No Country For Anyone

A spoiler filled rumination (not really a review) on the themes and messages
of the film No Country For Old Men

I can name the specific scene wherein I went from liking No Country For Old Men to flat out loving the film. It involves a sheriff's search for a killer who's murdering people with an unconventional weapon; an air gun designed for slaughtering cattle. The weapon's idiosyncrasies leave little evidence of how each murder was performed, and the sheriff spends some time trying to figure out what weapon the killer is using...

In a late scene, the sheriff has a conversation that turns to a discussion of slaughterhouses, specifically the air guns that are used to kill the livestock ... The exact same air gun that the murderer has been using. In any other movie, that conversation would have lead to a major revelation by the sheriff (complete with tense music), and that would have begun the resolution of the central conflict. But in this film, the sheriff never makes the connection. He discusses the very murder weapon he's been puzzling over, but he never puts two and two together. With that, all bets are off. Forget what other movies tell you about how good people solve bad problems. Sometimes, there just isn't a solution. No Country isn't a movie that's about life ... it's a movie that is life.

I've named Unforgiven as my favorite movie for years, though Saving Private Ryan often temporarily moves to the top spot for a while after a recent re-watching. But there's a crucial difference for me between Unforgiven and ...Ryan. I don't spend time thinking about ...Ryan when I'm not watching it. I think about Unforgiven all the time. Unforgiven is the best kind of art. It does the best thing that art can do. It started out as a real part of it's creator and has become a real part of this appreciator. The movie makes a real connection between two people who will never actually meet.

No Country For Old Men is probably the movie most likely to eventually replace Unforgiven as my personal favorite, since I find myself thinking about it constantly. And I find myself a little surprised to realize that, because these two films have very different themes. Unforgiven tells a story about regret and forgiveness, and ultimately communicates a hopeful message, even in it's downbeat ending. The theme of Unforgiven might be that peace is impossible without forgiveness, even if the person one most needs to forgive is one's self.

No Country..., on the other hand, has as it's foundation a kind of backwater cynicism that just barely stops short of real nihilism. No Country For Old Men is a dark, dark film. And it never relents, never eases up, never winks at the viewer. More than anything I've seen in a long time, No Country... is completely devoid of irony.

Based on four viewings, I'd assert that No Country... is a movie that presents life as random, pointless and painful, and indicates that the search for meaning in this world is completely futile. But the search, in and of itself, is a good thing. There is a huge difference between the idea that life has no meaning and the idea that life has no value.

No Country... even argues for an up side to the randomness of life, in that we're all subject to it. If there's never really any order, then chaos reigns over the just and unjust alike. Even someone who continually gets away with murder might get flattened at the next intersection. Life is random, but it's random for all of us, so it's fair.

Joel and Ethan Coen directed this movie damn near flawlessly, both in terms of meaning and method. Technically speaking, I'm especially impressed by their choices involving sound. Bullets, for instance, are transformed from movie cliches into avatars of human frailty simply by the sound they make on impact as they strike walls, cars, people. In fact, movie bullets have never sounded more relentless than they do here. Other specific scenes are given tremendous impact by sound, especially one scene that hinges on the metallic squeak as someone hides something by sliding it into motel duct work. And the sound mix isn't overtly loud, it's just that the Coens have turned out a movie with immaculate attention to audible detail. (This shouldn't be surprising from the movie makers who turned a "car door is ajar" tone into a leitmotif in the wonderful Fargo.)

One decision involving sound seemed to me to be especially bold in it's simplicity. And that is that there's almost no music at all in this film. There is one scene involving a jarring performance by a mariachi band late in the film, but that scene is about tension, not music. No Country is absent of conventional cinematic music, and I have to believe that's because the Coens don't want anything to distract the viewer from staring into the abyss with them. In a cinematic world full of Michael Bay crapfests, it's wonderful to see a movie that doesn't amount to a two hour MTV video for twelve new pop songs.

Other elements of the film defy convention, too. One major character's murder happens off screen. We're never even really told who killed him. A second tier character tries to talk the villain out of killing her, but we never find out what happened. And then there's a car crash that happens completely out of the blue and relative to nothing. Just like real life car crashes*. And that's the thing: This film isn't worried about story-telling. It's about truth-telling.

The performances are outstanding, all of them, and especially the three principles. Josh Brolin's performance as a good old boy in over his head is the definition of understated. And his character could have been a broad cartoon, given that the most important thing about the guy is his stupidity. Brolin never makes the guy comic, though. He always seems mostly just kind of sad. Then there's Javier Bardem's character, as fascinating a screen villain as any I've ever seen. And I think it's worth noting that this character is the only person in the film who really does see some order in the universe, because the character is purely evil. The best that a good person can do in No Country... is to roll with the punches. For good people, no order is there to be found.

But Tommy Lee Jones steals the movie, which isn't surprising, as his character is the film's moral and narrative center. Jones's character is a man of tremendous faith, even though he thinks he's lost his faith. The story of No Country... offers absolutely nothing to justify the sheriff's faith, but makes it clear that his faith is a good thing, and a huge part of what makes him a good man.

The world of No Country... is dark and dangerous, with violence and chaos lurking around every corner. but even with such a downbeat world view, this is a movie that conveys a tremendous love of life. No Country... is rescued from hopelessness by the thin thread of humanism from which this story hangs. Yes, the movie seems to say, life really is meaningless. But our lives are not.

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*The only movie I've ever seen use a car crash to better effect is Adaptation.