No Country for Old Men (2007)
*This post discusses, to a certain extent, the ending of the film.
Anyone who goes to the movies as often as many of us do carries around, consciously or sub-consciously, an image of a “perfect movie.” Like addicts looking for their next fix, movie obsessives see, talk and write about virtually everything, and hope for the next film that perfectly, or nearly perfectly captures their inner idea of whatever kind of movie they happen to be seeing. I came across one of those films in 2004 in Sideways, a film that I loved intially and have continued to carry around since. Sideways is my idea of a perfect human comedy. I find every performance, every scene, every bit, to be graceful, warm, intelligent, and supremely moving. I came upon another of those films last year in Pan’s Labyrinth. If you’re really, really lucky, you get one maybe once a year, maybe one every other year.
This year that film is No Country for Old Men. This is the film that I hope for every time I walk into a thriller. The film, like many great films, feels inevitable. It seems that Tommy Lee Jones was always meant to play Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a variation on the creaky, no bullshit persona that Jones has been perfecting for the better part of twenty five years. It seems that Josh Brolin, always a badass, authoritative presence, was meant to embody Llewelyn Moss, a character that utilizes everything that Brolin brings to a film when he’s on. Brolin, like Jones, seems like he would be comfortable in another era of movies, which is another way of saying that he actually looks like a man. He keys into Moss’s desperation but still manages to be charismatic, likable even, without shortcoming the self-absorption of the character.
I can’t say that I guessed that Javier Bardem was meant to play a villain as iconic as Anton Chigurh, but I’m happy to be surprised. Bardem’s irrepressible charisma lightens what could be a problematic part. Chigurh isn’t a character but a Grand Literary Idea, and that can be impossible for even the swiftest of actors. Bardem is the Grim Reaper, the Typhoid Mary of the kind of apathy fueled corruption that is slowly eroding the society that Sheriff Bell may have not treasured (the film isn’t that sentimental) but at least understood.
Finally, the film feels inevitable for the Coen Brothers, who after some great films, some uneven films, and one bad one (I’m talking about O Brother, yes, I feel comfortable admitting I hate that well shot, God awful redneck boonie movie) have now made their best film. No Country for Old Men is based on a novel by the beloved Cormac McCarthy, but it feels as if it has always been in the back of the brothers’ heads, the film that has fueled their other tales of greed, death and corruption. Some have implied that No Country is the first Coen Brothers film to discard the snarky bullshit, but I disagree. Their brilliant Blood Simple (my favorite of the Coens films before this one) while playful, has a mournful quality. Fargo and the underappreciated The Man Who Wasn’t There may have that deadpan, vaguely postmodern thing going on, but they also deal in a bewilderment, an existential despair, that comes to the forefront in their new film.
I recently watched Melville’s Le Samourai for the first time. What is there to say about that film? It’s perfect. It elevates a very familiar story to the level of art in the precise brilliance of its execution. A similar thought occured to me as I was watching the long scene in the beginning of No Country for Old Men as Moss investigates the bizarre blood bath that he’s discovered while hunting. The scene plays much longer than most thrillers have accustomed us to expect, and is a nearly overpowering achievement in pure film craft. The scene, at the risk of overusing the word, is perfect.
If No Country for Old Men was merely a chase film between Moss and Chigurh, with Bell making an obligatory third act appearance similar to McDormand’s in Fargo, then the film would still be the best I’ve seen all year. The third act though, as you’ve no doubt heard, strives for something else entirely. We suddenly realize that the story we’re seeing is just another of Bell’s lost stories of inexplicable meanness and sadness, yet another reason why the lines of his face seem to cut so much deeper than anyone else, yet another reason why his eyes, while alive, seem to droop down to his chin. No Country for Old Men begins as a thriller and ends as an elusive ghost story. A mourning for something the characters don’t entirely understand to be missing to begin with.
As gracefully as the Coens handle the third act sigh that occurs in place of a climax, it’s the final scene between Chigurh and Moss’s wife, Carla Jean (Kelly McDonald) that elevates No Country for Old Men into the realm of shattering masterpiece. In this scene we realize that even Chigurh has a certain honor, actually more honor than Llewelyn, and that the final death would have been entirely avoidable. Chigurh’s line to Carla Jean, something along the lines of “He could have saved you but he chose to use you to save himself” is the stuff of nightmares. The next image, of Chigurh checking his boots, has the quiet, unlanced dread of the ending of the original The Vanishing. This image, more than many even good movies before it, drives home the price of greed, the cost of selling yourself to the highest bidder.
