pretty much any movie today that wins any Oscar is mostly due to political reasons and not so much its quality. Well I'm glad to say that this wasn't one of them, I was pleasantly surprised.
The movie starts out with Josh Brolin's character going out into the Texas desert where he stumbles upon this drug deal that's gone terribly wrong. He finds a large stash of cash which he takes, as well as a few guns that are laying around. After this he goes straight home and we find out that he's a simple man who's down on his luck, doesn't have a job and he lives in a trailer home with his wife, so naturally this find was of considerable boost to his otherwise destitute life. From here on out is where his life begins unravelling, unfortunately, as he goes on the run from the hired gun who's out to collect what belongs to the Mexican drug cartel.
What struck me about this film were the performances, first and foremost, particularly fom Javier Bardem who really shined in his role as the evil antagonist Anton Chigurh, he truly steals the show. Josh Brolin does a great job as the unlikely hero Llewelyn Moss, and together him and Javier really cement this film as a tour de force show between the every man vs. great evil, kind of an epic struggle on a minor scale. As soon as Chigurh is introduced, there's no mistaking what he's all about and what he's capable of. He is very cold, mechanical and highly efficient at what he does, yet he lives his life by a set of seemingly arbitrary yet unbending principles revolving around destiny. Chigurh is so incredibly evil, it bothered me far more than any 'Saw' type movie and its ilk. He just oozes the essence of darkness, he is evil personified. The only one that compares would be Hannibal Lecter from 'Silence of the Lambs', and that says quite a bit. He deserved the Oscar for that role, hands down. Even though he's evil, there's a certain kind of respect that he commands, because he's so good at what he does, because of his discipline and dedication, that makes him quite intriguing, which made me wonder about his past and what caused him to be this way. I rooted for Moss the entire film, but I couldn't help being fascinated by this methodic killer on his trail, which made the experience a very haunting and intense ride from beginning to end.
The supporting cast is good too, with solid performances from Woody Harrelson as another mercenary, Barry Corbin as the sheriff's dad and Tommy Lee Jones as the sheriff who's hunting both Moss and Chigurh. Despite its theme and related genre, the movie actually works as a humanistic one as well, a look into human nature and our failings, how we too easily succumb to our frailties.
What I liked about this movie is that its cleverness lies in its subtleties, it doesn't clobber people over the head with its messages like some other, supposed masterpieces do. I'm a big believer in less is more, and this movie delivered that in spades, on so many levels. The Cohen brothers clearly know their art form.
This was one of the few movies in which the title plays an extraordinarily large part in the story, it was quite apt and does make one think more about the overall meaning and how it applies to the human race.
I'm sure there are multiple interpretations to this film, but for me it all came home in the final scene where sheriff Ed Tom Bell hangs up his belt and talks about why he can't do it anymore. He's an old man, and he's quitting because he can't take the pain and misery that he sees on a day to day basis, he's fed up and it's just too much at this stage in his life. From his point of view, he's living in a country that doesn't have any room for old peace officers, he's an ancient relic and he needs to retire, because he failed in what he set out to do, and that there is no point in going on if evil wins. This reminds me of an old quote by Edmund Burke who once said that, paraphrasing, all it takes for evil to win is for good men to do nothing, which fits this movie to a t. If all the kind, decent people like the sheriff become completely apathetic or simply give up fighting against evil, then evil WILL conquer the world, so the movie is a message about tenacity and having the will to fight the good fight, to continue no matter what obstacles lie in the road. Sure, sometimes evil will win and get away scott free, but that's not a good enough reason to throw in the towel, one has to keep on duking it out, because if one does not, then we are all doomed for sure.
Movie Review: There Will Be Buckets of Blood....and then some
Summary: 5 Stars
I give the Coen Brothers this: they are never boring. Love their films or hate them, they have a way of sucking you into their storylines of common folk plagued by bad decisions, bad circumstances, and just plain bad luck. In "No County for Old Men", based on the Cormac McCarthy bestseller, the hero, Llewelyn Moss has to contend with all three. While hunting in the high border country of southwest Texas, Moss runs across a bevy of corpses, apparently killed in a shootout over a drug deal gone bad. It doesn't take him long to find 2 million dollars intended as payment for the deal, and it takes him even less time to decide that it's a good idea to take the money and run. Stopping by his ratty trailer house, he hides the money and sends wife, Carla Jean, packing to her cancer-stricken mother's house in Midland. By this time, the wheels have already started turning towards the film's inevitable conclusion. The drug dealers want their money back and have sent psychopathic hit man, Anton Chigurh, to fetch the money and eliminate anyone remotely involved in the mess. At the same time, lawman Ed Tom Bell kisses his wife goodbye and heads out to find who is responsible for the escalating number of deaths in his county. Both Chigurh and Ed Tom quickly realize that the central figure of their search is Llewelyn Moss, and it is a race against time to see who finds him first.
