Revisiting No Country for Old Men

In my original review for the Coen Brothers' legendary film adaptation of No Country for Old Men, I subtracted one point out of ten for what I once saw as a hasty conclusion to this movie. Nevertheless, I realized while rewatching it with my brother that an ending as jarring and abrupt as this had done nothing wrong outside of being more intelligent than I was. No Country patiently and subtly finds more meaning in meaninglessness than any other contemporary movie I've ever seen. Perhaps it was naive of me to ask the hangman to wear a frilly dress, to ask something as jarring as death to make sense. This movie is a cleverly considerate philosophy lesson dressed up as an oppressive horror show of violence, a philosophy lesson wielding a suppressed shotgun instead of the usual book of maxims.

Llewelyn Moss may have avoided trouble with the ruthless killer Anton Chigurh if he had just left the briefcase full of a cool two million in cash to bake in the Texas sun at the scene of a drug deal gone way bad, but it's incredible what some people will do to make a buck. I can't really say that I would have made a different choice, especially if I were living in a trailer house as third-rate as Llewelyn's. His situation may be far from good, but cinematographer Roger Deakins's vision of his predicament is beyond even great. I recognized that Deakins had absolutely outdone himself then, and I know it even better now. The camerawork of No Country perfectly captures rural Texas in all its immense, muted, yet colorful beauty, and is both understated and eye-poppingly beautiful in its precise, intentional simplicity and minimalism.

This movie is refreshingly simple without feeling shallow. Llewelyn's decision to involve himself with this dirty money opens a can of worms big enough to occupy everyone involved without introducing needless overcomplication. No Country wisely avoids making the deceptively easy decision to write in additional subplots, choosing instead to stick to its guns and perfect its aim, preferring contemplation over convolutedness. It even takes the time sometimes to show us more than one character's perception of a single moment, and because this movie is about its characters and how they view the world, this seeming repetition works, and it works well. No Country shaves unnecessary fluff from conversations and drops tons of exposition with seconds-long shots, doing far more with far less.

Obviously, this movie is an adaptation, and so the gauge of its success will be how well it adapts its source material. No Country is about its characters and what happens to them on a personal, thoughtful level. Both the hero - call him whatever you will - and the villain, an undoubtedly apt description, are brilliant. Josh Brolin's Llewelyn is a well-acted and subtle protagonist with an understated attitude, but Javier Bardem's mysterious and sinister Anton is without a doubt one of the most memorable villains I've ever seen in a movie. From the way he looks to the way he talks to the way he thinks, this stone-cold killer is an absolute knockout of a character who always manages to outshoot, outwit, and out-philosophize his foe, all while wearing the worst haircut in the history of mankind, a jarring combo. Both men are also incredibly intelligent, and I found a distinct satisfaction in watching two smart, capable opponents try to outwit and outshoot each other. No Country can be both very quiet and very loud, and it works either way wonderfully. The quiet is unsettling. This movie contains virtually zero background score, and while I'm not the type to dismiss a well-timed swell of music, the eerie near-silence serves the naturalistic tone of this movie extremely well while also making the loud moments truly startling.

No Country, though contemplative, sure knows how to stage a shootout when it comes to action. One such gunfight in a motel is one of the tensest, most shocking of its kind I've ever seen, flashy in its simplicity, unnerving in its quiet, and startling in its noise. It doesn't try too hard to be cool and is surprisingly restrained compared to other blockbusters. The only thing scarier than the sight of a black-clad assailant is not being able to see him - that, and the distant flash of a muzzle in the dark, the sudden and surprisingly loud TWHIP of a passing round. When subtle philosophy isn't enough, No Country brings out the big guns - literally. It can be both fine-drawn and blunt. I once disliked the bluntness of this movie, but only until it clicked for me as to why it was so frank. This movie is tastefully nihilistic and doesn't dress its violence up. One minute, someone is alive. The next, they're not. There's no rhyme or reason to it, and I realized that this abruptness was the entire point. No Country does a spectacular job of making you feel like a helpless observer of something horrible. You can't do anything about it, and neither can the more benevolent characters in this movie, as few and far between as they are. All you and they can do is try to find meaning in something ultimately void of it once the storm has blown over. You can't stop what's coming, and understanding it is no easy feat, either.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of No Country for Old Men is its enduring appeal in spite of its nihilism. This is a movie as intentionally thematically hideous as Anton's hair, yet so skillfully woven together into a beautiful tapestry of horrible violence that it doesn't matter. It raises hard questions without providing easy answers, forcing audiences to reflect on what they have just watched. Judging from the cultural legacy of this movie, we're still thinking about these questions eighteen years later.

No Country for Old Men - 10/10

Ecclesiastes 3:16-22