No Country for Old Men

[Spoiler Alert!]

Until the end credits, there isn't one bar of music in the Coen brothers' "No Country for Old Men." In fact, the bulk of the first third of the film is as visually empty as the soundtrack; it's Middle-of-Nowhere, Texas, 1980: beautiful in it's bleakness--untamed, unpopulated. The photography, by the brothers' longtime associate, Roger Deakins, is always sumptuous, but it works better here than in most of their films; this film needs to be implacably picturesque and distant--the world of this movie isn't quite real, not quite full.

The story follows around Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who, on a solitary hunting trip, stumbles on the remains of a mass execution of drug dealers in the desert. We never figure out much about them--and neither do the police--but they were certainly the victims of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a merciless killing machine whose ties with the victims are never made clear. Moss is the kind of man who un-self-consciously sees himself as a modern day cowboy, but, in actuality, is just a Vietnam vet living in a trailer park. He is so deadpan that his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), doesn't believe him when he says off-handedly that the valise he's brought back from his hunting expedition is loaded with cash. Moss does not realize, however, that his cash came equipped with a tracking device and, after Carla Jean is safely away with her batty mother, he finds himself stuck playing cat-and-mouse with Chigurh. Though he's no Rambo, the vet is resourceful; and his laconic understatement makes him the perfect foil for Chigurh, the latest word in sardonically unfeeling inhumanity. While not perfect, Llewellyn is scrappy and not easily frightened; he acts the way we'd like to think we would in the face of robotic evil.

And then he's killed off.

As the trusty old sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, Tommy Lee Jones enters into the movie relatively late. Dealing only with Carla Jean, he's almost like a bystander; he's never directly involved in the A-plot, but only watches from afar. Jones' character is a particular specialty of the Coens--like Frances McDormand's cop in "Fargo," he's old-fashioned, glib and utterly straightforward. On the surface he may seem like a typical Tommy Lee Jones part, too--his Man in Black without the zazz--but he's not. Like the rest of the Texans here, he's dry and laconic, yet older enough to think he's seen it all--but he's never seen this. In the beginning, his understatement makes him seem as dead as the deathly flat landscape, but he's not; something dies in him later on. (And Jones lays it to rest gracefully.) Like all cowboy heroes, he has to be internalized and stoic, but he, like Llewellyn, is out of his league. Unfortunately, that seems more troublesome than any of the graphic murders Chigurh commits; are the Coens really saying that mechanized evil (a singleminded clockwork orange) has rendered traditional American goodness obsolete? This apocalyptic revelation leads Bell--a sheriff so old and craggy that the bags under his eyes couldn't be taken as carry-on--to finally retire.

One may be lead to think that "No Country for Old Men" is a tract about evil, but it's not. The evil embodied by Bardem is rarified to the point of absurdity. He and his motivations are more primitive than any of the other characters. I can only recall one shot from the entire movie that might lead one to believe that Chigurh is layered--his reaction to Llewellyn’s actually having the gumption to fight back. Bardem's portrayal is quietly effective, but one-note; he's too much of an allegory to be believable. One can surmise from "A Clockwork Orange" how the evil inside of Alex has come to a boil, but Chigurh lacks a past or even a context. He's menacing, but too far removed from the reality of evil to be rationally feared. The Coens are talented enough to ratchet up the suspense in ways that befit such a proficient thriller, but Chigurh is a monster better suited for horror films.

The movie is more accurately about fate than evil; it is a significantly more powerful force in this world. Much of this fatalism is probably due to Western-gothic writer Cormac McCarthy, on whose story this movie is based; but that's not to say that the Coens haven't had a long and solid history of fatalism in their movies. Criminals, in particular, seem to lack control over their destinies--as in "The Big Lebowski" or "Fargo," crimes are always being botched by imperfect miscreants. In "Barton Fink," John Tuturro's screenwriter is entrapped by the old Hollywood system. There, however, the hero's flaws and missteps partly brought him to his downfall; here, Llewellyn only makes one mistake--being bold enough to take a stand against Chigurh. Unlike several minor characters, Llewellyn meets his demise off-screen; the motivation behind that device is obscure, but ultimately cruel--he never even had a chance.

Fortunately, the Coens are smart enough filmmakers to allow room for caveats. There is some semblance of love and compassion and human feeling here, even if it's piled under layers of toast-dry Texan drawl. And, though defeated, Bell ends the movie on a note of tentative faith; maybe he's not been destroyed after all.