No Country For Old Men Review

The world is a fickle thing. Constantly swayed and changed by its societies, always in flux, never settling for a single moment. It is in flux because of people and furthermore its people are always in flux. Some stick with “traditional values” others label themselves as “progressives,” most of them go forward with the best intentions. This ever-changing fabric is of coursed held loosely together with the sanity of time. After all, all things take time to build and all things take time to erode away. One generation follows the other, each one carrying on pieces of their predecessors while at the same time deconstructing the older status quos and building their own unique society. Because of time’s patience, most of us have the time to adapt to our world through reason but what about when we can’t? What about when things just seem to be zooming by us, leaving us in the dust. Leaving us helpless with our own devices to analyze and rationalize a world we never new existed, let alone understood. “No Country for Old Men” begs such questions. Desperately.

I fear to relay the mere premise of “No Country for Old Men” because it sounds like too much a conventional thriller: a man in West Texas stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone wrong and discovers a satchel filled with millions of dollars. Drug dealers being the fiscal types that they are, send their most powerful weapon to retrieve their money from him: a cold blooded killer named Anton Chigurh. Meanwhile, the county sheriff also discovers the blood-bath and from that point trouble ensues. Oh! But “No Country for Old Men” is so much more than that. It’s about relationships, and greed and miscalculation and West Texas. Above all it’s about West Texas. From its characters, to cinematography to its tragic subtext it seeks to embody the culture it catalogues.

As I mentioned earlier, “No Country for Old Men” has the fixing of conventional thrillers. However, its premise and plot are merely a canvas for its artists to create. Take for example its characters. The closest thing to a protagonist the film has is Llewelyn Moss, a retired welder Vietnam War veteran. Now, the thing we must understand about Moss, about all the character in “No Country for Old Men” in fact, is that he isn’t stupid. He’s lived in that part of the country for years, he knows, or at least has a good idea about, how drug dealers would react if he took their money. If there is one thing he possess it is hubris. It’s not of the intellect of course; he just thinks he’s in shallower shit than he actually is.

Even if Moss isn’t the protagonist, Anton Chigurh is still the antagonist. Some may try to label Chigurh as psychotic or pure evil. Such a categorization is close but not quite true. Chigurh believes he is a prophet of destiny. He flips coins to determine people’s fate (though other times he doesn’t, which makes the process seem like a formality. Then again he is the prophet). One important thing to remember, though, is that he is still an evil psychotic person. So while he believes himself a mediator of pure destiny he is tinged with a bias, which is appropriate when we consider him in the context of the sheriff. The actor who plays Chigurh, Javier Bardem, deserved the Oscar he received for this role. With the little dialogue he is given, he is forced to flesh out the character with body language and subtle facial control. He squeezes every once of potential out of this character.

Last of the most central characters is the sheriff, Tom Bell. He is an old, desperate man played brilliantly by Tommy Lee Jones. Jones seems to know this sort of character too well. His face is always solemn but never melodramatic. He speaks frankly, in his own none frank sort of way, constantly enforcing into viewers’ minds the ludicrous bloodbath unfolding before him. He also always seems to be step behind Chigurh’s and Moss’ violent game of cat mouse: a protector marred by the fact that he can no longer protect. There is a quintessential line at the beginning of the film as we listen to Bell narrate as the camera pans over West Texas countryside: “I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job … A man would have to put his soul at hazard [now though.] He'd have to say, ‘O.K., I'll be part of this world.’” This line, perhaps more than any other, encapsulates Bell. He’s afraid of this world not because it might kill him. He’s afraid because he’s not sure that if he died trying to change it that it would actually make a difference. He wants to fight this world, not be digested by it.

The Coen Brothers were nominated for cinematography and editing for this film, in addition to Best Picture and directing of course. Their diligent craft can be seen throughout the film. They never waste a second of time, nor make a scene pass by too fast, they keep the pieces flowing naturally and powerfully. They end on a powerful, even if anticlimactic and subtle, note that truly brings all pieces of the film, in terms of subtext, together.

You may have noticed that I have spent much time going on about characters, directing, editing, and other such things much more than any actual events in the film. That’s because ultimately “No Country for Old Men” isn’t about its story. It’s about its characters in its world. Its violent, dark, and seemingly unintelligible world.

*edit: Roger Deakins was nominated for the cinematography Oscar, not the Coens.