No Country for Old Men
Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
Paramount Vantage, 2007
By Doug Nayler
From the very first screening, the hype was completely insane. Every early review by even the most hardened, cynical, pretentious critics was as if it were the messageboard post of a fanboy who’d just finished a new piece of Raising Arizona fan-fic. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing: “Their best since The Big Lebowski.” Who says this? Who ever makes a statement that bold? And yet, for No Country for Old Men, every critic at Cannes was falling over the others to be the first to sing its praises. What masterstroke had the elusive Coen brothers created here? And why can’t I see it for another six months?! This is the level of expectation with which I entered No Country for Old Men. How could it ever possibly be met?
Llewellyn Moss (John Brolin) is a stoic, grizzled man of the range who stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong. Mixed among the sun-baked bodies, Moss finds a satchel filled with $2 million. Moss soon decides that he should head out on the lamb, as the owners of the money will probably want it back at some point. This is a good decision on his part as Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a completely deranged sociopath of the completely unstoppable variety, is searching for Moss and the money by mowing down anybody that stands between them. And a few others just for kicks. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) meanwhile is expected to pick up the pieces, but instead finds himself wistfully pondering the point of his life spent stemming a tide of ruthlessness that never seems to end.
Adapted from the novel by Cormac McCarthy, in some ways No Country does for West Texas what Fargo did for Minnesota. This story is almost inconceivable without the impossibly bright and inhospitably barren plains where everything goes wrong. However, unlike Fargo, this film contains no parodic, self-winkery, or kitschy quirk. No Country for Old Men plays it straight, and in a completely unpretentious fashion. And this gives me true, teary-eyed hope for cinema yet to come: if the Coen brothers can successfully abandon quirkiness then maybe Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze, and every other fucking director that’s ripped off all of them in the past five years can do so as well. One of the most unsettling things about this film is the subtle, untempered eye with which it is watched. No music to build the mood. No slick, jumpy, unbelievably oversaturated cinematography. Just stillness, wind, and horror.
The performances are completely spot-on across the board. Brolin centres the film perfectly as the newest in a long line of uncommunicative Coen protragonists. Tommy Lee Jones brings total believability to his old hero at odds with the myths he once took for granted. But it is most certainly Bardem who faces the most challenging role in this film. What part has been more stereotypically overdone than the inhuman killer? What could possibly be brought to it to make it interesting again? And yet, Bardem does something genuinely interesting with the role. He is not tortured by his violence, or troubled by his madness. He isn’t aroused or excited by it. He just does the things he does because they’re what he must do. And there’s never a glimmer in his eye of any question of why this is. And this is what makes him so terrifying and fascinating to watch.
There is a rub, however, and one that cannot be overlooked. If there is a place that No Country for Old Men could quite likely lose a viewer that’s been on board all the way along, it’s at approximately three-quarters of the way through. Here we find an almost fundamental aspect of film narrative construction that is completely subverted. I will say nothing more on the fact, but it will just as likely make one praise the genius of the Coen’s originality as it will turn an audience member right off. After a few days of great internal turmoil over this matter, I have submitted to the former case. Thus, begrudgingly, I cave to the popular critical opinion. Thus far, No Country for Old Men is the best film I’ve seen of 2007.
