No Country for Old Men

Posted by Matthew Alexander (matthew@filmschoolrejects.com) on November 24, 2007

It has been nearly a decade since the Coen brothers have done anything worth remembering. Most of their recent efforts have been silly little films that tried too hard to be cutesy, or artsy or both. The Man Who Wasn’t There was a serious piece, but it bogged down in an effort to be too abstrusely artistic and mystical; the rest of their recent offerings have bordered on ridiculous. But the trailers to No Country for Old Men suggested a return to greatness, to that tight editing and thrilling story telling that made a few of their earlier films some of the best ever made. The first three quarters of the film seemed to confirm that presentiment. The last quarter is the most unexpected and tragic conclusion I can recall.

No Country for Old Men, based on the book by Cormack McCarthy, is a simple tale. Lewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a hunter in Texas and a man of few words, comes across a large drug deal gone wrong. With none of the dealers left alive, he makes off with the money he finds. An expert assassin, Anton Chiguhr (Javier Bardem) who seems to represent the callousness of chance and fate, comes looking to kill him and get the loot back. That pretty much sums up the important parts… at least I think it does. The movie’s ending makes me think I might have missed something.

Perhaps that something is the character of Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Though Jones’ performance is nothing to complain about, I found his character to be superfluous. He opens the movie with a voice over, and then figures prominently in the ending that so misfires. In between it is difficult to see why he appears in the movie at all; ditto for Woody Harrelson’s Carson Wells whose absence wouldn’t hurt the movie in the slightest.

The movie works best when Lewellyn Moss and Anton Chiguhr are pitted one against the other. Everything else feels extraneous, even though all the characters are well portrayed (in particular I was impressed with Kelly Macdonald, whose role was also unimportant but extremely well portrayed). When the movie is about these two, it enraptures its audience. When it strays from this storyline, it loses momentum.

The Coen brothers waste little time in getting the action started, but they don’t rush things. In their careful, methodical way they draw you deeper and deeper into a story filled with paranoia and tense expectation as the footsteps of unseen figures creak in a hallway, as shadows and silhouettes reveal only enough to titillate the imagination. The best word to describe it all is “gripping”.

One is left in the merciless grip of the movie for just about the entire first three quarters. And then disaster strikes. Just when we can feel an exhilarating climax drawing near, we get blindsided by the most unfathomable development and the movie proceeds in the most unexpected and unsatisfying direction imaginable. It feels like the ending to another movie, which just happens to have some of the same characters, has been nailed onto the body of No Country. One first experiences a great shock, and then a worry that the directors are going to let all the movie’s momentum fade away, and then a dawning fear that there will be no attempt to reclaim that momentum, that the credits are just going to start to roll. And indeed they do roll, suddenly, at a point that feels arbitrarily chosen, as if the movie had reached some predetermined time limit and it must languish unfinished for eternity.

Though I never saw it coming, a bit of sober reflection leads me to believe that the nature of the ending is tied to the nature of Bardem’s character. Perhaps it is a commentary on chance and fate. Why this commentary must be made at the expense of the movie’s entertainment value I cannot figure. If the Coen brothers wish to explore the theme of random chance, and if they feel they cannot do this while following the pillars of storytelling, then I suggest they write an essay on the subject. When they feel like they want to tell a fine story and not disappoint they may pick up the camera again.

The spectacular failure that such a promising movie became leads me to wonder if cinema itself is dying. Artists prefer to seek their own unique vision, to be trailblazers. But how much room is left on which to blaze new trails? Music went through its own crisis from which it never recovered. Composers like Bach established it as a great art form; men like Mozart and then Beethoven took it to new heights; Mahler and others like him started to chafe under restrictions and began to explore some radical territory; and finally men like Schoenberg killed music, having apparently been left with so little room to innovate that with his twelve-tone music he ripped apart everything that music was about rather than continue to make pale imitations of what had already been done.

