No Country for Old Men: The Poll

[rolotomasi99]

here is an alternative view on the critical circle jerk for this film. like me, stevens sees the mastery in the film but also notices how badly the bizarre moments with jones' character hurt the film.


No Country for Old Men
Why the new Coen brothers' masterpiece disappoints.
By Dana Stevens, Slate magazine

Walking out of No Country for Old Men (Paramount Vantage), Joel and Ethan Coen's new adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel, I finally understood something about why the Coens' work has always left me cold. The brothers make movies that can be good, even very good, without seeming essential. They can pull off bravura camerawork (Raising Arizona), dark wit (Fargo), or chair-gripping suspense (Miller's Crossing and, now, No Country for Old Men.) What they can't seem to do, at least for me, is make movies that matter. The Coens' movies are effective—diabolically so—without being affecting.

Maybe part of the problem is that black comedy is a tough genre in which to create a masterpiece. With rare exceptions—like Alfred Hitchcock at his best —few filmmakers can move from cynical chuckling to solemn contemplation of the human condition. The Coens seem to have set themselves that very task in No Country for Old Men, and the result, while it may be their most ambitious and successful film in years, remains just a Coen brothers movie, a curio to collect rather than an experience to remember.

That's not to say that there aren't certain images from No Country for Old Men that will haunt you, especially those involving Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a bob-haired golem of a bad guy who lumbers through southwestern Texas amassing what may be the highest per-villain body count in any movie this year. Chigurh wants back his $2 million, a briefcase full of drug money that winds up in the hands of a feckless hunter named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin). But Chigurh is also a born killer of an unfamiliar breed, neither a suave sadist nor a feral beast. He simply seems to regard killing as the natural way to end a conversation. He's lumpen, expressionless, and as unstoppable as an Old Testament curse.

No Country for Old Men is, in essence, an extended three-way chase, in which Chigurh pursues Moss across the sunbaked borderlands while Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) tries to find both, or either, to forestall the carnage that will be inevitable should the two men meet. If you've read any Cormac McCarthy, you're already laughing at that last sentence: Good luck with that forestalling-the-carnage thing! The novelist's world is one of omens and portents, where the worst thing you can imagine has already come to pass and something far worse is on the way. It's easy to see why this fatalistic vision would appeal to the Coens' grim sensibility, but less clear is what their adaptation brings to McCarthy's moral universe.

In the book, the three principals constitute a moral cosmos unto themselves: Jones' Sheriff Bell, a third-generation lawmaker on the verge of retirement, is a holdout from the days when men did the right thing simply because it was the right thing to do. The soulless Chigurh is like an envoy from some evil but inevitable future. And Llewelyn, like us, dwells somewhere in between: He's a thief, but no murderer, and he's tenderly protective of his wife Carla Jean (played here by Scottish actress Kelly McDonald).

On the level of a Western cops-and-robbers thriller, No Country for Old Men leaves very little to be desired. But when the movie shifts into manly-philosophical mode (which is fairly often; there's no shortage of wordy ruminations from Jones' Sheriff Bell on the decay of the social fabric), the sense of urgency dissipates. Even in their best films, the Coens have trouble with endings (witness the mood-destroying Sam Elliot speech that weighs down the final minutes of the otherwise delightful The Big Lebowski). The last scene of No Country for Old Men, in which Bell recounts his dreams to his wife Loretta (Tess Harper) is a tacked-on chunk of Meaning that seems to bear no relation to the tragically futile bloodbath we've just witnessed.

The Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy share something else besides a bleak worldview: Both the directors and the writer have attracted passionate cult followings in addition to their considerable mainstream success. I can't speak for the McCarthy cultists, but I predict the Coen-heads will be thrilled by No Country for Old Men. Like most of the brothers' films, it looks and sounds terrific, with a spare Carter Burwell score and impeccable cinematography from Roger Deakins, who also shot the season's other big Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Brolin, Bardem, and Jones give monster performances. The Coen brothers have taken McCarthy's mythical, fallen West and made it their own—and maybe that's the problem. At some level, the Coens still seem like two movie-mad brothers lying in their bunk beds, daring each other to imagine ever-more-shocking scenarios: "Dude, what if Javier Bardem went around killing people with a cattle stun gun?" That would be awesome, bro. But not necessarily art.

[Penelope]

For reasons you know, Penelope, I love your new avatar... Eleonora would be glad.

[ITALIANO]

For reasons you know, Penelope, I love your new avatar... Eleonora would be glad.

[The Original BJ]

BJ, I hope you didn't think I was trying to insult you, I genuinely wasn't, but I just found that statement, well, odd.

Oh, of course I wasn't insulted! Don't be silly!

Let me put it this way: although Macdonald's character functions as an absolutely integral element to the narrative, ultimately I don't think the story is very interested with her as a character. In other words, though she's lovely, I don't think her part is meaty enough (part of what I meant by "small," though I don't expect anyone to have connotated that) to gain much awards traction.