"No Country for Old Men" returns the Coen Brothers to a harrowing Texas landscape of bloodshed and relentless violence that they last visited 25 years ago in 1983's "Blood Simple". As much as I like the brothers, I never felt that any of their subsequent films matched the chilling complexity and authenticity of "Blood Simple" until now. "No Country for Old Men" is, to me, a bookend to "Blood Simple", and a worthy contender for the best film of the Coen's career. "No Country" is a practically flawless film, graced by a gorgeous and melancholy cinematography that drifts cloud-like over a vast and lonely country largely populated by tough, wily, and sometimes lawless men whose roles as predator or prey can change with the suddenness of a summer storm.
The acting is first-rate with the much-awarded Javier Bardem giving a calm, steady, utterly terrifying performance as the remorseless assassin, Chigurh. His steely killer is actually the centerpiece of the film and a single-minded foe that will not be deterred from his mission. He reminded me a little of Schwarzenegger's "Terminator", in his steadfast determination to continue his mayhem; despite his own injuries, he seems almost superhuman. As Llewelyn Moss, Josh Brolin is both foolhardy and courageous--he does wrong and knowingly endangers his family, but he truly believes that he'll somehow be able to pull it off and evade the killer hot on his tail. Brolin brings a vulnerability and a likability to the Moss character that he wouldn't otherwise have--we root for him, in spite of his reckless behavior. As Ed Tom Bell, Tommy Lee Jones lends his usual comforting and easygoing presence as a lawman entering an era that doesn't conform to his own experiences and beliefs--he's become an anachronism without knowing it; he still thinks that good will overpower evil, but he's never met anyone like Anton Chigurh before. As Moss's confused and increasingly frustrated wife, Kelly MacDonald is funny and touching--she wants to be with her man but, at the same time, she knows he's gotten into something that's over his head and she isn't sure if either one of them will come out alive. Also popping up in the film, with brief but effective appearances are Woody Harrelson, as a man playing one side against the other, with unfortunate results; Tess Harper, as Bell's supportive wife; and Barry Corbin, as Bell's retired lawman uncle, a nearly-dead old relic who, nevertheless, delivers the film's coda in an unexpectedly sage and moving scene.
I've heard many people complaining about the ending, but I think it's stays true to what would actually happen in a similar, real-life situation. Real-life endings are rarely neat and tidy and not as happy as most films portray them. In fact, "No Country for Old Men" goes a step further, letting us, the audience, know that it's not an ending at all, that some lives will continue, with all that that implies.
I can't think of a better American film that I've seen this year.
Movie Review: Instant masterpiece, no question
Summary: 5 Stars
Joel and Ethan Coen have proven, as filmmakers sometimes do, that Hollywood has not entirely degenerated into FX effects, big name actors doing precisely nothing, and huge amounts of money which would have been better used feeding hungry children. (See "Live Free or Die Hard" for the kind of thing I'm talking about.)
Based on the equally grisly novel by Cormac McCarthy, "No Country" is essentially meditation on evil and the way in which evil slowly corrodes the human soul through intimidation, fear, apprehension, and last but not least:resignation. It is also a thinly disguised commentary on the impotence of authority to protect us from phenomena which arises from the worst of human instincts.
Nearly every scene in this film is rich with symbolism, angst, and a sense that things could go horribly wrong at any moment in a huge tide of slaughtered innocence. Each character represents a piece of the American landscape which, in the present time, has become obsolete. Josh Brolin's Moss, clearly a cowboy of the classic Bonanza/Western variety, finds that his ethics no longer apply when he comes into conflict with Chiggurh, played by Javier Bardem in one of the best performances I have ever seen in any movie, who embodies the evil and meaninglessness lurking somewhere within us all. He resembles some kind of bow legged Frankenstein, lurking across the Mexican landscape with his emphysema tank resembling cattle gun, killing sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for principle, taking everything he wants; not so much because he's pursuing the money Moss has as his thorough enjoyment of the entire affair. Bardem manages to make his voice a grating, terrifying rasp, as though Darth Vader picked up a crack habit and decided to return an re-join the Emperor.
