Title: No Country for Old Men
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, …
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Release: (2007)
In retrospect, I guess we all should have seen this coming. It was almost two years ago now that two big, Hollywood productions both inexplicably chose the same, little west Texas town of Marfa to film in at the same time. Both productions found themselves quickly in competition for the first of what would be many more times, for the precious space and resources available in what Daniel Day-Lewis described succinctly as “not a two crew town.” One day, the two brothers directing one of the films were forced to halt production for an entire day, when the sky above their landscape became filled with a gigantic cloud of black smoke from the nearby explosion of an oil derrick, set off by the director of the other crew. From that day on, we all should have known, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood would be forever destined to compete with each other. And just like the small town of Marfa, Texas turned out to be, the Academy Awards spotlight ain’t big enough fer the two of ‘em.
And so it came to be that with four brief words on behalf of the Academy last week: “No Country for Old Men”, Martin Scorsese struck the final blow in one of the most hotly contested film rivalries in recent memory. So how do those of us in the There Will Be Blood/Paul Thomas Anderson booster club make sense of it all? Well, actually, pretty easily.
No Country for Old Men centers largely on the relentless fixation of a sociopathic killer named Anton Chigurh (pronounced ‘shi – gurr’) (Javier Bardem) as he hunts a Texas welder named Llewelyn Moss across a number of towns and borders to recover a bag of Chigurh’s money that Moss stumbled upon and took while out hunting one day. Along the way, Chigurh remains fixated on moving in a straight line towards Moss at all times, killing or pushing aside effortlessly anyone who steps in his path, practically staring straight through them to keep his gaze fixed over some distant horizon and onto Moss and his money all the while. Tommy Lee Jones plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a grizzled and quickly becoming exhausted Texas sheriff trying to get to Moss before Chigurh finds him, and trying harder to convince himself he still cares enough about his job that it matters to him anymore whether he actually does or not.
The result is a pretty good story, pretty well told. A movie I might, at first glance, describe just as “solid”, in every way. But Best Picture? I can’t say that I would have believed that at the time I was watching it. So the question then became, “Why?” And it was in an effort to make sense of this question that I finally began to see what I had at first missed in the way this film was crafted at the skillful hands of the Coen brothers.
*************Warning: Contains Spoilerish Analysis*************
Given the amount of time the film spends following him on his quest, as well as the overwhelming attention focused on him and his He-Man haircut in the advertising and marketing of this film, you could be forgiven for thinking (as I certainly did) that this movie is about Anton Chigurh. Or, even, about Llewelyn Moss. But the real story here is actually about neither of them, the story here is all about Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. It doesn’t make sense to think so, at first, but it’s the only thing that makes sense once you realize it. It is also the slight shift in perspective needed to realize why all of the accolades showered over this otherwise gritty, little chase movie might make sense, as well.
The simplicity of this bit of deception is probably what sealed the deal for the Coen brothers as Best Director winners this year. When you consider that Jones as Bell was both a main character and the film’s narrator, not to mention the fact that Bardem’s Oscar for Chigurh was for Best Supporting Actor, it would seem pretty obvious who the story is about. But Joel and Ethan Coen know that the secret of misdirection is to capture the eyes and just allow the mind to follow. They use this simple ploy with the practiced ease of a master magician to trick the audience into forgetting reason and accepting what they see in front of them. With the kind of confident arrogance that a younger M. Night Shymalan once brought to The Sixth Sense, the Coen brothers similarly lay out a story right before us that remains hidden only by our own failure to see it. Our faith in the infallibility of our own senses turns out to be the only source of any confusion necessary for them to make their point. We see Anton Chigurh more. We see Llewelyn Moss more. We hear from them both more often than anyone. And we assume, because of this, that this movie is about them. Knowing this, the Coen brothers don’t need to make any effort to hide the fact that this story is always about Bell. They know we won’t even notice until they’re ready to point it out.
Perhaps nowhere is the essence of this stunningly simple sleight of hand more perfectly encapsulated than on the quickly becoming iconic poster for this movie. Who do you see on it? Who do you not see on it? What do you see on it that your mind decides not to factor in because of who you see? Does your mind let you consider why Tommy Lee Jones might have top billing? Or even that the title is No Country for Old Men? A title that our reason would tell us makes no sense at all for the story we infer from the picture, if we hadn’t become so adept at repressing our own ability to reason when it comes to processing information given to us on screens. And, trust me, I include myself as guilty of this as anyone.
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