No Country for Old Men
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Movie Reviews of No Country for Old Men
Movie Review: Who or what was Chigurh? Evil as an essential component of humanity
Summary: 5 Stars
The powerful novels of Cormac McCarthy may lend themselves to interpretation on film and No Country for Old Men has been successfully translated by the Coen brothers and is a superb work of art in its own right. In an interview in a recent magazine, McCarthy indicated he was pleased with the translation of his novel into a film, saying that the film captured the novel. The direct, bleak, no frills dialogue that is a characteristic of McCarthy's novels is captured in the dialogue in the film. Both the novel and the film are disturbing, not only for violent content but also for the philosophical underpinning of the novel and film. As the literary critic Harold Bloom notes, the violence in McCarthy's work is not gratuitous, but plays and essential role in the underlying message and theme of the work. I hope to focus on this underlying philosophy in this review.
The story is that of an everyman, a self contained competent American male against forces that are overpowering even for his rugged native ingenuity. Llewelyn Moss, played superbly by Josh Brolin, discovers where a drug deal gone bad has left all parties (both men an dogs) dead on the field, with neither the money or the drugs taken away. He finds 2 million dollars in payoff money and takes it. However, he violates a basic premise, often explored in the novels of John Bowles, that he should follow his instincts and never second guess himself in such a risky situation. Llewelyn is troubled by the cry of a dying Mexican drug dealer for water and so he fills up an empty milk jug and goes back to the scene of the crimes to give he man water. What a mistake this is and what a price he pays. He is soon pursued by a paid killer, Chigurh, played perfectly by Javier Bardem. He sends his wife to his mother-in-law's home and tries to escape the, and embarks on an escape, leaving his wife Carla (Kelly Macdonald) to escape the pursuit of Chigurh. Because of the string of killings, Chigurh is being tracked by the local sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones. The sheriff becomes somewhat of a narrator and commentator upon the events as they unfold. Chigurh is also followed by a hitman, played by Woody Harrelson, who works for one of the criminal parties left empty handed after the desert shoot out. Much terror follows, making for an intense and suspenseful film that will keep viewers on the edge of their seats.
But who and what is Chigurh? Many, in fact the majority, of reviewers see him as a homicidal maniac, as insane, a psychopathic murderer. But he is more than that. He appears in other McCarthy novels as other similar characters. The most obvious is Judge Holden in the frightening novel Blood Meridian. As Harold Bloom points out, this character is also that of Achilles in The Iliad by Homer. He is the embodiment of the dark animalistic homicidal nature of mankind which like tornadoes and earthquakes and hurricanes, is part of nature, is a force of nature, is often unavoidable, and which follows the rules of natural forces and not the rules of man. He also follows the rules of chance rather than the rules of man, as evidenced by his use of a flip of a coin to determine who may live or die.
It is the worn-out and wise Sherriff that senses this in his pursuit of the killer Chigurh and his gathering of the endless clues that point to both the brutality and cruelty of Chigurh. The Sherriff has a dialogue with an estranged relative about the death of one of their ancestors, a lawman, who is killed in the line of duty. The comments of the Sherriff and his dialogue with family members and colleagues, reveals his philosophy that this evil force will burn itself out, reach some point of conclusion, and will move away. This is a very different view of how evil should be dealt with in Western, and specifically American culture, where we must fight evil until the bitter end rather than seeing evil as a storm that will one day move on. The strength of the film is absolute fidelity to this philosophy on the nature of evil.
With a compelling story, superb acting, penetrating dialogue, and the ability to challenge thoughtful viewer's preconceived notions, this film is excellent.
Movie Review: No country for old men...or women, really!
