No Country for Old Men
I chose this particular poster for a very good reason; in the film No Country for Old Men, Anton Chigurgh does not just cast a pall over the events of the film, he IS the pall.
If you take the most facile and literal reading of the story, Chigurh represents chaos and random acts of violence. He's the short fall down the stairs that results in quadraplegia; he's a stray bullet from a gunfight so far away you can't even hear it; he's a car accident; he's cancer.
But the character himself operates under the rules of absolute order; chaos and a disordered mind he abhors. He is fastidious in his appearance, careful with his surroundings, and deliberate in every move he makes. EVen He expends no energy that is not absolutely necessary. If he says he will do something, he does it. His chilling motivations and adherence to a 'moral code' of sorts is a twisted reflection on Ed Tom's nostalgia for a simpler time, when people did what they said they would do and could always be trusted.
One of the most disturbing things about Chigur is his emotional range: he actually has one. He's a homicidal monster to be sure, but he expresses excitement, frustration, pain, even petty annoyances suited to a petty situation. The differences are that he is quite willing to kill a person for what might seem to others no good reason, and that while his expressions and mannerisms seem human, they also seem just out of synch. His guttural voice and unplaceable accent (Bardem himself is Spanish, but he speaks with a peculiar inflection that seems almost alien) further the gulf between him and the rest of humanity.
Chigur is a character that would have been a disaster in the wrong hands. Happily, the Coens, after twenty years or so, know what the hell they're doing. The backdrop and look of the film is absolute realism. Nobody is glamorous in this, the sets are seedy and suitably worn, and the hotel rooms Moss stays in during his flight from Chigur even has that bizarre pressboard pine-panelling that I always associate with the early eighties, probably because most of my relatives were living in trailers then and it was the hot new decorative thing. There are gun battles, but they are so understated and messy that there is never any indication that they couldn't be real. There's no flying through the air with both barrels blazing, no sexy leather-scrape sound effect when a gun is drawn, no steely eyed heroes. This is a movie about fear and blood and pain and how truly wrong things can go. IF this world were anything but plain and downtrodden, Anton Chigur would be a walking joke with a Prince Valiant hairdo. He wears PURPLE PANTS in one scene. Yet anytime he's on screen you curl up in anticipation of the worst. Through the contrast, he becomes much too real.
One thing repeated over and over in the reviews of this film was praise for its dark humor.
Most of that responsibility falls to Tommy Lee Jones, who I'm positive was cast by the same genius who traveled through time in order to genetically engineer the cast of Lord of the Rings. The man was BORN to play this role. It fits him like a glove, and no small wonder. Jones' Master's Thesis was written on Flannery O'COnnor, the Queen of the gothic Southern tale. As Ed Tom Bell, his task is to balance the incredible darkness and brutality of the film with a gentle weariness. Occasionally the sharp edge of bitterness finds its way into his voice, but in its wake comes the years-heavy disappointment he feels at how the world has turned out.
This film falls into the mould of the early Coens' work Miller's Crossing, and to a lesser extent Fargo. I never saw Miller's Crossing or Barton Fink, but understnad that they have a solid grasp of the noir genre and pretty much anything they touch turns to gold. There are no belly laughs in this one, just a few quips intentionally placed to break the tension and allow the audience a breather.
Josh Brolin is perfect as Llewllen Moss, the man who finds the bag of money to begin with. His laconic portrayal, stoic features and yet expressive eyes reminded me of a younger, more masculine version of John C Oreilly. He begins as a man of reaction, of just trying to get by, but becomes one of action as the situation calls, which is reactive itself. The change only feels unnatural if you haven't read the book or don't know his character, but I won't spoil it. I think that might have beem played up a bit, but one thing this movie shies from is clarification.
I think the Coens made this film most of all because they wanted to deconstruct the current fascination with ultraviolence in our society, especially as it pertains to movies. The film takes place in 1980, which could be seen as one waypoint along the progressing path of violence in cinema. Images from the Vietnam war played on the nightly news had numbed viewers, and films in the seventies had worked hard to acheive the same grit and despair that real life could hold, with none of the emotional attachment. I think the Coens also wanted to explore the fascination an audience can have with an antagonist rather than a protagonist; we want to feel powerful sometimes, and usually the bad guy has the power. He certainly does now, but identifying similiarities between yourself and Chigur leave you feeling cold and alienated, and is a great success filmwise.
I doubt this'll have the draw of O Brother or even Fargo, but it'll play to the people interested in this year's Oscar fare and won't disappoint.
In it's way it is terribly simple and straightforward, and in that the Coens succeeded: on film, they have actually recreated reality. In a weird way, I almost count this as a horror film: the audience looks through the magic window and instead of escape, realizes they have been trapped.