DVD REVIEW: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (NICK'S TAKE)

Another sign of a film being a genuine classic is what subsequent viewings leave you hungry for. The first time I saw the film my mind was trying to digest everything onscreen, soaking it in. Trying to remember what was and wasn’t from the source novel. What did and didn’t feel like Coen signatures. What Roger Deakins was doing with the light and shadow. The stuff that creates the foundation of one’s opinion. The second viewing was geared more towards the three performances that the film hinged upon. Each viewing from there on led me down different paths, all extremely and wholly satisfying.

Now I watch the film and am triggered by tiny moments. Delicious little things that are unique to this film. The look Josh Brolin gives as he tries to cross the border, beer in hand and straining to maintain his composure. The look Javier Bardem gives when he tells the shop owner that his lucky quarter is after all, just a quarter. Tommy Lee Jones’ introductory voiceover and the gravelly warmth it provides. The reflection of Anton Chigurh in the ratty television in Moss’s trailer. Little things that instantly trigger the brain into gushing massive love for the material.

When I read the
novel, it was right around the time our resident know-it-all Russ
Fischer was in Toronto seeing the film. When I reached the point in the
book that firmly shifts the narrative from the Llewelyn Moss [longtime
beloved of mine, Josh Brolin] character to the Tom Bell [Tommy Lee
Jones, whom my father-in-law mistakenly assumed was just playing
himself here] I was as taken aback in the same way as many of the
viewers of the film were. Then, after finishing the book and rereading
it, it became absolutely vital to the what makes the story and meaning
behind it so pitch perfect.

In fact, the last seconds we see
Moss/Brolin smiling at the beer girl at the pool at the hotel is
undoubtedly my very favorite moment in the movie. A little glimpse at
the man Moss was before he found the money that sets the story into
motion. The Moss we never got to know. One of very few softer moments
in a very hard movie.

Funnily enough, this is most certainly a movie that registers a lot more with males than females. Not a “guy film” per se, but definitely one that savors the bleakness and question marks that permeate it. This is not a film that answers more questions than it presents. It’s a deceptively dense film and on principle a lot of more casual viewers and yes [though I’m not trying to gender profile] women like things to wrap up nice and tidy. There are exceptions to the rule of course, like 90% of the ladies who read this site. This is not a site that caters to people anxiously awaiting the next Hudson/McConaughey flick. No Country for Old Men is about uncertainty and doubt and how life eludes definition and meaning. The choices people make and the consequences they lead to and how law and rules and a higher power bend to plain old actions.

It’s also a film willing to let its wild spirit and unpredictability spill out onto its audience. Which is a vicious and brilliant way of telling a story. When the audience finally realizes who the story is really about, many of them can’t handle it. The tonal change. The lack of a chance to say goodbye to a character they thought they’d be following until the end credits. The sheer amount of rug being pulled out from under them.

Brolin actually has the unfortunate task of doing most of his work silently. It’s a very physical performance and when we meet Moss as he’s hunting there’s virtually no dialogue [which is part of why I see the Coens as partially exorcising their James Dickey demon here]. It makes his nomination that much sweeter, because he doesn’t have Bardem’s amazing palette of options at his disposal nor Jones’ rich and textured ponderings. He’s a catalyst and the driving force for much of the film’s running time but more often than not it’s his charge to be the straight man to two very powerful actors and characters. In time his work here may be the most respected.

As an aside, next time I watch the film I’m going to count Brolin’s lines. Can’t be that many in there.

Then there’s Jones. His role is thankless only by virtue of the fact that he has to do the procedural work for a portion of the story. He has to be a cop. Talk to people. Ruminate. Deal with paperwork. It’s easy to look at Sheriff Bell as simply the tour guide here, but once the shit hits the fan in the film’s third act [is it me or is it a very truncated act?], Jones absolutely delivers the finest work of his career. Including U.S. Marshalls.

The scene in Ellis’s [Barry Corbin, a long way from Wargames] house is absolutely staggering in its writing, execution, and performance. It lets the air out of the balloon in such a way that I cannot see how anyone cannot see this movie and write it off as anything less than a major accomplishment.

Then there’s the Coen Brothers, arguably the most talented and unique pair of people making movies today and for nearly any day that preceded it. That their presence is both invisible and on every frame of this film is a testament to the quality of the work it’s based on, their grasp of their craft, and the overriding truth that this film is something we are given all too rarely in our cinematic lives.