★★★★
November 27th, 2007 at 7:50 am
well done
November 27th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Great review, chas. It’s hard to complain about this movie, but I’m going to anyway. Despite the film’s perfect construction(indeed, I can’t imagine changing a single frame) and off-the-charts entertainment value, I still feel the contrivance of the picture. Those characters don’t live for me; they’re beautiful but inert. They do their part, exactly as they’re supposed to do it without a hair out of place. They speak their lines and then disappear.
Compare these with the characters from another film you mentioned, Pan’s Labyrinth. The characters in that film, though no less “types,” feel lived in and authentic, as if you could tell dozens of other stories from their lives. In No Country, everything seems to exist only to suit the story. It’s hard to imagine the characters doing anything else.
And the Coen’s have made great, living characters: look at The Big Lebowski. I did love the movie, but it’s not quite a classic, and it’s not quite perfect, after all.
November 27th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Worth the wait Chuck. Thanks.
The beautiful thing for me about the Coens is that everyone who likes them has their favorite and least favorite, but everyone still likes them (having said that: O Brother rules!)
The funny thing is that the very thing that so many people hate about the ending is what I love. It’s a thing of poetry. It makes you feel and it defies intellectualization.
***Spoilers***
I agree with Travis to a point. There is a certain precise clockwork coldness to the movie, but the ending is a hammer blow and it’s gotten me back into the theater 2 more times already. Bell’s last line “And then I woke up.” And that look he gives his wife. Cut to black.
The heart of the film for me is Carla Jean’s simple defiance. Chigurh is just doing what he’s doing because that’s what he said he was going to do. He gives her a 50/50 chance which is as close as he can come to kindness, and she rejects it knowing what will happen to her because her life has more meaning than the flip of a coin. One of the many great moments in the film and probably my favorite.
November 27th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Thank you guys, love to hear from all of you.
I would agree with Travis if the film had followed the outline of a more traditional cat and mouse movie, but the ending, along with that wrenching final scene with Carla Jean, makes it impossible for me to call the movie “cold.” Like The Man Who Wasn’t There (a film this has more in common with than many have acknowledged), the seeming lack of humanity IS the humanity, the detachment is the characters’ detachment, they want to see or feel more and just can’t. Maybe Carla Jean can, but it largely isn’t her story.
Another scene for anyone who wants to call No Country “cold”, the goodbye between Carla and Llewelyn in the bus.
November 27th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I didn’t call the movie cold, nor do I mean that it is cold.
November 28th, 2007 at 5:19 am
My apologies for confusing the issue Travis, I read your and Craig’s responses and combined them in my head and went off in a third, mutant direction. I’m not really buying what you actually wrote either though.
My first reply would be that I simply don’t agree that the characters are inert. Where you see inert I see spare exposition. But the exposition is there, I feel the Coens paint a full picture of the Moss marriage, and I could imagine them in another story. Jones has enough trembling regret and pathos for ten other movies (though, admittedly the part to a point depends on the established Jones iconography.
Bardem, well, he’s not inert, but he’s not a full character either, and he’s not supposed to be, as I said in my post, he’s a BIG IDEA, but he’s scary and brilliantly played.
My second response would be, let’s suppose your right about the characters not being alive, should that always be the primary motivation of a great movie? I can’t, for instance, imagine too many characters in later Stanley Kubrick pictures to be leading lives outside of their stories, and some of them barely even do that.
The Big Lebowski is an apples and oranges scenario. Yes, those characters appear to be more “alive”, but then again, they aren’t appearing in a morality play about the erosion of our civilization either.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
this post has nothing to so with No Country.
are you going to see the mist?
November 29th, 2007 at 6:40 am
I guess today is another lucky day for you Rachel.
January 1st, 2008 at 11:59 am
Excellent review Chuck. I was a little surprised to learn that you hate “O Brother Where Art Thou”. I don’t think its their best film but it’s clever and Clooney is hilarious. I’m looking forward to your thoughts on “There Will Be Blood.”
January 1st, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Thanks David.
You know “O Brother” is just one of those movies that rubs me the wrong way. It makes me feel claustrophobic, the film hits the same “aren’t we cute and eccentric” notes over and over and I just wanted out. Clooney is very good, and the film is obviously succeeding in what it wants to be, but I just don’t get the popularity. I really like Raising Arizona, and Lebowski, but I’m hoping that the Coens do for their comedy what they just did for their thriller with “No Country” and that’s par down the self-conscious art house games in favor of something that just hits you in the gut, maybe Burn After Reading will be that comedy, the script is certainly quite good.