No Country for Old Men may well be my favorite Coen Brothers movie. It’s dark, aggressive, and relentless, just like its main villain Anton Chigurh.
The movie has little dialogue, as it just keeps moving along, and never stops coming for you. When characters do speak their words are sparse and terse. Our protagonist, Llewelyn, is not really our hero. We do follow him in nearly every scene, and emphasize with him as he is stalked and hunted by Chigurh. Due to his bizarre and grizzly initial discovery, Llewelyn is just trying to make a quick buck and get away with it. He barely acknowledges his kind and loving wife. Yet when his body is discovered towards the end of the movie, I felt for him and heard a woman two rows behind me actually gasp in shock.
Our hero, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, only has a few scenes with short and beautiful lines of dialogue, including the breathtaking monologue that closes the movie. He is an old, tired and gentle man who struggles to understand the depths that the players in our tragedy are sinking to for a bag of money. He knows that this country, as things turn out, is no place for an old man.
The pacing of No Country for Old Men is what really sells this movie to me as the Coens finest. A quiet sense of dread permeates every scene. It is as if around every still corner lies a gust of violence.
Josh Brolin resurrected his career with his stern, focused performance as Llewelyn. It is said that he lobbied for a part that was already promised to Brad Pitt. Tommy Lee Jones, as the aging Sheriff, is the beating heart of the movie. His sense of heartache and sad disappointment at the turn the world has taken is palpable in every look that shows in his eyes. Kelly Macdonald as Carla Jean – Llewelyn’s wife – is a standout as she tries to bring kindness and common sense to a man who just won’t listen, and Woody Harrelson can only be described as a perfect and hilarious extended cameo.
Of course, the star of the show is Javier Bardem. His dead eyes, improbable haircut, and a slow relentlessness in stalking his prey reminds me of a modern day Michael Meyers.This is one lone stalker that you feel you might actually encounter, embodying Chigurh with every gesture. After his international breakout performance as Raoul Silva – a Bond antagonist in Skyfall – his agent asked Javier Bardem who he’d like to work the most with in the US. As a seasoned cinephile, he replied: “The Coen brothers”. His agent reportedly amicably laughed and replied, “My friend, that’s impossible”. And yet here we are.
No Country for Old Men was shot just before cinematographer Roger Deakins decided digital was the way to go, and it remains one of his most beautiful. Carter Burwell scores, as always, with the Coens with a soundtrack that is more a collection of dreadful sounds and suggestions. Again, in this picture silence is everything along with the empty space. In the desert scenery, in the sounds. Behind Chigurh’s eyes.
Cormac McCarthy, who is one of the great American novelists – wrote the novel that No Country for Old Men is based upon. I am a big fan of the writer and this is, to me, the best adaptation of his work so far. Even though I did also love Ridley Scott’s The Counselor, and there’s a line that goes around two blocks of people ready to tell you how wrong I am on that one.
No Country for Old Men recently received the Criterion treatment. It is, like I said, my favorite from the Coens. It came at a height of their career: it was followed by A Serious Man, a film that despite the title has me gagging on the floor belly up every time I re-watch it, and True Grit, their Spielberg collaboration that turned into their biggest commercial success. Watch this movie if you are ready to take it seriously: it’ll leave a mark on you that’ll stay.
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