Directed by Joel and Ethan CoenI hadn't watched No Country for Old Men since its release nearly a decade ago, but I still vividly remembered every scene. It's that kind of movie: whatever you think of it, it makes a lasting impression.
United States, 2007
*Review contains plot spoilers
It's intensely scary, to start with. No Country for Old Men builds tension with ruthless patience. Everything about the film has an eerie starkness. The action unfolds in vast Texas deserts and empty motel rooms. There is no score. Even a horror film score would have offered a certain comfort, informing the viewer how to feel, and unconsciously reminding them of the film's artifice. In No Country for Old Men, the silence is unsettling. Every small sound gains sinister significance - the hiss of a cattle stungun, the beeping of a tracking device, the muffled patter of shoeless feet on concrete. When shotgun blasts tear through the quiet with shocking violence, it's enough to give you a panic attack.
The story begins as a straightforward cat-and-mouse thriller. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles on the aftermath of a botched drug deal in the desert - bullet-ridden corpses, abandoned stacks of cocaine, and a satchel full of hundred-dollar bills. He takes the money, unaware that a tracker is hidden in the cash, putting psychopathic bounty hunter Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) on his tail, while a world-weary lawman (Tommy Lee Jones) surveys the carnage they leave behind.
The performances are across-the-board excellent. Josh Brolin plays a prototypical Coen Brothers character - an everyman who, through his own foolish decisions and thoughtless ambition, gets into deep trouble. Tommy Lee Jones brings a wounded soul to Sheriff Bell, a good man who has been spiritually exhausted by all the violence and evil he encounters on the job. Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald puts on an impressively believable Texan accent as Llewelyn's wife Carla Jean, a woman who initially seems naive but reveals surprising depths of courage.
Yet the standout is clearly Javier Bardem as the evil Chigurh. Just as Llewelyn is a classic Coen character, Chigurh is an archetypal figure of Cormac McCarthy, who wrote the novel No Country for Old Men. He's an unfathomable figure of pure malignance, a walking embodiment of evil, but bizarrely principled in his predatory instincts - a cousin to the Judge of Blood Meridian or Malinka of The Counselor. Playing an individual of total evil is a challenge for any actor (see Cameron Diaz's admirably committed but not-quite-convincing performance in The Counselor as evidence of how it can fall flat), but Bardem rises to the challenge with terrifying results. It's partially his physical appearance - the handsome Bardem stifles his natural charisma behind a freakishly incongruous pageboy haircut and alarming bulbous eyes. He moves with the steady precision and quiet of a predatory cat. Chigurh is amused by his own sadism and enjoys toying with his prey. Most memorably, he cruelly taunts a bewildered old man working at a gas station. "What's the most you've ever lost in a coin toss?" Chigurh growls, cryptically making it known that the old man's life is on the line, for seemingly no other reason than his attempts at small talk were bothersome.
That sequence makes clear what a harmonic convergence of very distinctive artists No Country for Old Men is. It displays the Coen Brothers' penchant for quirky characters, rich regional language, and darkly comic dialogue; at the same time, it exemplifies Cormac McCarthy's terse prose and fatalistic philosophy. No Country for Old Men is as accomplished and technically brilliant as anything the Coen Brothers have directed. It's all in the details. I've already mentioned the immersive sound design, but Roger Deakins' cinematography is just as noteworthy. A chase through the desert, backlit by a budding sunrise, is all the more heart-stopping for its harsh beauty. Deakins' images capture a level of textured detail that feels hyperreal, recalling our animalistic heightened senses when in danger. No Country for Old Men is a masterwork of film craft.
As if typical of both McCarthy and the Coens, No Country for Old Men may begin as a simple thriller, but ultimately upends expectations. The entire film appears to be building towards a showdown between our protagonist and antagonist, one that never comes. The last act does resolve the story, but not in the dramatically satisfying way you would expect - it offers no catharsis. This may be generically disappointing, but it's exactly the point.
"You make your own destiny" about sums up the ethos of so many American westerns and action films. Even mistakes - like, for example, Llewelyn taking the money - can be corrected with determination and ingenuity, and our hero can ride off triumphantly into the sunset. Cormac McCarthy does not believe that. Llewelyn does, but it does not stop his fate - gunned down ingloriously, a scene that the Coens perversely leave off-screen. Sheriff Bell is ultimately disillusioned of that belief - he may be sheriff, but he is not truly in control. "It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity."
Cormac McCarthy's unrelentingly bleak worldview sometimes strikes me as contrived, but it's also a necessary and humbling corrective to so much of America's mythology, which can be blindly and selfishly optimistic. Fate and evil can overtake anyone, no matter how clever or good. I've read before, though I can't recall where, that Cormac McCarthy has a Catholic conscience without the redemption. His stories are convicted of the existence of evil and mankind's weakness, and there is nothing we can do in our own power to escape either. The best we can do is, like Sheriff Bell, be resigned to the existence of evil and hold a faint hope for the afterlife - represented by his dream, where he searches for his late father through a snowstorm, knowing that he will be waiting for him with a warm fire ready. Or, like Carla Jean, we can stick to our principles even in the face of inescapable fate. "I ain't gonna call it. The coin don't have no say."
I'll admit that I yearned for a character equivalent to Fargo's Marge Gunderson or True Grit's Mattie Ross - two characters from other Coen Brothers films whose goodness really has power in a world overtaken by chaos and evil. Some might call that wish sentimental, but I think it's closer to the truth. No Country for Old Men demands and deserves respect. It's the work of masters at the peak of their powers. Yet I admire but do not love it - not in the way I love Fargo or True Grit, or even McCarthy's novel The Road, which may present a massively depressing vision of the apocalypse but leaves room in its moral universe for selfless love that transcends evil.
The BBC Top 10:
- Mulholland Drive
- In the Mood for Love (previously reviewed)
- There Will Be Blood
- Spirited Away
- Boyhood
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- The Tree of Life
- Yi Yi
- A Separation
- No Country for Old Men
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