No Country for Old Men

The Coens truly crafted a film that reflected the spartan, near-Biblical prose of Cormac McCarthy with this adaptation. Just as McCarthy’s novels are sparsely punctuated, filled with austere violence, and alternately terse and brusque, so too is No Country for Old Men. The whole thing plays out like a noir without the fatalistic romanticism with its lead in a situation that finds him punching above his weight and a specter of grim death that feels like the eye of the chaos swirling around him.

Roger Deakins remains the secret ingredient and MVP of the Coen brothers’ films, and his provides this bullet-soaked story with a severe look. The Texas deserts have rarely looked as harsh, unforgiving, and duplicitous as they do under his lens. What McCarthy writes, Deakins visualizes with a simpatico emotional texture that’s unnerving and bracing in its impact.

I say that McCarthy’s prose is near-Biblical because he renders a vision of the earth that demands blood sacrifice at routine intervals. His is not a benign natural state, but one of vengeance and fury balancing the karmic scales. The violence is as inevitable as it is horrifying. It’s the stillness and vastness of the landscapes that unnerves as one knows something is merely bidding its time before it strikes.

It is into this bleak atmosphere that we find Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) as he discovers a grisly murder scene, essentially a drug deal gone horribly wrong. A trail of blood leads to a suitcase filled with two million in cash and off he goes. Following close behind are a psycho killer (Javier Bardem, a revelation as the impassive grim reaper), a hired hand (Woody Harrelson), and a ready-for-retirement cop (Tommy Lee Jones) each with their own aims for finding Moss.

In the end, the violence shed throughout is of little consequence as the present-day tilts into madness and the past, despite a repository of folktales and explanatory remembrances, never offers any balm. If, as Anton Chigurgh argues throughout, everything has already led to this moment, then what difference does a coin toss make in the grand scheme of things? Life and death will go on as these are ongoing events on a scale we cannot comprehend.

In fact, that sense of things expanding beyond our comprehension is a reoccurring motif throughout No Country. Harrelson drawls out, “you’re not cut out for this” to Moss, but that analysis carries over into Jones’ lawman who sees the brutality before with uncomprehending eyes. A redneck mumbles out, “you can’t stop what’s coming,” and this becomes something a mantra, especially in the embodiment of Anton. While Anton may not view his actions as decisive, the story lends him an aura of spectral justice meriting out (often unholy) blessings and eliciting confessions. Chaos is the organizing principle of this universe, but it’s a near perfectly balanced chaos.

Swirling around all of this is the Coens penchant for dry humor. These asides don’t provide punctuation so much gasps in-between mounting tensions. No one’s ever going to mistake No Country for Old Men as a black comedy, but Beth Grant, character actress extraordinaire, as a cancer-stricken matron is a damn hoot in her limited screen time. They look straight into the ever-escalating tension and odious visage of Anton and laugh on occasion to make it all more manageable. It also makes some of McCarthy’s more relentlessly dark visions more palatable. They’re the best at managing these tonal shifts and keeping the wider work feeling of one coherent, complete piece. Behold, one of their masterpieces.