No Country for Old Men

The Coen brothers don’t make bad movies and No Country for Old Men is no exception.

The film is based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name. McCarthy has seen his fame rise after his latest book The Road was chosen as one of Oprah’s Book Club selections, even though he has been writing for last forty some years and is considered one of the major novelists of his time. His unique writing style - dialogues without quotation marks and distinctive Texas dialect – sometimes turn readers away from his books. His deliberate avoidance of any publicity has not helped his popularity until, of course, Oprah changed all that. He was not widely read until the publication of All the Pretty Horses in 1992 which earned him National Book Award of that year. After that book, he has gained a literary following and now with Oprah’s support, a much broader fan base.

It was not an easy read for me when I first read All the Pretty Horses and by the time I read No Country for Old Men, I had grown accustomed to his writing styles. McCarthy has a deep melancholy for the past and writes about people of dying breed in modern society. It is not hard to see what attracts the Coen brothers to this particular book. McCarthy and the Coen brothers share the same view about the evil of money. In Coen brothers’ two best works to date, Blood Simple and Fargo, greed plays pivotal role in the plot lines.

It is always hard to adapt a literary work to screen, but the Coen brothers have done a terrific job. They cut most of the personal stories in the book and have the movie solely concentrate on the chases – hitman Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) after antelope hunter Llewelyn (played by Josh Brolin), sheriff Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones)’s attempt to find Llewelyn in order to protect him from the psychopath killer and another hitman Wells (played by Woody Harrelson) in turn stalking Chigurh.

McCarthy doesn’t write fancy dialogues and that suits the Coen brothers just fine. Their movie Fargo has dialogues very much akin to McCarthy’s style – lean and bare, sounds mundane but with hidden every day truth. If All the Pretty Horses shows the hardships for cowboys in 1940s Texas/Mexico border, No Country for Old Men has painted an even bleaker picture of Texas in 1980. McCarthy has some quite conservative streams running through his books. In No Country for Old Men, sheriff Bell is his mouthpiece condemning young people’s more liberal way of life as the main cause for a darker and more pessimistic future. In the book and the movie, violence dominates the story and occurs pretty much every few pages or every ten or so minutes.

The Coen brothers capture the essence of the suspense in the book. Although I have read the book and know what to expect, I still covered my eyes several times in the scenes when Chigurh is coming after Llewelyn. However, the movie is limited by its source material and carries the same problem that I have with the book: mainly it is hard to be attached to any particular character. McCarthy writes without any conventional style in mind. He introduces characters, but has no qualms to kill them a few pages later. After many body counts, it is hard to care one way or the other. If you do get attached to certain character, when the slaughter time comes you may feel quite cheated after going through emotional highs and lows. Thankfully, the Coen brothers also follow the book’s lead and after a few graphic killings, most violence is insinuated off screen, because there are just so many innovative ways to kill and even the most bloodthirsty audience may get bored after a while.

The Coen brothers, along with cinematographer Roger Deakins, create a desolate and wide-open Texas desert and highland. Rundown little border towns Llewelyn encounters on the run further emphasize the unique Texas culture and environment. Texas, in McCarthy’s pen and under Coen brothers’ direction, is indeed a whole new country, quite different from other parts of the States.

The cast is first-rate. Javier Bardem has pulled a Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley. This Spanish heartthrob may have looked aged and bald in The Sea Inside, but he has never looked this hideous and scary before. His Chigurh is pretty much what McCarthy has imagined on the paper: pure evil with no empathy whatsoever. Unlike many clichéd killers with some moral backbones, Chigurh kills as pure need and for pure pleasure and he has a completely twisted “code of ethics”. Bardem conveys Chigurh to the bone. When he looks into the camera, you feel the chills on your spine. Josh Brolin is surprisingly good in this movie. He has matured as an actor and is quite comfortable in his own skin. His Llewelyn is a decent guy at heart, but has many human weaknesses: chiefly greed. His years in Vietnam do not prepare him for the depth of evil Satan may possess. His disarming smile and fundamental goodness is a sharp contrast to Chigurh’s heartlessness. One may say Tommy Lee Jones is typecast here, but there is a reason why he has cornered the market for sheriff roles. Jones is right at home playing a Texas sheriff. His Texas drawl and his offhand demeanor make it hard to imagine anyone else in the sheriff’s role.

Because the Coen brothers had to cut a big chunk of the book for the movie to be tight and make the two hour screen time, certain parts of the movie do not flow smoothly and lose its meaning on the audience who have not read the book. One major killing scene is quite unclear as to who and how the crime is perpetrated. Also, if I remember correctly from reading the book a few years back, the Coen brothers omit some conclusive ending for a certain character and instead leave it wide open for the audience to ruminate.

The key scene between Jones and actor Barry Corbin is confusing because the audience doesn’t really know the relationship between Jones’ sheriff and Corbin’s character, but Corbin utters some most insightful comments on Jones’ ultra-conservative view. If McCarthy has the conversation in the book, I must have missed it since the book left some bad taste in my mouth after all those preachy remarks from Sheriff Bell. In the scene between Jones and Corbin, Corbin points out that there have always been fights between good and evil. Cruelty and heartlessness are not something new in modern society. That is one view I wholeheartedly share. As times change, each society will face different problem and obstacle in their progress. We cannot wish time to stand still simply because there may be evil lurking underneath growth. Human beings have to fight their inside demons in any period of history.