Let me maintain while I'm at it that the likely ongoing debate about the meaning of the film's ending can only help this film's chances with at least nominations.

[Penelope]

the most apt comparison I can think of is a porn film without a money shot--sure, the kissing and sucking and fucking is marvelous, but if we don't see the guys cumming, there's a letdown.

"Girls, Lisa. Boys kiss girls." -- Marge Simpson

Not this boy! :p

[Eric]

the most apt comparison I can think of is a porn film without a money shot--sure, the kissing and sucking and fucking is marvelous, but if we don't see the guys cumming, there's a letdown.

"Girls, Lisa. Boys kiss girls." -- Marge Simpson

[Penelope]

BJ, I hope you didn't think I was trying to insult you, I genuinely wasn't, but I just found that statement, well, odd.

And, respectfully, I'd argue that Carla Jean is hardly tangential to the film, particularly in the second half of the film, where she essentially becomes the focus of attention for the three male leads; and comparing her role to last year's slate of Supporting nominees isn't particularly fair: with the exception of Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine, those were all Lead roles stuffed into the Supporting category.

And, finally, I'd argue her last scene is about as Oscar-bait a moment as one can get--though it's possibly too subtly performed by MacDonald to make an impression on the Academy.

[The Original BJ]

Kelly MacDonald, whose role is a bit too small for awards consideration,

Wha-wha-what? This is the type of role for which the Supporting category was created; not to be offensive, but no wonder the Academy is increasingly shifting Lead roles into the Supporting category if one's perception is that Kelly MacDonald's role in the film isn't large enough for awards consideration.

I'm not saying she SHOULDN'T be considered, but that she probably WON'T be.

Compare the size of her role to ALL of the supporting actress nominees last year -- Macdonald's character is WAY more tangential. (I think it also feels this way because she lacks that ONE BIG SCENE that usually pushes supporting players into consideration.)

[Penelope]

Kelly MacDonald, whose role is a bit too small for awards consideration,

Wha-wha-what? This is the type of role for which the Supporting category was created; not to be offensive, but no wonder the Academy is increasingly shifting Lead roles into the Supporting category if one's perception is that Kelly MacDonald's role in the film isn't large enough for awards consideration.

[The Original BJ]

I think the best way to describe No Country for Old Men is "deceptively simple." On the surface, this doesn't sound like a particularly original film, as the premise -- guy finds a case full of money after drug deal gone wrong and is hunted for it -- is tried-and-true. Similarly, while the narrative avoids stuff like time-jumping (typically the hallmark of "innovative" narratives), its linearity is hardly conventional. Here we really have three separate narratives -- one each for Brolin, Bardem, and Jones -- which overlap in ways both obvious and not. The film reveals its layers of intricacies through a series of motifs (borrowed shirts, cattle stun-guns, trails of blood, coins) that reappear in multiple narratives, providing subtle thematic contrasts, and linking all of the characters in a knotty web of disaster.

And yet none of this emphasis on detail and symbolism weighs the film down, partly because the Coens' (and McCarthy's) narrative is so economical. Those opening scenes are marvelously efficient. First we hear Sheriff Bell ruminating on the crimes of the past that have haunted him (and the land) for years, as he will be wont to do throughout the film. Then we're introduced to Anton, and if his actions don't brutally introduce you to the kind of man he'll be throughout the film, I'm not sure what would. Last, we meet Llewelyn, who stumbles upon the bloodbath, drugs, and money that set the narrative in motion. A lesser film would have opened with the violent shootout that begat this situation, cut to scenes of Llewelyn's life underscored by plenty of music, and would never have dwelled on quiet images of the landscape instead of dialogue (aka exposition, which this film could care less about.)

But No Country plunges us right into the narrative, and what a plunge it is! Watching this masterfully gripping and exciting thriller I was reminded of Mister Tee's comments last year on Children of Men. In a a lesser film, I might have cheered every time Brolin's character narrowly escaped Bardem's wrath, but No Country for Old Men seemed to be operating at such a different level, I could only gasp in horror at the nightmare unraveling before me. (That the film is also very funny -- in a very typical Coen-esque way -- only adds to the unsettling, macabre atmosphere.) I also loved the way that multiple climactic events happen off-camera, narrative subervsions that, for me, only added to the shocking brutality of said events. (Side note: it's interesting how both this film and fellow award-frontrunner Atonement -- at least if the film stays true to the novel -- feature momentous events merely revealed off-hand after the fact.)

