No Country for Old Men

Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald

Directed by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

B. J. Carter
Coastal Journal Staff

In his book On Directing Film, David Mamet rather contentiously asserted that good acting requires only the most basic performance of action, that the more elaborate the performance from the actor, the larger the shadow cast over the script, which is more crucial to the success of the picture than any performance.  Watching even his best films, namely House of Games or Homicide, you can see evidence of his philosophy to a startling degree.  The actors speak their jazzy lines in that particular Mamet drone and move through the films like zombies.  Given that his films are meant to be about as emotionally resonant as a good chess match, Mamet has gotten away with making a handful of good pictures and a couple of great ones despite skimping on a component of filmmaking that audiences rely quite heavily on to digest the information onscreen:  Acting.
 

With their new film No Country for Old Men, adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s grim novel of the same name, Joel and Ethan Coen have made a rivetingly basic film (on the surface) with rivetingly basic performances to maximum emotional effect, thanks in large part to a script that manages to be ponderous and economical at the same time.  Hailed as a return to their Blood Simple days, No Country is really just a return to good storytelling, something we see so rarely at the multiplex that we practically jump out of our boots when we do come across it.  That said, it rivals Fargo and Miller’s Crossing as their best work and illuminates some of their lesser films, like the vastly underrated The Man Who Wasn’t There.  It distills their attitudes towards the complex relationship between America’s appetite for violence and uniquely American conceits like mid-western “nice” (in Fargo) and the Wild West, in which they seem convinced we are still living, into one concise, bleak statement.

Said storytelling begins when Llewelyn Moss (a ragged Josh Brolin) stumbles upon a grizzly crime scene in the middle of the desert:  Bodies strewn across the sand, dead dogs, bullet-ridden trucks, and a briefcase holding millions of dollars.  He takes the money and quits the scene, only to find himself in the unswerving crosshairs of Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a pathological murderer with a slight limp and an unnerving bowl cut.  He’s one of the more iconic manifestations of evil in recent American cinema, handily taking his place alongside Hannibal Lecter and Amon Goeth; he’s also the most overtly mythical character the Coens have ever written, save maybe the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse from Raising Arizona.  The Coens even knowingly reference that character’s brand of sadism when Chigurh, hot on Moss’s trail, slows down as he drives over a bridge just long enough to shoot a bird through the passenger-side window.   

Chigurh is much scarier than the Lone Biker, though.  Of the many wonders he can work with his face, the most effective trick in Bardem’s arsenal is his burning yet vacant stare, making us believe that Chigurh is so filled with a sexual impulse to kill that it brings tears to his eyes.

Tommy Lee Jones plays Ed Tom, a weary lawman struggling to keep up with the body count.  Where Francis McDormand’s Margie was a reassuring maternal figure in the world of puerile decay that was Fargo, Jones’s Tom is already fading into twilight, roaming out of time in a place that he no longer knows.  It’s a beautifully understated performances that ranks with his best, including this year’s In the Valley of Elah.  Without giving too much away, Tom is hard pressed to track down and protect Moss or apprehend Chigurh.

There are sequences lasting dozens of minutes in this film without a spoken word or hint of music, sequences I’m tempted to call “pure” filmmaking in order to illustrate how effectively they cast a spell of uneasiness that doesn’t relent even after the credits start rolling.  But No Country isn’t all work and no play.  The Coens  can get laughs out of the most unseemly images, like the sight of a dog swimming effortlessly after a human being; it’s as much poetry as it is a sight gag.  And the Coens still have a way with nonsensical, curly-cue exchanges between characters, except now their comic timing is more acute than ever.

National treasures that they are, I would say that the Coens are due to write their own On Directing Film if I hadn’t just seen it.