Rewind – 2007 in Film: No Country for Old Men

The quiet wind is the first sound heard, and then the wide plains open before our eyes as the sun rises over the blackness of the night. This country – the ground and the earth and the grass – is so beautiful. And yet, even as light wins its battle over darkness just as it does every morning, we know there remains another kind of darkness. This darkness seeps into the very ground beneath our feet. Everything is stained with it. The opening voiceover we hear reminds us of that unique kind of night.

“The crime you see now it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But I don’t wanna push my chips forward and go out and meet somethin’ I don’t understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, “Okay…I’ll be part of this world.”

This is how No Country for Old Men, the 2007 Best Picture Academy Award winner from Joel and Ethan Coen, begins. The words are from Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), who we will meet later in the film. In all reality, the opening dialogue is adapted nearly word-for-word from the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. When it comes to writing, you really can’t get much better than having a McCarthy novel adapted for the screen by the Coen Brothers. This opening is only a glimpse (a breathtaking one, at that) of the kind of writing that will populate the rest of the film.

“The Coens are famous, among many reasons, for the incredible characters they’ve created over the years.”

The Coens are famous, among many reasons, for the incredible characters they’ve created over the years. This film has one character, in particular, that is near the top of their list of memorable ones. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is an evil enigma. He is like the wind, but not the quiet one we hear in the opening. No, he is a violent wind of destruction, cutting down everyone in his path. We see his first killing early in the film, and many follow after that. He wields a cattle gun, and he doesn’t say much. He is governed by chance, and he flips a coin to see whether some of his victims will live or die.

The other main character in this trio of leads is Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin). We meet him as he is hunting antelope on the Texas plains. Then he stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal, and the film’s main plot takes shape. He finds $2 million, and he takes it home with him. This sets in motion a chase that will forever change the lives of all involved.

One of my favorite things about this film – and I have many – is that it respects its audience so much. What I mean by that is the film doesn’t spoonfeed us important elements but rather trusts our ability to piece things together. This shows an incredible bravery on the part of the Coens, who are artists working at the heights of their cinematic mastery here.

An example of what I’m talking about is a late scene where Bell goes back to the scene of a crime to look for Chigurh. There’s a shot that shows Chigurh hiding behind the door waiting for Bell. But the remainder of the scene makes it clear that it isn’t possible that Chigurh is actually there. The scene is meant to put us in the mind of Sheriff Bell. On first watch, it might be a bit of a difficult scene to parse. But as you watch the film again, it takes on new meaning.

The Coens have long worked with Carter Burwell as their score composer, and he is present here once again. However, you’ll notice that the film barely even has a score. Most of the film is accompanied by ambient noise, but that shouldn’t be a knock on Burwell. Rather he, along with masterful sound editor Skip Lievsay, knows when to let the music simmer underneath the visuals and when to simply allow the wind to give us what we need. The sound of wind is a key element throughout the film.

I love the opening and closing scenes of this film, but this is one of those all-time greats that strings together incredible scene after incredible scene. In my mind, none is greater than the Texaco scene early in the film. This is the Coens at their best, in terms of writing. It contains an all-time great performance from Javier Bardem, and a masterful performance by Gene Jones in his own right as the gas station owner.

“This is the Coens at their best, in terms of writing.”

Without ever actually coming out and saying it, we can tell that the tension is steadily growing and this is a life-or-death situation. This is when we are confronted with Chigurh’s view of fate and how it absolves him of culpability. He never answers any of the man’s questions, but rather asks him return questions which is its own form of verbal warfare. We’re watching two men talking in a gas station, but it is one of the most riveting moments I’ve ever seen in a film.

The film’s cinematography is from none other than the great Roger Deakins, and it represented one of two Academy Award nominations he received that year (the other for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford). There are many incredible shots in the film, including the early morning chase across the Texas plains once Moss’s taking of the money is uncovered. I was amazed, however, after watching this film so many times at all the shots I recognized for the very first time. Even transitional shots that seem less important are given so much.

One such shot that caught my eye this time came after the only meeting between Chigurh and Moss that we get in the entire film. Moss somehow escapes, but we aren’t quite sure of what happened to Chigurh. That is, until we get a shot of the side of a car with a blurry figure walking towards us. We see it is Chigurh as he walks up to the car and opens its gas tank. We also see that his leg is badly injured. The shot is visually interesting, and it gives us key information related to the plot.

“Jones and Brolin both give fantastic performances, and as good as Bardem is, the film wouldn’t work without them.”

The acting here is top notch, and it would not be hyperbole to say that Bardem gives one of the best performances ever in this film. For his work, he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and he is clearly the best performance in the film. But that’s not to say that the other performances are lacking, it’s just a credit to how incredible Bardem is. Jones and Brolin both give fantastic performances, and as good as Bardem is, the film wouldn’t work without them. But I’m also struck at the supporting roles and even minor ones, like Gene Jones as the Texaco station owner I mentioned before.

One of my favorite stories from interviews about this film is about Kelly Macdonald who plays Carla Jean Moss, Llewelyn’s wife. The Coens were looking for actors who could come across as being “of the region.” Tommy Lee Jones and Brolin are both from Texas, so it fits there. When you hear Macdonald as Carla Jean in the film, you’d probably think she’s from Texas too. But she’s actually from Scotland, and it’s incredible to hear her on the DVD bonus features. It underscores what a fantastic job she did in her role, and a later scene between her and Chigurh is another absolutely riveting scene. I could go on and on about the performances – Barry Corbin is great and is a part of another of the film’s best scenes – but I think you get the idea by this point. Every single performance is great here.

The Coens have said that one thing that drew them to the novel as a possible adaptation (their first adaptation ever) was how it subverted genre. They carry that idea through their work too, as this is a film that is hard to peg down to any one genre in particular. There is some of the Coen’s familiar black comedy here, but you certainly would not call this a comedy. There are elements of crime drama here, but we’re not really seeking out a crime or trying to figure out who did. We see Chigurh’s killings in all their lurid detail, and we know that Moss took the money. Based upon the location, this feels like a Western. But Westerns build to a final showdown, and we never get such closure here.

“The ideas this film handles don’t offer closure, so a neat ending would have felt false.”

That lack of closure in the film’s ending has been a controversy among movie buffs. It is confounding at first glance, and it leaves you wanting more. But, here again, the Coens are trusting us. The ideas this film handles don’t offer closure, so a neat ending would have felt false. The face-off for which we’ve waited never comes, and we’re left with an old man’s dreams.

One of the joys of this movie is that such an ending leaves it open for many different interpretations. I have my own, and this film has incredible spiritual and moral significance to me. But there’s no “right” conclusion here, and that’s one reason that this is such a powerful work of art. I leave it to you to come to your own conclusions, though if you’re particularly interested, I have written elsewhere about my personal feelings regarding this film, which I consider my favorite of all-time.

In his review of another routinely-praised film from 2007, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, the great Roger Ebert referred to No Country for Old Men as “a great film, and a perfect one.” The arguments about which film is greater between the two will continue to rage for years. No Country for Old Men won Best Picture that year, and I’m inclined to agree with Ebert and the Academy. But what’s really more important is that films as unique and ambitious as these can continue to be made.

We began with the wind, and we end with it. Along the way, we’ve seen with our very own eyes the darkness of which Sheriff Bell speaks. We’ve seen the face that holds “all that dark and all that cold.” But just as the sun crept over the mountains to begin a new day in the film’s opening scene, we get a glimpse of light and warmth here at the end. Is that enough? When there are people like Anton Chigurh out there, will it ever be enough?

Will we decide to be part of this world?