I spoke a couple words about the ending below, but here's my additional two cents: this could be a controversial statement, but I don't think there's much that's open-ended about the conclusion. (I've excluded spoilers, but if you don't want to know ANYTHING about the finale, skip this paragraph.) We know the fates of Brolin, and MacDonald. What happens to Bardem is a terrifically sly summation of the film's preoccupation with luck and chance, and certainly a foreshadowing of what his future holds...it's really only a matter of time, isn't it? And Jones's final speech -- in which the laws of the past literally ride past him and disappear -- is the sad coda for a character unable to make much sense of the bloodbath that has unspooled before him. I don't think the film builds to the socko conclusion it seems to have been promising, which is disappointing, but neither do I think the film avoids offering resolution. What more resolution for this story IS there?

On the Bardem lead/support issue, I personally feel like he could go either way. (And he's terrific -- frighteningly calm, and perfectly in pitch with the film's morbid sense of humor.) To me, you could say the film has three leads, or you could say Brolin is the lead, and Jones and Bardem are supporting him. Bardem's role is not miniscule, but he is absent from significant chunks of the narrative. (A supporting nod wouldn't be anywhere near as ridiculous as it would be for Affleck, who is the MAIN CHARACTER of his film.) But the entire cast here is very fine (listen up SAG!), especially Jones, whose sadness here is so much more powerful than in the inane Valley of Elah, and Kelly MacDonald, whose role is a bit too small for awards consideration, but who completely sheds her classy Brit persona for something very different.

Oh, and if the Oscars were the Olympics, Roger Deakins should be winning BOTH the gold and silver trophies so far for his marvelous evocations of two very different American Wests.

[rolotomasi99]

Two people started to clap, but when nobody else joined in, they immediately stopped.

that happened in my theatre too. one person let out two loud claps and then abruptly stopped.

not since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT have i seen an audience so pissed off at a movie's ending.

[Sabin]

I will be brief as I am writing this on my Treo. I would not for a second hesitate to chategorize the first 80 percent of this film as one of the best studio films of the decade or the prior one. I will make apologies for the subsequent ten minutes, but the final scene is just not needed because something
between Jones' relentlessly humanistic approach and the coens' anti-humanism is not simpatico. His will be the loveliest unsuccessful performance of the year. the previous scene's ending would work fine.

The Coens are guilty of the year's most savage narrative subversion. more than any other film, they could have given us what we want...remember Watchmen? 'I did it fifteen minutes
ago.' Same thing. Smaller whammy. but most of it works in an unsettling fashion and gangbusters at that. ultimately, the movie we want would be better.

Beyond that, I hate to say it but the ending will cost them the Oscar. The win, certainly, but maybe also the nod. Bardem is the lead. he's not though. it's Brolin, but by the same token, it's really Bardem that they care about and place the onus on.

I will say this is an amazing film, one that deserves a bevy of nominations. Beyond that, Wes is wrong but so was I.

[Penelope]

Anyone else have another reaction?

Two people started to clap, but when nobody else joined in, they immediately stopped.

That ending may be the film's Achille's Heel: after 95% of a film that gripping, dazzling, brilliant, where the audience thrills to the cat-and-mouse game between these characters, we aren't provided with any kind of resolution. The ending for all the characters is of a piece, and that didn't bother me too much; but, yeah, the film builds to what the audience expects will be a final confrontation--and it happens off-screen--the most apt comparison I can think of is a porn film without a money shot--sure, the kissing and sucking and fucking is marvelous, but if we don't see the guys cumming, there's a letdown.

Thus, that 95% that is absolutely brilliant will surely grab the film a Best Pic nomination (as well as Best Director), but a win seems a slimmer possibility. Also working against the film is the lack of empathy--there really isn't anybody to root for (unlike Fargo, for example, which at least had thoroughly rootable Marge)--one certainly can't root for Javier Bardem's psycho, nor for Tommy Lee Jones' sherriff (who often seems peripheral to the action, though he--and Kelly MacDonald--are certainly likable), and Josh Brolin's character is too underdeveloped (or stupid) to root for.

Now, these are just practical arguments; as Flipp says, up until that last 10 minutes, No Country For Old Men is a stunning, gripping film (the scene with Brolin in the room at the Hotel Eagle is one of the most tense moments in recent memory), and, imho, it makes last year's Best Picture winner, The Departed, look more and more like the routine actioner that it is. (Gone Baby Gone, which I saw yesterday, also trumps The Departed for excellence.)

Another exterior complaint: as with Casey Affleck in The Assassination of Jesse James, I simply cannot see how one can categorize Javier Bardem as Supporting. It's a dazzling performance filled with marvelous, memorable touches, but it's a Lead role, alongside Brolin and Jones (like Ed Harris in Gone Baby Gone, the best he's been in years). Woody Harrelson, Kelly MacDonald, these are Supporting performances; Bardem is a Lead.



Edited By Penelope on 1194788529

[The Original BJ]

my review of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN:

fuck you, coen brothers. fuck you.

Yikes! Calm yourself there, frend-o.

[rolotomasi99]

my review of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN:

fuck you, coen brothers. fuck you.