No Country for Old Men – Review
Bleak Theme in Coen Bros.’ Gripping Adaptation of McCarthy’s Novel
Despite impeccable performances and direction, this hyper-violent drama can't overcome the moral vacuum it wallows in.
No Country for Old Men, Ethan and Joel Coen’s film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel, may shock, frustrate, or disappoint viewers. But it is not likely to bore them.
Every moment is brimming with tension and the unexpected. The movie crackles with histories beyond what is seen on screen. It is a master work of movie making. But that is not enough to save it from itself.
McCarthy’s Nihilistic Theme
The set-up is simple: When Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out hunting on a scrabble-dry prairie, he stumbles across the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad, and a satchel with $2 million cash. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a ruthless, psychopathic killer contracted to find the money, begins hunting Llewelyn. Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is weather-beaten sheriff out of his league amid the violence seething around him, trying desperately to make sense of the randomness of his world.
But Sheriff Bell can make no sense of it, because there is no sense to be made. Part and parcel of McCarthy’s world, brought to life by the Coen brothers, is a sense of fatalistic nihilism: Destiny cannot be escaped any more than a coin can decide whether it lands heads or tails.
Anton is not merely a mystical angel of death, but an incarnation of the fatal destiny awaiting us all, a personification of inexorable fate, as surely sealed as if tombstones were carved before birth. The moral code he embodies, reverberating throughout the film, is one of arbitrary formalities, with no underpinnings from the human condition.
It is this stark theme, devoid of hope and redemption, rather than the ambiguity or unexpectedness of how the storyline unfolds, which cripples the movie’s impact as art.
Joseph Campbell once insisted that an essential aspect of the hero’s journey, retold eternally across the ages, is bringing back a boon to society. Revisionist themes often treat such plotlines as Pollyanna platitudes, unworthy of mature audiences.
But No Country goes beyond revisionist, tearing down every shred of hope it can find, offering little or nothing of redeeming value in return. It is violence raised to allegory, bathed in an unholy light. But it does nothing to help us understand such violence as a human factor, neither its motivations nor the reasons for its release. It points out mankind’s fly-speck status in the spinning cosmos and implies that, therefore, life is simply meaningless and futile. (For stark contrast, compare this with the absurdist themes in The Savages.)
Stellar Performances by Brolin, Bardem and Jones
To be sure, the acting and direction are masterful all around. Brolin’s performance is understated and powerful. Bardem is at his best, good enough wash the simpering taste of his papier-mâché protagonist in Love in the Time of Cholera out of one’s mouth.
Jones is in another league entirely, maybe even surpassing his superb work in In the Valley of Elah. Woody Harrelson’s riveting Carson Wells, a foil to Anton, is all but wasted in the film. But Kelly MacDonald, as Llewelyn’s wife Carla Jean, is sincere, touching, and provides the only trace of a counterpoint to the otherwise bleak theme.
Barry Corbin, in a masterful cameo, delivers the movie’s leitmotif, which unwittingly provides a lever for deeper criticism: “You can’t stop what’s comin’. It ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity.” Indeed. Every human must die. But that is perhaps of much less importance than what each does along the way. People are often lost, afraid, desperate. Is the purpose of art merely to point this out?
- Grade: B
- Rating: R
- Running Time: 122 min.
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