No Country For Old Men
This is turning out to be quite a year. Admittedly we’re only three weeks in but I’ve been lucky as all the films I’ve seen have been good and now finally the long awaited ‘No Country For Old Men’ by the brilliant Coen brothers is out. Not only is this a welcome return to form after one minor and one major mis-step, they have produced arguably their best film to date and quite possibly an American masterpiece.
The plot is relatively simple and centres on three men – Sheriff Ed Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a resigned and ruminative lawman who is approaching his retirement. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across the aftermath of a drug deal gone sour near the Mexican border and promptly flees the bloodbath with £2 million dollars in cash. Llewellyn is pursued through the Texan badlands not only by Sheriff Bell but also by the lethal assassin Anton Chigurh who has been despatched by the furious drug cartel to retrieve their missing funds by any means necessary.
Javier Bardem is quite simply brilliant as the personification of evil that is Chigura, a force of nature, ‘The Terminator’ with a weirder haircut. He is someone with whom one does not fuck - utterly ruthless, utterly remorseless and utterly terrifying. There is one scene, right toward the end which is simply breathtaking in its presentation of subtle terror and the evil’s at play within our world.
Usual Coen cinematographer Roger Deakins provides the visuals, capturing the hostile Texan desert and motels with his usual brilliant aplomb - with this and ‘The Assassination of Robert Ford’ under his belt he could make a claim for one of the top three cinematographers working today. Curiously the film has no soundtrack, just the occasional use of some clever source music. This makes the sound design and editing all the more direct and effective during a number of excruciatingly tense scenes as Chigruh skilfully prowls his prey.
I cannot stress what an absolute joy this film is - proper, adult film-making that skilfully weaves it’s mediation on life and death, good and evil into a gripping chase western noir. The characterisations and performances are magnetic leaving you anxious, demanding to find out what happens next. I’m a huge Cohen fan yet this even eclipses the heights of great films like ‘Miller’s Crossing‘, ‘Fargo‘ and ‘The Big Lebowski‘ - it obviously harks back to their low-budget debut noir ‘Blood Simple‘ and it’s a real relief to see them back, firing on all cylinders. They’re reigned in their more outlandish characterisations and opted to tell a brutal, bloody story as directly as possible - the frequent, graphic violence is shocking and delves to the films core purpose of illuminating a grim and difficult world.
It’s the first direct adaptation of a novel they’re produced, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of 2004. You may recall me referring to McCarthy in an earlier post as the incredible author of ‘The Road’ which prompted me to delve into this - I’m about halfway through and it is stunning, he is the best writer I’ve discovered in the past ten years.
There seems to be a real sense of defeat in recent ’serious’ American cinema when you consider ‘The Assassination of Jesse James’, ‘No Country For Old Men’ and if I’m reading my trailers correctly ‘There Will Be Blood’. All are set in America at various periods in the countries more immediate history, all are set in the rugged central states, all feature world-weary and morally questionable characters. I sense a very tangible thread of melancholic dismay at the world, evil triumphing over the noble and just, violence and greed dominating the human condition.
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