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Ten Days Of The Coen Brothers: Day Eight Part Two
Back in the Saddle
♦ With the release of Hail, Caesar! in the UK on 4 March, Tripwire kicks off a look at all of the Coen Brothers films released to date. Yesterday we took a look at their eleventh film The Ladykillers (2004) and now our editor-in-chief Joel Meadows takes a look at their twelth movie No Country For Old Men (2007).
No Country For Old Men
Director: Joel Coen
Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald
There was a three-year gap between the Coens’ Ladykillers misfire and this simmering, surreal slice of modern western which allowed the brothers to regroup – and it is hard to think of any other filmmakers who have resurfaced from such a lull in their career to deliver a work that is among their best. No Country For Old Men, based on the book by Cormac McCarthy, was probably their darkest and most compelling project for almost a decade. Tommy Lee Jones plays sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a man in the final stages of his career who is forced to acknowledge his impotence as a law and order officer when he encounters force of nature Anton Chigurh, played with chilling understatement by the brilliant Javier Bardem. Chigurh is on the trail of a suitcase full of money that his criminal bosses have lost, and he has no compunction in doling out a very final form of lethal justice to anyone who obstructs him. Josh Brolin plays Llewelyn Moss, a naive backwoods hunter who finds himself in Chigurh’s crosshairs when he liberates a gang of murdered Mexicans of the drug money that by rights should be in the hands of his employers.
It is an archetypal story about desperate men who find themselves up against adversaries they have no hope of defeating, and Bardem, as the relentless survivalist Chigurh, is exceptional here. There is a world-weariness and abject resignation to Jones’ sheriff, forever chasing shadows, which recalls Peckinpah – while the film itself is a cryptic subversion of the genre that sees major characters become false protagonists, casually disappearing offscreen, more or less whipped out of the narrative. Set on the Tex-Mex border, the film has all the tropes of the late ’60s westerns that graphically drafted the death of the Old West, coupled with the dislocated, bizarre urbanity that is very much the Coens’ calling card. There is a sense of inevitability as soon as Moss steals the money that he is doomed by forces beyond his comprehension.
The cast doesn’t put a foot wrong here: apart from Jones and Bardem, Brolin is very well-cast as a man utterly out of his depth, and even a cameo from Woody Harrelson as a by-the-book employee of Chigurh’s bosses adds much to the film. Macdonald is also excellent as Moss’s wife Kelly Jean, another Chigurh victim and a reminder that the Coens are wilfully flouting the rules – no-one, regardless of audience empathy, is spared, although her death is unseen.
For the first time since O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country For Old Men sees the Coens provide depth and subtext – if anything the film is as much about what lingers on the edges than what is centre screen. It examines the atavistic nature of evil and its cold, immutable heart. Visually, it is also a return to the power and impact of their earlier cinematic endeavours with director of photography Roger Deakins and production designer Jess Gonchor working their magic on the sunburnt, hazy backdrop which frames this compulsive tale.
What was perhaps more amazing is that, despite the fact that this was one of the darkest, most enigmatic films released in years, No Country For Old Men scooped four Oscars in 2008, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Bardem – a remarkable comeback indeed.
After two less-than-impressive efforts, this outing proved that the Coen Brothers were still savvy auteurs with a rare ability to make dynamic, cutting-edge and thought-provoking movies.
JOEL MEADOWS
http://imgur.com/a/t8iTD
Coen Brothers Day One Part One
Coen Brothers Day One Part Two
Coen Brothers Day Six Part One
Coen Brothers Day Six Part Two
Coen Brothers Day Six Part Three
Coen Brothers Day Eight Part One
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