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow what a terrific film. Not many films can get away with being over two hours long, but this movie kept my attention for all of its 122 minutes. The plot is loosely based on "A Simple Plan" in which someone finds some drug money by chance, and intent on keeping this, puts himself and his family in danger. The way in which the story is told owes much to Pulp Fiction, with several groups of characters who never meet each other, or whom only do so en passant. Likewise, there is a debt owed to Psycho; where the audience is wrong-footed into thinking that one character is the star of the film, only to have that character give way to another person part way through the film. The Coen brothers go one better than Hitchcock, however, and have a third good guy (Woody Harrelson from Cheers) take over halfway through, only to be blown to bits a short while later.
There is some controversy over whether this is a western. It's debatable, but my vote goes to "yes". There's classic western themes of good against bad, people both good and bad operating outside the law, a law which proves ineffectual due to the huge extent of gun ownership, the setting on the Tex-Mex border, the scene with horses, and the white cowboy hats worn by all four of the principle good guys. There's even an "old timer" there to tell tales and give advice.
In contrast to the white hat-wearers, Chiguhr, Javier Bardem's baddie wears only black for most of the film(in fact it has to be said, he has a very gay sense of style, from his hair, to his cropped jacket and tight buttock-revealing trousers...notably he only seems to be enjoying himself when on the floor strangling a policeman who is lying on top of him in a very homoerotic fashion). The star of the film is undoubtedly this villain, the peculiar looking and acting Javier Bardem, and he has a truth to his character consitent with his zealous belief in principles. His callousness might seem unbelievable, but it's clear that this is an instinct which ensures his survival at times when lesser baddies fall by the wayside. He is consistent, whereas the good people are inconstant, lose concentration, or make unnecessary allowances.
Josh Brolin plays the everyman character who finds the money, being a resourceful Vietnam veteran with McGuyver-like skills at making things, now making a meagre living and living in a trailer home. He's likeable despite being trigger happy and a little amoral at times.
Tommy Lee Jones's Sherrif decides to retire BEFORE he gets old, having found many old men killed during the course of his investigation (hence the title). By contrast, women don't come off very well in this film. It's almost irrelevant whether the main female character lives or dies (it's not shown), and most women are either there as support for men, a nagging mother-in-law, or harridan-like gate-keepers. Only the final scene of Kelly MacDonald's character Carla, shows her to have any character, and in this one scene she does what no man has done before; she refuses to play Chiguhr's game. How this is resolved isn't seen on screen, but it's interesting that no women are seen to be killed in this movie.
In contrast to Pulp Fiction, the film benefits from the minimalist score. There's no sweeping James Horner strings or Danny Elfman cellos here. The sound is presented as though it's all naturalistic, for example the first ten minutes or so are accompanied only by the sound of the wind, giving the impression of the stark, desolate landscape much better than a score could ever do.
Apart from Brolin and Jones, the film is cast mainly with lesser-known actors who all put in competent performances, leading us to concentrate on the duels and gun battles between the four main characters. Although there isn't a normal resolution to the film, it does seem quite satisfying at the end that Jones's character is still alive, even though he doesn't succeed in capturing Chiguhr.
I would recommend this film to anyone who likes Pulp Fiction, Westerns, and intelligent cinema.
Movie Review: Finely Filmed Dark Parable of Our Times
Summary: 5 Stars
Before even watching the movie, one should take into account that on the surface, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN should be a good movie. The film is based upon a novel by Cormac McCarthy. It's a Coen brothers' picture, meaning that Joel and Ethan Coen wrote, directed, edited, and co-produced the picture. The cast is composed of mostly talented, though underrated actors, including Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, and Tommy Lee Jones. I realize that many times movies with similar credentials have been complete flops. Thankfully, that isn't the case with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.
The Coens return to the type of filmmaking, like that of BLOOD SIMPLE and FARGO, that gave them a following. The film revolves around three very distinct and different characters. First there is Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) an everyman slacker. Despite his lack of ambition, his wife loves him and they have a good relationship. Llewellyn stumbles upon what appears to have been a shootout over a drug deal gone bad amidst a circle of vehicles in the back country. Slaughtered bodies lie scattered across the field. Llewellyn locates the apparent "survivor" of the massacre who lies dead beneath a tree along with a briefcase full of money. Llewellyn gives in to the temptation and takes the money, thereby placing himself on the top of the list of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a murderous psychopath who sometimes decides the fate of his victims with the flip of a coin.