Does No Country point to similar problems? Of course the fun popcorn movies with ever improving special effects will continue to draw in great crowds, but what about the truly artistic films which are the foundation for the art form? It seems like the Coen brothers disdained to make a predictable ending such as has been done thousands of times. But could they not find a unique way to conclude that doesn’t ruin what they set up? Did Shyamalan mine the last of the surprise endings? Have we reached and passed Peak Cinema? Has it all been done before so many times that Schoenberg’s evil specter has come to haunt movies?

Or am I making way too much of this? It does seem that the last decade has been a poor one for movies, but maybe we are just in a slow spot while we wait for the next great idea that revitalizes the art. Perhaps No Country is nothing more than an exasperating movie that should have been better. Only time will tell, but in my mind one thing is certain: I have never been so frustrated with a movie as I was with No Country for Old Men. I hope I never am again.

Grade: A movie like this defies standard scores. Grade withheld.

Lions for Lambs Poster Release Date: November 21, 2007
Rated: R for strong graphic violence and some language.
Running Time: 122 min.
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Screenplay: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Cormac McCarthy (novel)
Studio: Miramax
Official Website: Click Here


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  • Even Rolling Stone's rave review contains this line: "I've heard some carping about the ending, which stays tone-faithful to McCarthy instead of going for Hollywood pow."

    Now I've got to see it for myself. Maybe if I walk out 15 minutes before the ending, it will work better.
  • "Though Jones’ performance is nothing to complain about, I found his character to be superfluous."

    That's probably why you didn't get the movie then, because the film is about him. He's one of the "old men" in the title, who finds himself no longer with a place in the world.

    I do understand the change in tone of the film is jarring, much the same way a realization of life can be, and some are finding it disappointing, but "the death of cinema" seems a bit of a stretch.

    Maggie, if you walk out 15 minutes early, you'll miss the whole point of the story.
  • "Maggie, if you walk out 15 minutes early, you’ll miss the whole point of the story."
    O.K., El Bich, so I was hasty. As usual, you're the voice of sanity. Well, close. :-)
  • The Bros. Coen as the Arnold Schoenberg of filmmaking? For a movie so old-fashioned in its cold formalism, that's a hell of a stretch. I have to agree with El Bicho, if you think Mr. Jones was extraneous, you didn't understand what the movie was supposed to be about, which would be why you were so befuddled by the ending. (By the way, the ending is straight out of McCarthy's novel, so don't blame the Coens, they were just being faithful to their source material!)

    "Why this commentary must be made at the expense of the movie’s entertainment value I cannot figure." Great films are more than mere entertainment.
  • Matthew
    Thanks for your replies. I do believe I understand what the Coen brothers think it was about, but for me it was not about that. Subtle points and themes and motifs are all well and good, but not if the story must be sacrificed to achieve them.

    I realize the death of cinema was dramatic, but a walked out of the movie feeling that way. It's been a bad decade and this was an extreme disappointment, and just when I was deciding whether it deserved an A- or my first A!

    I appreciate your opinions though.
  • This movie will undoubtedly divide people into groups that think it's terrible and groups that think the other group "just doesn't get it". I think that's all part of the fun.

    The ending is jarring, but I think the Coens handled the shifting of focus fairly well. I left the theater feeling awkward and empty, like all was not right in the world. That was definitely a new movie-going experience for me, and I appreciate it.

    There was only one problem I had with the movie - and that was the lack of a showdown. I think that's the reason I felt so uneasy about it at the end.

    I may be coloring this film by my faithfulness to Coen movies, but God, it is amazing. It's no Barton Fink, but what is?
  • Matthew
    Cole,

    The lack of a showdown is what got to me. If the movie really is about Ed Tom Bell, then why was it... well... not about him? There was nothing about him that interested me in the slightest, which makes his paucity of screen time fortunate. It was Chiguhr and Moss that made the movie so engrossing.

