No Country For Old Men [DVD]

I think (though I don't want to speak for anybody else) that the main reason some people don't like this movie is because it defies traditional moral and movie logic - there really is no moral compass here. What happens to every character is almost totally random, good deeds often results in terrible consequences and and bad deeds can go ahead unhindered - in this sense it is much truer to life, but it makes disturbing cinema where we are so conditioned to see heroes be pushed to their limits but ultimately triumph and evil doers be punished by those who suffered most at their hands. Themes of chance and determination/fate and the crossing over of unavoidable lines of force or action are the themes of this film it seems - made most vivid in the coin toss scene with the shop assistant.

The abrupt ending threw me for a loop the first time as well - annoyed me and frustrated me.... but hell it also made me think about what I'd seen and that's something not many movies do - sending you off with a friendly cinematic, cathartic pat on the back. And the more I thought about it the more it seemed right, to tie everything up neatly at the end would undermine the very idea of movie itself.

Be prepared to think about it a bit.

Being the arthouse cinema fan that I am, over the last 10 or so years I would occasionally watch a Hollywood movie for entertainment, but I gave up any hope of seeing anything truly artistic from that source. It was about time I was chastened for my arrogance, and sure enough, I came across 'No Country for Old Men' a couple of weeks ago. What attracted me was the title lifted from Yeats; I correctly guessed that it must have been the title of the book on which the film was based, but at that stage I had not yet read the book nor was even aware of its existence.

What a feast! A violent modern western on the surface; a dark and bitter existential meditation underneath; actors working their socks off; solid direction and camera work; a minimalistic soundtrack that is as un-Hollywoodian as they get; all of this works together and keeps one impressed non-stop.

The layered structure of the film is quite ambitious, but thankfully, the directors do not spell things out for the viewer. If anything, certain things were made less obvious than they are in the book, and that enhanced the overall impact. For example, it takes the full length of the film, including the paradoxical ending, to bring the viewer to the realisation that the protagonist of the story is Sheriff Bell - the least likely of the three candidates for that role. This realisation has quite an impact by itself, but it also takes care of the loose ends of the surface plot - not by tying them up in any logical way but by rendering them irrelevant, which is so much better. The film is about the sheriff, and as far as he is concerned, there are no loose ends left: he lost on all counts; the bad guy won. The book is rather more direct about matters like who got the money in the end, and after the film this certainly felt like a weakness: what is the point of trying not to disappoint the readers who do not get the point, if you know what I mean... To be fair, the book is not always direct, but the film is even less so. For instance, McCarthy pointedly avoided describing the deaths of Moss and his wife in gory detail (in sharp contrast to the overall style of the book); the death of the former is even narrated by a third party rather than directly by the author. The film goes further, merely implying both these deaths.

The tense scene where Chigurh and the sheriff appear to be standing at the opposite sides of a motel room door is not to be found in the book. There are several ways of interpreting what happened there, and each of the possibilities enriches the story in its own way. My guess is that the two characters are not actually present there at the same time and that when Chigurh calmly observes the flicker of light through the punched-out hole in the lock, this is in fact just an image in Sheriff Bell's mind - a visual manifestation of his fear, which we are given a chance to see as yet another hint at the fact that the sheriff is, after all, the main character of the story. Of course, this cannot be literally the image in his mind because the sheriff does not know what Chigurh looks like - but the viewer does...

A few more words about that infamous ending. I always like it when a film ends at an unexpected point, but here this old trick achieves so much more than delivering a parting surprise. Yes, the final sequence comes from the book verbatim, but unlike the book, the film is wide open at that point because of some small changes to the plot, so what the viewer gets is an anticlimax by the action genre standards and a knockout artistically. A character describing his dream is a staple of arthouse cinema, and here we get not one but two dreams, told to us by the downbeat Tommy Lee Jones, alone in the frame, in such a thick Texan accent that I had to rewind and switch on the subtitles. Everything falls into place, except for the things that, as it dawns on us, do not matter. And can there be a better punch line than "And then I woke up", followed immediately by the credits?

This Oscar winning film is based on an unusual 2005 novel by American author Cormac McCarthy and is very faithful to the book. Beautifully brought to life with stunning cinematography, inventive direction, some great set pieces and, for the most part, realistic acting. I say for the most part because the main villain, played by Javier Bardem (who also won an Oscar) is like a malevolent phantom; a creature of pure evil, more like the Devil than a person. His nightmarish performance is the best part of the movie - every time he is on screen he chills and fascinates in equal measure.

The film is a modern day Western, set in 1980 on the US / Mexico border with a plot so simple it's not worth mentioning. The action is viewed from the perspectives of the three main characters; the psycho Bardem, a world-weary (and philosophising) Sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones, and a man who gets himself into a heap of trouble, played by Josh Brolin. Although told at a slow pace, the first 2 thirds are very compelling, mostly due to the well-worked set-pieces and the ever-menacing presence of Bardem. The movie does however become ever more strange with a somewhat modernist attention to detail on small things, while the big events get glossed over. By the final third, it has become so interiorised that the action is threatening to cease at any moment. And in fact that's what it does. The film ends when you least expect it to. This has infuriated and baffled many, but, in restrospect, I feel it finishes at just the right time. It's in keeping with the real themes of the movie, which are not spelled out, (and it wouldn't be right for me to spell them out either).

If I had to compare this film to other Coen Bros films; the first two thirds are like Blood Simple and Fargo whereas the final third is more like Barton Fink (i.e a bad dream!). Not everybody's cup of tea, for sure, but like I said, I loved it.