Chigurh is the second focal character in the film. Chigurh is another symbolic character that seems to represent everything that has gone wrong with the U.S. He is a murderer and stops at nothing to get his way. Yet, there is an almost twisted logic to some of his actions. He never contradicts the coin he carries--it is his lord. He also never breaks a promise; a trait that would be a good thing in most people, but a trait that becomes horrifying in psychopathic murderer. Chigurh chases Llewellyn across the country with a ruthless abandon. Along the way, Chigurh settles the score with other men that have crossed his path before.
The final focal character is sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). Bell is on the verge of retirement. His father was a lawman as was his father before him. The world has changed dramatically since Bell was a young officer. Violent crime and illegal drugs coming across the border are common occurrences. Bell feels that he is the last of dying breed; the last of an old tradition. He has the nose of a detective and is chasing Chigurh and trying to catch the demon before he causes anymore violence, but he always seems to be just one step behind. He doesn't realize it at the time, but his hunt to capture Chigurh is the last of his career before he retires to live in a place that truly is "no country for old men."
I really enjoyed NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The movie is serious, but has comical moments that relieve the tension. The cinematography and settings are almost majestic in their simplicity and barrenness. The acting is top of the line and Bardem, Brolin, and Jones each give great performances. Even though there are no car chases, super powers, sword fights, or pirates, the film kept me on the edge of my seat as I tried to guess what was going to happen next, root for Llewellyn Moss to escape, and hope that Ed Tom Bell would meet Chigurh in a final showdown.
I realize that even though I liked the film, there are many who won't. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is a dark and depressing picture. It offers no solace, no comfort, very little joy, and paints a picture of the future as being almost hopeless. It also doesn't have a nice, tight ending. I liked the film as a work of film, but when I left the theatre after seeing the movie for the first time, I was so saddened by what I had seen that I cried for a few minutes in my car. Very few dark films have touched me like that. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN is without a doubt one of the best movies of 2007. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys well-crafted movies.
Movie Review: Of what is past, or passing, or to come
Summary: 5 Stars
Being the arthouse cinema fan that I am, over the last 10 or so years I would occasionally watch a Hollywood movie for entertainment, but I gave up any hope of seeing anything truly artistic from that source. It was about time I was chastened for my arrogance, and sure enough, I came across 'No Country for Old Men' a couple of weeks ago. What attracted me was the title lifted from Yeats; I correctly guessed that it must have been the title of the book on which the film was based, but at that stage I had not yet read the book nor was even aware of its existence.
What a feast! A violent modern western on the surface; a dark and bitter existential meditation underneath; actors working their socks off; solid direction and camera work; a minimalistic soundtrack that is as un-Hollywoodian as they get; all of this works together and keeps one impressed non-stop.
The layered structure of the film is quite ambitious, but thankfully, the directors do not spell things out for the viewer. If anything, certain things were made less obvious than they are in the book, and that enhanced the overall impact. For example, it takes the full length of the film, including the paradoxical ending, to bring the viewer to the realisation that the protagonist of the story is Sheriff Bell - the least likely of the three candidates for that role. This realisation has quite an impact by itself, but it also takes care of the loose ends of the surface plot - not by tying them up in any logical way but by rendering them irrelevant, which is so much better. The film is about the sheriff, and as far as he is concerned, there are no loose ends to the plot: he lost on all counts; the bag guy won. The book is rather more direct about matters like who got the money in the end, and after the film this certainly felt like a weakness: what is the point of trying not to disappoint the readers who do not get the point, if you know what I mean... To be fair, the book is not always direct, but the film is even less so. For instance, McCarthy pointedly avoided describing the deaths of Moss and his wife in gory detail (in sharp contrast to the overall style of the book); the death of the former is even narrated by a third party rather than directly by the author. The film goes further, merely implying both these deaths.
