No Country For Old Men

The Great Coen Brothers (Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou, The Big Lebowski, etc.) have adapted the Cormac McCarthy novel No Country For Old Men for the big screen. The plot centers around a man, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who finds a drug-deal/bloodbath in the desert. He soon finds $2 million and walks away. Little does he know a man of incomprehensible evil, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) wants that money. So begins the long chase. In the mean time, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is investigating these homicides, and a few others that Chigurh has perpetrated along the way.

Do you ever see a film and feel like something profound and incredible happened on screen but don't feel like you really caught it? That was my experience. This film has deep, deep truth in it but I am going to need another few viewings to grasp it. This is a film that causes the audience to feel inadequate in its shadow.

The main focus of the film centers around the question of evil. Why does it exist, where does it come from, is it inevitable, does it progress/lessen/stay the same over time and history? Chigurh is truly seen by the film as a psychopath (a term I like to stay away from because it assumes that there is no cause). The film offers no history or explanation for his evil-ness. At one point near the end of the film, Chigurh flips a coin and asks a potential victim to call it. He says that he got there the same way the coin got there, implying fate, or chance, or a mixture of the two. Is he saying that he was destined to kill people, that he didn't have a choice, it's all chance (the flip of a coin) or fate. Is this his justification for all he has done? Evil is seen throughout the film from a fatalistic, almost nihilistic point of view. One character says to Sheriff Bell: "You cain't stop what's comin'." This implies that evil has, and always will exist. We cannot stop it. Nothing Bell, or anyone else does, will make much of a difference. Yet we as humans still strive against it. The film is set in 1980, but the year isn't all that important. Evil was around then, horrific and unexplainable, just as it is around now. Evil is a disease that entered the world at the beginning of time, and we are helpless, utterly helpless, against it. There is only one who can, and will, conquer it: Jesus. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try with everything we have, but sometimes it seems as though all is lost.

The human condition is a difficult thing to grasp. It confounds us, yet we live in it. We look for explanations for why things are the way they are, as do the characters in the film. Fate, chance, God, why are things the way they are? Bell reads a story of a couple who murders old folks to his deputy near the end of the film. The couple was caught because an old man with a dog collar and nothing else was seen running away from their place (they tortured people). The deputy laughs. Bell says he laughed when he heard it the first time too. Sometimes evil is so difficult to understand that all you can do is laugh. The film even evokes some comic moments, some strange morbid chuckles.

There is a very real level of tension throughout the film. One scene involves Chigurh flipping a coin and asking a gas-station owner to call it. It is implied that the man's life depends on it. There is so much build-up that the audience wants to explode. No Country starts out very bloody and gruesome. By the end, the "important" murders are taken completely off-screen. Why is that? Matt Zoller Seitz, in his blog The House Next Door, suggests that we have a morbid fascination with all stories of extreme violence. Yet after a while the shine wears off, and we realize that it is just the same thing that has happened before. Again, it's nothing new.

*spoiler warning* Near the end of the film, after Chigurh whacks pretty much everyone and gets away scott-free he his blindsided by a random car. Just when we thought there was no justice in the world (is this a divine hand? fate again? chance?) But it comes too late. Then he is helped by a few young men, and one literally gives him the shirt off of his back. If anyone in the world should not receive help, it's Chigurh. Yet he receives grace. But it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. Again, evil is truly incomprehensible.

As I predicted before, this film will be nomiated for Best Pic, and may win. No Country is shot in a stark, lonely and contemplative way. The music (which is the primary way films manipulate our emotions) is minimal, allowing us the space to think and to be confronted with evil. We have nowhere to run. The dialogue is quirky and unique. The acting is flawless. The film is masterful, but difficult to convey through words. I find that I am lacking much to say. Maybe that's a good thing.