Pretty much everyone who comes in his path dies quickly; his coin toss is the only possible salvation, and even that seems tenuous. If he wants you to die, you do, no matter how much you resist, flee, or hire other people to protect you. Though it is clear that Chiggurh is human (I wasn't sure until he bled) I have no doubt that the Coen's use him as a metaphor for the absurd ways in which we flee from the inevitable. Moss goes from hotel to hotel, jumps across national borders, hides in hospitals, and none of it is of any consequence. You could very safely interpret this film as a very stark reminder that whatever we do, however far we flee, oblivion cannot be avoided, and neither can our humanity. First Brolin's Moss, after tangling with Chiggurh for awhile and nearly dying as a result, stumbles across three youths walking near the New Mexico border; they ask him if he was in a car accident, and he uses a bloodstained dollar bill to buy a coat from one of them. Chiggurh does the same thing (with two younger men riding on bikes) at the end of the film, when we finally get to see him bleed a little bit; he uses a similar bloody dollar bill. The first three youths are eager for the money, and the second group consider it unethical to take money from a man who "has a f**king bone sticking out of his arm". Hushing up corruption and pain with money, all of it somehow soaked in the blood of another, becomes easier with age.
Tommy Lee Jones is perhaps the most "normal" of all the characters in the film, and we slowly discover that he is going to make absolutely no difference in Moss' fate or the fate of his wife. He has seen too much gratuitous evil, and he is sick of being involved or even trying. For all that he has some of the best lines in the film, lecturing the younger sherrif about what he's in for. They both seem like fossilized relics from a time long past when things made sense and they could keep track of the blood.
"No Country For Old Men" is a wake up call of sorts, but for all the questions the Coen brother raise they offer very few answers; perhaps because in the worldly sense there really aren't any. The death of Carlo Jean and the narrow survival of Chiggurh clinches it: salvation is elusive or even absent in this world. The film left me with such a palpable feeling of nihilism and evil that I could almost taste it; for all that, it was also thought provoking, and simply the best movie I have seen in years.
Movie Review: "I'm looking for Llewellyn Moss."
Summary: 5 Stars
We have all seen those movies in which:
a. Some average schmo finds beaucoups of money.
b. Some nasty thug(s) who are looking for the money try to make life difficult for the hero.
c. Average schmo either dispenses with all the villains, and/or he escapes to a secret location never to be bothered again. Then he lives happily ever after, or at least until sequel time when he repeats a,b, and c.
With NCfOM, only a and b apply. We can take c and put it in the proverbial circular file that you open with the little foot lever on the bottom. What Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers made here is the perfect antithesis to all of these average guy toppling the highly trained assassin(s) action subgenre movies that were especially popular during the 1980s. I'm not a sadistic person. I like seeing the good guy win as much as anyone else, but let's be realistic here. It just does not happen.
This is great filmmaking on so many levels, mainly the acting. Josh Brolin is great as the retired welder/Vietnam veteran Llewellyn Moss who finds $2 million in drug money. Moss actually knows about guns and he does possess some survival skills, but above his head you almost see a dark cloud that is shaped like the word "OVERWHELMED". When things spiral out of control, he still manages to keep a front of bravado even though he knows deep inside "how this is going to turn out" as Anton Chigurh so eloquently puts it. Kelly MacDonald is also amazing as Llewellyn's feisty wife. She really has the lower middle class Texas woman act down pat, and she's from Scotland too. Tommy Lee Jones once again returns to playing dignified roles as the about-to-retire Sheriff Bell. This is a relief after seeing him waste his talents in wretched movies like Man of the House and Batman Forever. And finally no review for NCfOM is complete without mentioning Javier Bardem. This guy is demonically awesome. Anton Chigurh is one of the greatest villains I have ever seen. In addition to being irredeemably evil; he is honest to his own perverse code of ethics, fearless, and scarier than a barrel full of tarantulas. He can even administer surgery to himself with minimal variation to his facial expressions.
As great as the acting is, don't just watch NCfOM for that reason. This is one of those movies that invites your intelligence instead of insulting it. The dialoge is sparse and to the point. There is a complete abscence of meaningless jibber-jabber. Contrary to the negative comments many reviewers used about the ending of the film, the monologue about dreams is very relevant to what the film is about. The viewer is expected to (GASP!!!) pay attention. Even the long shots of the vast Texas prairie convey an atmosphere as to how if such a place is not immune to corruption that is usually reserved for the big cities, then what place is? This is not a movie to be watched while chatting with your buddies. It requires your complete undivided attention.
Before I sign out, the thing that really strikes me as strange is the core message. NCfOM sympathizes with people that long for times that they perceived were simpler. Doesn't this contradict the whole youth-obsessed Hollywood zeitgeist? Then again, the movie is not a plea for us to return to the "good old days". Instead, it reminds us that they are gone forever and it definitely does not glorify what replaced them. To try to stem the dark tide by yourself is as one character puts it "vanity".
One more thing (I bet you're getting tired of me saying that). McCarthy's uber-violent western novel Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West and his post-apocalyptic masterpiece The Road are making their way to theaters very soon. Anyone else excited?