No Country for Old Men

I love December. All the studios bring out what they think will be their heavy hitters for Oscar consideration and all of the sudden there is a glut of potentially fabulous movies to be seen. Not that I will get around to seeing even a small fraction of them during their theatrical run, but the choice is absolutely dizzying – in a good way. No Country for Old Men is actually kind of a no brainer – it’s got “buzz”. Serious buzz. Already nominated for a whole slew of awards, it’s sure to be one of the most acclaimed films of the year. And, honestly, I understand why that is. That doesn’t mean I have to like it, but I sure do understand it.

No Country for Old Men is the offspring of the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy and the fertile minds of Joel and Ethan Coen. Now, I haven’t read the book, so I have no idea what sort of liberties the Coen boys have chosen to take with McCarthy’s source material, but this is one intense movie experience.

At its core, No Country for Old Men is a very, very simple story of a drug deal gone wrong. But we don’t even see that happen, we step into the story in the immediate aftermath. The first man upon the scene is Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who’s out doing a little illegal hunting. Llewellyn is a good old boy from West Texas, who uses his boot to steady his rifle and knows his way around the harsh and unforgiving back country. Llewellyn is also no fool – he knows when he comes upon the carnage in the desert that he could be looking at a secure future for himself and his wife (Kelly Macdonald). He finds the money, takes it and runs. Too bad for Llewellyn that the end of his saga with that cash is nowhere in site and that his initial greed will come back to haunt him a thousand fold.

On the outside of this drama – Llewellyn and the man sent to chase him down (Javier Bardem) – is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). Ed Tom is our narrator in the beginning and sets the film within a framework that goes well beyond a simple drug/heist/chase movie. Ed Tom is an “old man”, this is his country and he’s proud to be the sheriff. But he’s seen the world change around him and he looks upon the unfolding human devastation with tired eyes and a tired spirit. It is through Ed Tom that Joel and Ethan Coen manage to make an incredibly violent movie without the gorge-rising glee that infects so much of movie violence. Blood is spilled in mass quantities; much of it without a hint of remorse or conscience – but Ed Tom is always in the background, reinforcing the reality of just how unfathomable such acts are to thinking human beings. Ed Tom has a conscience – sometimes he wears the weight of the conscience of the whole world.

Tommy Lee Jones is Ed Tom. Really is Ed Tom. A West Texas man who knows how hard life can be and looks at his current situation with a palpable weariness befitting a man who has seen too much in his day. Jones wears the emotion perfectly, affecting an almost Andy Griffith-like amiability and gentleness that is at great odds with the nightmare that surrounds him. It’s a perfect juxtaposition – Jones vs. the bad guys. That’s simplistic, but it’s there – it’s Jones who counters all the evil that men do in this saga and he does it with perfect tone and exquisite line delivery of the Coen’s brilliant script.

And that script is a thing of beauty. No Country for Old Men is a hard movie – intense, violent and ugly in many ways. But the Coen brothers have an almost unrivaled talent for dialogue that turns horrible events into fascinating miniature character studies. While, unlike films such as Fargo, there is precious little comic relief to be found here, these characters are still gifted with lines that create tension, create humanity where there should be none, and even, once in a while, create a subtle but real humor that fits seamlessly into the flow of the film. Tommy Lee Jones and his deputy (Garrett Dillahunt) share a sort of Andy/Barney type relationship which is touched on just enough to take the edge off when we need a break from the overall intensity. It’s brilliant.

We are also treated to some of the finest cinematography I’ve seen in a long, long time. The film exists in a harsh place, and it keeps that harsh look throughout. The year is 1980 and all the period details are in place. But what makes it all remarkable is how hardscrabble every last location looks. Hotels, houses, roads, cars, bridges and people – they all wear the same worn out, tired, wind scraped desolation. It’s both beautiful and desperate.

Jones isn’t the only one to put in a stellar performance in No Country for Old Men. Brolin makes his Llewellyn tough and stupid, but also savvy and tender hearted. He’s not too much of anything, making him a fine protagonist and one we really do want to see succeed, even if his quest is not the most noble. Brolin makes a fine West Texan from 1980, he wears the clothes and the hairstyles like he was meant to live in that time and place. Bardem is one of the most effective bad guys I’ve ever seen. Slow, methodical and completely crazy, with no visible emotion or conscience. Bardem appears to be a big man (I have no idea if he actually is), his presence filling a room with a strange menace. Not overtly threatening, but rather a slow simmering insanity that people can feel if they are unlucky enough to talk with him for more than a few seconds. Bardem is genius in this role – using every ounce of his physicality to exert his menace. Smaller roles filled by Barry Corbin, Woody Harrelson, Tess Harper and Beth Grant are also spot-on, adding layer after layer of fine acting to this gorgeous production.

Now, time for my gripe. Of course I have one. As I have already said, this is an amazing production, worth seeing for the performances, the brilliant script and the incredible cinematography. But the story doesn’t completely work for me. It’s intense and the suspense is sometimes glorious, the violence is plentiful but not glorified and the whole thing is pulled together by Tommy Lee Jones. But……as it wound around itself I began to spot too many places where the Coens deliberately choose not to go with the predictable twist or outcome. Unpredictability is certainly not a bad thing, not at all – it should be the hallmark that elevates the film to greatness. Unfortunately, they go to that well too many times and the unpredictable eventually becomes predictable. As a result the end product is a little too dismal and has virtually no closure whatsoever. I don’t mean that things should be tied into a neat bow – I understand their point and it’s expressed beautifully through the Jones character – but after investing two hours in this story, I felt let down by some of their choices. Simply put, I saw them coming and some of them left me cold. This gripe does not mean I didn’t like the film – because it’s a beautiful piece of work. The bleak predictability may be from the source material, it may be the Coens never wanting to give us what they think we expect, but the end result is that it detracts a bit from the brilliance of the rest of the film.

Overall, No Country for Old Men deserves the accolades it is collecting. It’s a genuinely gorgeous piece of filmmaking, from the script to the sets, filming, performances and every nuance in between. Except for that nagging sense of knowing what we’re going to get because we know it will be the opposite of what we’re supposed to expect, this is an incredible accomplishment for the Coens. Using the Jones character to frame the story creates a sadness that is simply beautiful in this world of violence for fun. Nowhere, even in the ugliest scenes, do we sense that awful violence porn that oozes from directors who worship at the altar of Tarantino. None of these filmmakers are getting some giddy fix of uber-violence here. It’s ugly and raw and real. And damn if it isn’t beautiful as a result.