{"id":82659,"date":"2012-10-06T04:00:32","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T10:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/?p=82659"},"modified":"2013-03-17T15:28:21","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T21:28:21","slug":"no-country-for-old-men-2007-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2012\/10\/no-country-for-old-men-2007-2\/","title":{"rendered":"No Country for Old Men (2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>Five years ago today, No Country for Old Men<\/em> played in the U.S. for the first time. The buzz had begun at the Cannes Film Festival a few months earlier, and anticipation was high.<\/p>\n

It went on to win Best Picture at the Oscars, surprising some by winning over Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s There Will Be Blood<\/em> and Tony Gilroy\u2019s Michael Clayton<\/em>; the Coens won the Best Directing award and the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay; and Javier Bardem won Best Supporting Actor.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, my first draft of this review, which was published at Christianity Today<\/em><\/a>, inspired waves of angry mail from readers who thought that a Christian should have no business giving any attention to a film as troubling and violent as this one. This review has been slightly revised, but only to include a few lightly spoiler-ish comments about the conclusion.<\/p>\n

Today, No Country<\/em> remains the only Coen Brothers movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Barton Fink<\/em> took the top award at Cannes many years earlier. And yet, those films are rarely ever named as moviegoers\u2019 favorite Coen Brothers film. What\u2019s your favorite Coen Brothers film? Can you think of any other novels that seem like great material for the Coens to adapt?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my review.<\/p>\n

\u2013<\/p>\n

As Sheriff Ed Tom Bell stares out at the barren Texas landscape, wondering how to catch a crazed killer, we can feel his deepening despair. As bodies pile up, and the maniac slips away, how can Bell hope to bring about anything that resembles justice in this situation?<\/p>\n

But we can feel something deeper disintegrating too. Nostalgic for days when towns could depend on a lawman for order and security\u00a0\u2014 Did those days ever exist?\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Bell is losing any hope he has for humankind. And where is this God who is said to \u201cbless America?\u201d Bell scowls and says, \u201cI always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

You too may find yourself hoping that God will save the day while you watch this riveting adaptation of the\u00a0bestselling novel\u00a0No Country for Old Men<\/em>. You may wait and wait, hoping that justice will be done, that grace will come to these characters.<\/p>\n

But those familiar with the author of this story will probably guess that God is not likely to show up onscreen and save the day like the cavalry. Instead, we\u2019re shown a world full of foolish and greedy men, heartless killers, doomed innocents.<\/p>\n

Welcome to the World According to\u00a0Cormac McCarthy.<\/p>\n

McCarthy\u2019s stories paint dispiriting pictures, but they\u2019re bestsellers nevertheless. His celebrated line of novels includes\u00a0Blood Meridian<\/em>,\u00a0All the Pretty Horses<\/em>,\u00a0The Crossing<\/em>, and the recent Oprah-selection\u00a0The Road<\/em>. (Soon we\u2019ll see a big-screen version of\u00a0The Road<\/em>, directed by John Hillcoat, who brought us another nightmare called\u00a0The Proposition<\/em>\u00a0last year.)<\/p>\n

No Country for Old Men<\/em>, published in 2005, was bound to become a movie. It has elements of classic crime thrillers, film noir, gunslinger shootouts, and thrilling chase sequences. And it features a villain as distinct and malevolent as Hannibal Lecter.<\/p>\n

The story \u2014 which gets its title from William Butler Yeats\u2019\u00a0\u201cSailing to Byzantium\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 is aabout a Vietnam vet named Llewellyn Moss who finds $2 million at the scene of a drug deal gone wrong. Like an idiot, Moss takes the money and runs. But he can\u2019t hide from the killer that the dealers have sent after him.<\/p>\n

