The opening scenes of the Coen's new effot really set the tone.
It begins with shots of the Texas landscape, a country beautiful and heartless. The hills roll away into the horizon as the sun mercilessly beats down. Later, when violence marks every turn of the country we see, it'll be hard to be surprised. It's like violence belongs there. As one character says, "This country is hard on folks."
As this almost alien world flicks before us, we hear Tommy Lee Jones's Sheriff Bell speak of evil, and of one young, remorseless killer he had to put away because "if they let him out, he said he'd just go and do it again." To be a sheriff or to be any person of moral purpose, he says, one would have to put one's soul at hazard. At some point in time, he says, "you just have to say, 'All right. I'll be a part of this world.'"
And as he speaks we see a deputy leading a man into the back of a squad car. The man is dressed casually. His face is hidden in shadow and darkness and he moves mechanically, with either too much thought or no thought at all. The deputy climbs into the front seat and drives away.
Later, once we understand (or perhaps witness is the word) the thing sitting in the back of the car, we wonder how the deputy could even touch it. If he even knew what he was carrying. If he knew what was looking out at him behind those eyes.
The deputy returns to the station and phones in his arrest. In the background, his form blurry, sits the strange man. As the deputy speaks the man rises, dips down, and suddenly his handcuffed wrists are before him. The deputy ends his speech with the phrase, "Yes, sir. I've got it under control," which is when the man behind him reaches down and uses his handcuffs to garrotte the deputy, heaving him back, their boots making savage rubber arcs across the linoleum, and we zoom in from above on the killer's face, twisted in sick, blind fury and exhilaration, as he strangles the life out of a human being. As the deputy dies, the killer exhales. He looks satisfied. It is not sexual. It is just something that has been done and done well.
Meet Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem not as a man, but rather as a force of nature in the world Sheriff Ed Tom Bell has agreed to be a part of.
The Coen's movie fundamentally is a chase movie set in a semi noir-western universe filled with dilapidated hotels and wide, empty stretches of country. The plot centers on three men - one, the salt-of-the-earth survivalist Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who while antelope hunting finds a drug deal gone savagely wrong and 2.4 million dollars sitting next to a corpse under a tree - the monster the drug kingpins have hired to get the money back, Anton Chigurh, whose nihlistic, existentialist, and harrowingly pragmatic method of living embraces murdering everything in his path - and Sheriff Bell, an old man who remembers simpler times and cannot understand what has come to the country he knows so well. It's fitting that the movie is set in 1980, just as the drug industry was firing up. Just imagine all the worse things that have happened since then.
Moss, of course, takes the money and runs. It's returning later to give water to one of the dying men at the shoot out that gets him in the sights of Chigurh, and as Chigurh mercilessly pursues him Sheriff Bell is left cleaning up after him and tagging the bodies.
I can honestly say that this movie is one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in the cinema. The Coens have masterfully crafted an almost Biblical thriller and cat-and-mouse game as hard men do hard things in a hard country. The movie has no music, but so fantastically arranged is each scene that you won't notice until the very end. Their eye for detail - the ring of a phone in the distance when there should be a man at the desk, but isn't, and why? - the flicker of thunder far on the horizon - the sound of a lightbulb being unscrewed outside a hotel room - these and more are deliciously wicked treats from masters of a craft. Their recent work has been fairly lackluster, but this takes them back to their works like Fargo, Miller's Crossing, and Blood Simple.
The movie is adapated from famed literary author Cormac McCarthy's novel, and adapted well - much of the novel is just dialogue to begin with. But the treatment of the country and the themes of fading morality are as scrupulously attended to as the way Tommy Lee Jones speaks his lines.
It also crackles with black humor. Moss's exchanges with his wife Carla Jean (the always gorgeous Kelly Macdonald) have the genuine charm and humor of a well-established couple. Bell's wry observations, while funny, mask a deep sorrow. And Chigurh's interactions with others evoke much nervous laughter. If you have ever wondered how a monster would interact with chicken farmers and beehive-laden women, here's your opportunity.
The acting is superb. Jones plays the role he was born to play. Is there a man more Texan? I can't think of one. Brolin is a revelation - his role is mostly silent, but somehow he imbues the simplest actions with knowledge and care. But it's Bardem, who is almost a sex-icon in Spain, who brings us a killer more frightening than Hannibal Lecter - whereas Lecter was a showy virtuoso, Anton Chigurh is an implacable force, as human as a thunderstorm, as thoughtful as a machine. His favorite tool is a pneumatic airgun made for slaughtering cattle, but he prefers to use it on people and door locks. His tool has meaning - not only is it the tool of a humble worker, it also implies that he views his fellow men as cattle. If they could be called "fellow men."
The movie is gripping and is unconventional for its scope - some climactic decisions are left off-screen, possibly for the viewer to imagine, possibly because they don't matter, an idea uncomfortable for most casual moviewatchers. The ending is sure to bring fire, but it's fitting. It is also abrupt. When Tommy Lee Jones starts talking about dreams, listen to what he's saying. Don't miss it or you'll miss one of the simpelst philosophical reflections on the events in the movie.
The movie is also violent. But it isn't graceful, Matrix-like violence, nor is it the immature torture porn of Saw - this violence is quick, gritty, disturbing, and featureless. It's both explosive and casual. In the world of No Country, such things are commonplace.
This movie is worth seeing in the theater for the ambient sound alone. The queer whisper of Chigurh's silenced shotgun (you heard me) has much more menace leaking out of the speakers behind your ears than it does from your TV. And the landscape, which may be even a bigger character than anyone else in the movie, deserves to be on the biggest silver screen available.
