A Review of No Country for Old Men.
By Drew Morton
Six years have passed since the Coens left us with their last truly satisfying film The Man Who Wasn’t There. Now, after stumbling through two rather uninspired comedies (Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers), the brothers return with a curious partner, novelist Cormac McCarthy, and a film feels much like their debut effort Blood Simple.
This is not a critique or complaint but a simple fact.
Like Blood Simple, No Country utilizes our knowledge of classical storytelling to tease us with a completely fresh experience. The film begins rather traditionally with retired Vietnam veteran Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) discovering the remnants of a failed drug deal and making off with a satchel filled with two million dollars. Llewelyn is more than aware that the money belongs to someone and begins to prepare for the consequences, consequences he thinks he can easily overcome. However, through his avarice, Llewelyn unleashes an apocalyptic force in the shape of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a hitman who a rival (Woody Harrelson) compares to the bubonic plague. As the hound dog eyed Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) notes in the wake of Chigurh’s handy work, if this ain’t a mess “it’ll do till the mess gets here.”
I’m afraid to be too specific in my overview of the film’s plot due to the fact that, like Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, much of success of No Country for Old Men is tied to the creators’ abilities to skirt spectator expectations. With this being said, this film has to be one of the most tightly constructed pieces I’ve ever seen. The Coens are well known for their affinity for extensive storyboarding, which must have reached Hitchcockian heights with one of the confrontations in this film. Regardless of the meticulous construction and biblical tone of the film, the Coens are still able to bring humor to the table. Much like their utilization of convention however, these moments of humor are almost always used as a false pacifier. For instance, early in the film Llewelyn is chased up a river by a dog. During the sequence, the Coens cut back and forth between the frantic paddling of Llewelyn and the dog. After a few minutes, almost all sense of danger is, pardon the pun, washed away.
That is until the chase meets dry land again.
After screening the film at the Directors Guild this past weekend, the Coens discussed their process of adaptation merely as one brother holding the book open for another while typing. Having not read the book, I kept wondering what each party brought to the film. For instance, was it the Coens decision to treat the climax the way they did? They denied modifying the book and, after briefly sifting through it, I realized they were extremely faithful and that much of film’s playfulness with classical conventions was, in fact, a product of McCarthy’s novel. Through their pairing, which in retrospect seems rather fitting, they have created one of the best films of the year.
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