Anton Chigurh is a ruthless predator who really enjoys his work. He\u2019s so bad, in fact, that even his employers are frantic to stop him when they realize the trouble they\u2019ve set in motion.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something very familiar about the madness that ensues in McCarthy\u2019s page-turner. The numbskull thief. The apocalyptic killer. The exaggerated dialects. It all sounds suspiciously like the work of the Coen Brothers, who brought us violent crime capers like\u00a0Blood Simple<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Fargo<\/em>. In fact, reading the book, this reviewer could not help but laugh at how conversations between the foolish thief and his oblivious wife resembled the bone-headed banter between Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter in the Coens\u2019 comedy\u00a0Raising Arizona<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s almost too good to be true that the Coen Brothers have, in fact, adapted McCarthy\u2019s novel and brought it to the screen. It\u2019s as if this was part of McCarthy\u2019s plan all along.<\/p>\n

Sweetening the deal, Tommy Lee Jones has been cast as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. The Coens\u2019 greatest strength has always been their flair for comical dialogue and exaggerated dialects. Their language comes as naturally to Jones as riding a horse. He savors and spits his lines as if they were chewing tobacco. He has the gaze of a lifelong farmer who hasn\u2019t seen a drop of rain in a decade, and his face is as rugged as the Texas landscape. He captures the book\u2019s portrayal of Bell \u2014 a man caught in the quicksand of despair \u2014 perfectly. Jones has played a lot of troubled trackers in his career, and chased a lot of fugitives. But his work here is second only to his performance in last year\u2019s\u00a0The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Josh Brolin, enjoying a remarkable year of breakthrough performances (Grindhouse, In the Valley of Elah, American Gangster<\/em>), has the biggest role of his career so far playing Moss. He\u2019s fantastic. Maintaining a caveman\u2019s stupefied expression, he makes us wonder if Moss might be related to\u00a0The Big Lebowski<\/em>\u2018s \u201cDude.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rest of the cast, with one exception, is note-perfect. Kelly Macdonald, known for her fragile beauty and Scottish accent, is startling as a trailer-bound housewife with a Southern drawl thick as molasses. Woody Harrelson plays a boastful hitman named Bell to perfection, just two steps up the ladder of idiocy from Moss. Only Beth Grant seems out of place, overplaying Moss\u2019s mother-in-law as if she was acting in a sketch on\u00a0Saturday Night Live<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But everybody will leave the theater raving about Javier Bardem, who plays the sinister slaughterer. There\u2019s a wild light in Chigurh\u2019s eyes and even a hint of a smile as he torments his soon-to-be-victims. Looking like the worst descendant of the Addams Family, he\u2019s a fearsome freak, as unstoppable as those black thunderstorms we see sweeping across the desert.<\/p>\n

Chigurh marches from target to target, knocking off his victims one by one with a tank of compressed air and a hose \u2014 a weapon that is almost silent and definitely deadly. His view of the world is frightfully mechanical: He carries out his rituals without any exceptions, and the only chance he gives his targets depends on the flip of a coin. Mercy? Compassion? Forgiveness? Those concepts don\u2019t exist in his vocabulary. He loves to watch his victims squirm. (Even crumpled candy wrappers twitch and writhe in his presence.)<\/p>\n

The scenes in which Chigurh stalks Moss are as suspenseful as anything the Coens have ever staged. And that has as much to do with what we\u00a0hear<\/em>\u00a0as what we\u00a0see. No Country for Old Men\u00a0<\/em>lacks a traditional soundtrack, but don\u2019t say it doesn\u2019t have music. The blip-blip-blip of a transponder becomes as frightening as the famous theme from\u00a0Jaws<\/em>. The sound of footsteps on the hardwood floors of a hotel hallway are as ominous as the drums of war. When the leather of a briefcase squeaks against the metal of a ventilation shaft, you\u2019ll cringe, and the distant echo of a telephone ringing in a hotel lobby will jangle your nerves.<\/p>\n

In spite of masterful sound design, and brilliant cinematography by Roger Deakins (who also shot\u00a0The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford<\/em>), it\u2019s what we\u00a0don\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0hear or see that makes\u00a0No Country<\/em>\u00a0so haunting. Love, hope, and Almighty God \u2014 they seem to be missing in action.<\/p>\n

The silence of God may, in fact, have been the mystery foremost on McCarthy\u2019s mind. Following Chigurh on his rampage through the desert, the author offers only a few possible conclusions:<\/p>\n