    The Coen brothers pulled a cruel trick, not a masterstroke.
  • Stacey Keith
    What a relief. I thought I was the only Coen brothers' enthusiast in America left with a bad taste in her mouth after watching "No Country For Old Men." I admit--I'm a geeky fan. And after reading all those laudatory reviews ("Every bit as good as "Blood Simple," "A tour de force deserving shelf space next to "Fargo"), I went into the theater with high hopes.

    And left with one thought: as a director who's bankable enough to turn story structure on its ear, is showing everyone that you can do it more important than telling a good story?

    Story structure works like this. We see Hero in everyday world. Some event or person calls Hero to action. He meets with complication after complication (rising tension) until at the midpoint of the story, he learns something he will need in order to achieve his goal. He suffers reversals (turning points) until the blackest moment when all seems lost, followed by the climax and the denouement. 99.9% of stories are crafted along these lines.

    So what do the Coens do? For starters, they dispense with any clearly delineated protagonist. If a story protagonist can be defined as someone who experiences the most pronounced character arc during the course of a tale, then I think we might claim the protagonist in "No Country" is Tommy Lee Jones's character.

    But in this we are deceived. We spend most of our time with Josh Brolin and are disabused of any notion of his being the protagonist about 3/4 of the way through the film. Are we shocked? Perhaps. But does shocking an audience for the sake of shocking it make this any less of a mediocre movie? No.

    If we are to assume Javier Bardem's character, Chiguhr, is Death or, as has been suggested, cruel and capricious fate, we learn nothing, are left with nothing, other than its implacable nature...and an entirely gratuitous scene where he debrides an open wound. Again, was this scene worth shooting? Was this movie worth making?

    To my way of thinking, the Coen brothers are--or can be--better filmmakers than this. Depriving us of anyone likable to root for (with the exception of Kelly MacDonald's character, the only one by the way with enough pluck to refuse the coin-toss challenge posed to her by Chirguhr's personification of Death), an emotionally satisfying (or at least understandable) ending, any sense of causally-related cohesiveness (Woody Harrelson's character, while brilliantly acted, bore no relationship to the plot, not even allegorically) does NOT make this movie Oscar worthy. Instead, what we are fed in great abundance, is gore, directorial arrogance, and a whole lot of brilliant cinematography.

    After reading all those rave reviews, I left the theater feeling as though I was the only one who realized the emperor wore no clothes.

    And after reading this blog, I'm hugely relieved to know I am not alone in my censure of a widely-touted film.

    Joel, Ethan--if by some remote chance you read this--please seal up your bag of cinematic tricks and write a movie with a little heart, okay? You have fans out here. Sure, some of us took a gut punch with this last movie, but we're still willing to give you our time, consideration, and money.
  • hardy campbell
    Dudes, a traditional shoot-'em-up Anton-gets-killed-by-Tommy-Lee ending would have been tragic. One can argue about the literary ending, but don't y'all get it? Tommy Lee's lawman was essential to the film, as the Old Man who was always a step behind the two main protaganists - intentionally so. He is the aged sage of the sagebrush, mystified by the violence and amorality that Vietnam, Watergate, crack cocaine and Ronald Reagan had and would inflict on America. Brolin was the cyncial vet, clinging to a country long dead, while Bardem was the Wall Street assassin who would doubtless take his millions and make a mint on leveraged buyouts. Three characters were necessary for this story to have meaning; all others were fifth wheels.
  • Clark
    As a long-time fan of the Coen Bros. work, I must admit that I had very high expectations for this film. I was not disappointed one bit. I appreciate that the film stayed true to the book, and as others have mentioned, the intent isn't as superficial as many people would desire a film to be. The fact that we are left with a very uneasy feeling is exactly what makes it great. I don't view the ending as being self-serving or artistically selfish. It certainly invokes a definitive and visceral reaction, and I can't help but to believe that that is exactly what was intended. There is so much understatement and subtlety, incredible restraint.....I can't wait to see it again.
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