It begins with shots of the Texas landscape, a country beautiful and heartless. The hills roll away into the horizon as the sun mercilessly beats down. Later, when violence marks every turn of the country we see, it'll be hard to be surprised. It's like violence belongs there. As one character says, "This country is hard on folks."
As this almost alien world flicks before us, we hear Tommy Lee Jones's Sheriff Bell speak of evil, and of one young, remorseless killer he had to put away because "if they let him out, he said he'd just go and do it again." To be a sheriff or to be any person of moral purpose, he says, one would have to put one's soul at hazard. At some point in time, he says, "you just have to say, 'All right. I'll be a part of this world.'"
And as he speaks we see a deputy leading a man into the back of a squad car. The man is dressed casually. His face is hidden in shadow and darkness and he moves mechanically, with either too much thought or no thought at all. The deputy climbs into the front seat and drives away.
Later, once we understand (or perhaps witness is the word) the thing sitting in the back of the car, we wonder how the deputy could even touch it. If he even knew what he was carrying. If he knew what was looking out at him behind those eyes.
The deputy returns to the station and phones in his arrest. In the background, his form blurry, sits the strange man. As the deputy speaks the man rises, dips down, and suddenly his handcuffed wrists are before him. The deputy ends his speech with the phrase, "Yes, sir. I've got it under control," which is when the man behind him reaches down and uses his handcuffs to garrotte the deputy, heaving him back, their boots making savage rubber arcs across the linoleum, and we zoom in from above on the killer's face, twisted in sick, blind fury and exhilaration, as he strangles the life out of a human being. As the deputy dies, the killer exhales. He looks satisfied. It is not sexual. It is just something that has been done and done well.
Meet Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem not as a man, but rather as a force of nature in the world Sheriff Ed Tom Bell has agreed to be a part of.
The Coen's movie fundamentally is a chase movie set in a semi noir-western universe filled with dilapidated hotels and wide, empty stretches of country. The plot centers on three men - one, the salt-of-the-earth survivalist Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who while antelope hunting finds a drug deal gone savagely wrong and 2.4 million dollars sitting next to a corpse under a tree - the monster the drug kingpins have hired to get the money back, Anton Chigurh, whose nihlistic, existentialist, and harrowingly pragmatic method of living embraces murdering everything in his path - and Sheriff Bell, an old man who remembers simpler times and cannot understand what has come to the country he knows so well. It's fitting that the movie is set in 1980, just as the drug industry was firing up. Just imagine all the worse things that have happened since then.
Moss, of course, takes the money and runs. It's returning later to give water to one of the dying men at the shoot out that gets him in the sights of Chigurh, and as Chigurh mercilessly pursues him Sheriff Bell is left cleaning up after him and tagging the bodies.
I can honestly say that this movie is one of the greatest experiences I've ever had in the cinema. The Coens have masterfully crafted an almost Biblical thriller and cat-and-mouse game as hard men do hard things in a hard country. The movie has no music, but so fantastically arranged is each scene that you won't notice until the very end. Their eye for detail - the ring of a phone in the distance when there should be a man at the desk, but isn't, and why? - the flicker of thunder far on the horizon - the sound of a lightbulb being unscrewed outside a hotel room - these and more are deliciously wicked treats from masters of a craft. Their recent work has been fairly lackluster, but this takes them back to their works like Fargo, Miller's Crossing, and Blood Simple.
The movie is adapated from famed literary author Cormac McCarthy's novel, and adapted well - much of the novel is just dialogue to begin with. But the treatment of the country and the themes of fading morality are as scrupulously attended to as the way Tommy Lee Jones speaks his lines.
It also crackles with black humor. Moss's exchanges with his wife Carla Jean (the always gorgeous Kelly Macdonald) have the genuine charm and humor of a well-established couple. Bell's wry observations, while funny, mask a deep sorrow. And Chigurh's interactions with others evoke much nervous laughter. If you have ever wondered how a monster would interact with chicken farmers and beehive-laden women, here's your opportunity.
The acting is superb. Jones plays the role he was born to play. Is there a man more Texan? I can't think of one. Brolin is a revelation - his role is mostly silent, but somehow he imbues the simplest actions with knowledge and care. But it's Bardem, who is almost a sex-icon in Spain, who brings us a killer more frightening than Hannibal Lecter - whereas Lecter was a showy virtuoso, Anton Chigurh is an implacable force, as human as a thunderstorm, as thoughtful as a machine. His favorite tool is a pneumatic airgun made for slaughtering cattle, but he prefers to use it on people and door locks. His tool has meaning - not only is it the tool of a humble worker, it also implies that he views his fellow men as cattle. If they could be called "fellow men."
The movie is gripping and is unconventional for its scope - some climactic decisions are left off-screen, possibly for the viewer to imagine, possibly because they don't matter, an idea uncomfortable for most casual moviewatchers. The ending is sure to bring fire, but it's fitting. It is also abrupt. When Tommy Lee Jones starts talking about dreams, listen to what he's saying. Don't miss it or you'll miss one of the simpelst philosophical reflections on the events in the movie.
The movie is also violent. But it isn't graceful, Matrix-like violence, nor is it the immature torture porn of Saw - this violence is quick, gritty, disturbing, and featureless. It's both explosive and casual. In the world of No Country, such things are commonplace.
This movie is worth seeing in the theater for the ambient sound alone. The queer whisper of Chigurh's silenced shotgun (you heard me) has much more menace leaking out of the speakers behind your ears than it does from your TV. And the landscape, which may be even a bigger character than anyone else in the movie, deserves to be on the biggest silver screen available.
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