The tense scene where Chigurh and the sheriff appear to be standing at the opposite sides of a motel room door is not to be found in the book. There are several ways of interpreting what happened there, and each of the possibilities enriches the story in its own way. My guess is that the two characters are not actually present there at the same time and that when Chigurh calmly observes the flicker of light through the punched-out hole in the lock, this is in fact just an image in Sheriff Bell's mind - a visual manifestation of his fear, which we are given a chance to see as yet another hint at the fact that the sheriff is, after all, the main character of the story. Of course, this cannot be literally the image in his mind because the sheriff does not know what Chigurh looks like - but the viewer does...
A few more words about that infamous ending. I always like it when a film ends at an unexpected point, but here this old trick achieves so much more than delivering a parting surprise. Yes, the final sequence comes from the book verbatim, but unlike the book, the film is wide open at that point because of some small changes to the plot, so what the viewer gets is an anticlimax by the action genre standards and a knockout artistically. A character describing his dream is a staple of arthouse cinema, and here we get not one but two dreams, told to us by the downbeat Tommy Lee Jones, alone in the frame, in such a thick Texan accent that I had to rewind and switch on the subtitles. Everything falls into place, except for the things that, as it dawns on us, do not matter. And can there be a better punch line than "And then I woke up", followed immediately by the credits?
Movie Review: A Return to Form for the Coen bros.
Summary: 5 Stars
After two lackluster efforts - the bland romantic comedy, Intolerable Cruelty (Widescreen Edition) and the unnecessary remake of The Ladykillers (Widescreen Edition) - the Coen brothers return to form with a vengeance with No Country for Old Men. Even though it is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy, the subject matter is very familiar territory for the Coens. The story revolves around a bag of money and the desperate quest by several men to acquire it and who are more than willing to kill for it. Sound familiar? Blood Simple (Director's Cut), Fargo (Special Edition) and (rather humourously) The Big Lebowski (Widescreen Collector's Edition) are past Coen brothers films that feature a similar story so it is certainly material that they are drawn to and the results speak for themselves: critically-lauded and the recipient of numerous awards including four Academy Awards.
Javier Bardem is chillingly effective as a sociopathic killer who sometimes lets his victims decide their fate with a coin toss. Like other cold-blooded killers in Coen brothers films (the Dane in Miller's Crossing, Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink, and Gaear Grimsrud in Fargo) Chigurh is an enigmatic unstoppable force of nature. In contrast, Sheriff Bell is the film's moral voice of reason and who better than Tommy Lee Jones with his kind, weathered face and equally weathered voice that instantly suggests years of life experience. He conveys the intelligence of his character by the way he works a crime scene, quickly deducing what happens through keen powers of observation much like Marge Gunderson in Fargo. Unlike Marge, however, Bell has seen better days and does not share her optimism. There is a tired sadness in his eyes that says so much about his character.
Roger Deakins' superb cinematography perfectly captures the harsh, desolate West Texas landscape and how its vast expanse dwarfs the characters. They are at its mercy as much as they are with each other. The Coens have made a nihilistic thriller reminiscent of ones made in the 1970s.
"The Making of No Country for Old Men" takes a look at how this film came together. Producer Scott Rudin brought the book to the Coens. They liked the cinematic possibilities and how it could be adapted into a genre film that subverts genre. This is a fairly standard featurette but everyone speaks eloquently about the film.
"Working with the Coens" features the cast and crew speaking admiringly of working with the Coen brothers with a lot of their crew having worked with them for years.
Finally, there is "Diary of a Country Sheriff" which takes a look at Sheriff Bell and how his character is a meditation on aging. He pursues Chigurh but does not understand him or what motivates his actions. The Coens and the cast talk about these two characters and their contrasting takes on life.