**NOTE: This review freely discusses the final scenes of the film, so be forewarned of spoilers.
Strange, that after three viewings, I’m still at a loss to identify what exactly No Country For Old Men is. The main storyline featuring Llewelyn Moss’s (Josh Brolin) discovery of $2 million in drug money and killer Anton Chirgurh’s (Javier Bardem) subsequent pursuit of him are the makings of a fine crime thriller. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell’s (Tommy Lee Jones) investigation adds an element of a police procedural to film, but after much of the main action concludes, the film curiously stays with him for an additional 20 minutes. If you ask the Coen Brothers, they’d call the film a comedy, but perhaps it’s more of an absurdist drama, a comment on the randomness of crime and violence. Its lack of a clear identity is one of its mysteries, and in attempting to identity the parts of No Country, one begins to get at its intent.
The film is set near the Texas/Mexico border in 1980, when drug-related violence was at a peak from illegal trades across the border. However, if not for specific time markers, we might think the film is set in a post-apocalyptic world. In one scene, as Moss runs on foot from a group of Mexican drug dealers, a bolt of lightning splits the sky. Another scene sets a gritty standoff in an eerily quiet street that only offers parked cars as cover. Jones’s aged Sheriff Bell explains in his opening monologue, he doesn’t know what time make of this new world’s crime. The darkness and brutality of the violence he’s faced with has no logic or reasoning, and it appears to him that the world around him is becoming just as bleak.
Anton Chigurh presents himself as a product of this environment, and his identity is a mystery in itself. Bell thinks he’s a ghost. Or is he an incarnation of Death? Both theories are refuted in one scene that shows him bandaging a gunshot wound, revealing him to be very much human. Still, Chigurh views himself as more of a force than a man. For him, the murders he commits are not his choice, and he decides people’s fates by a coin toss. “I got here the same way the coin did,” he says. He is simply facilitating our eventual deaths. There is no systematic technique to his killings – he is not a serial killer in this sense – but he does retain a consistent tone and attitude. In several scenes, he speaks calmly to his potential victims, telling one man to “Hold still” and inquiring into another man’s family life. In others, he acts quickly and efficiently, and the Coen Brothers do not cut away from these killings. In this sense, the camera is as unflinching as Chigurh is. If the violence feels gratuitous, Sheriff Bell shares your view.
As the characters move through this bleak world, the pace remains methodical, and there is barely any musical score, with several sequences presnted in near silence. As a result, these scenes take on a chilling, sober air, and we find ourselves drawn to them with an almost animalistic fascination as Llewelyn fights for survival. The dialogue is minimalistic, and though the Coen Brothers claim to have simply opened up Cormac McCarthy’s novel and transcribed the dialogue, the pacing and delivery of it are decidedly Coen-esque. Watch how Javier Bardem takes the time to chew cashews in between lines of the first coin toss scene and raises his eyebrows to emphasize a point just before leaving. Later, a frank exchange between Llewellyn, dressed only a hospital gown, and a salesman elicits a laugh when the man states that, “It’s unusual” for a customer to come in without clothes on. These touches of humor and strangeness seep into the film without ever disturbing the film’s solemnity.
One of the main sources of mystery surrounding the film comes from what at first appears to be an extended epilogue after the main action has ended. The focus is redirected to Bell as he struggles to understand the world he is now a part of, ultimately conceding that he has neither the strength nor the will to actively fight back. A conversation with his uncle, a retired sheriff, convinces him this resignation is for the best; the evil forces in the world are too much for him. The scene that follows presents the film’s only glimmer of hope, a meeting between Llewelyn’s wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) and Chigurh, who she finds in her home. When asked to call Chigurh’s coin toss, she refuses, stating that the coin has no say. Her resistance to Chigurh’s game expresses a belief that the world, Chigurh included, does not need to be the way it is. The scene cuts before we see his actions, but he checks the soles of his shoes in the next shot, and we know from a previous scene where he lifts his feet from a spreading pool of blood that he has killed her. The film returns to Bell for the final scene, ending with his recounts of two dreams featuring his father. He explains how his father never saw these times, and perhaps he wishes he hadn’t either. Reinforcing the theme of changing times is the sound of a clock in the background that is heard after the cut to black and into the credits. In the dream, Bell’s father is “going on ahead” to build a fire in the dark, perhaps a sanctuary in the afterlife of some sort, and in time, Bell will be joining him.
No Country For Old Men is a virtually perfectly edited film; nothing unnecessary is said or shown. It showcases the peak of the Coens’ craftsmanship, every shot a beautiful visualization of McCarthy’s bleak world, every character, no matter how minor, a fleshed out individual. It is a film that exists outside strict genre identity, delivering a potent and uncompromising take on a brutal and violent country.
- Steve Avigliano, 2/10/10
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