Tampa Film Fan

film fan finding:no country for old men

I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

– Sailing To Byzantium by William Butler Yeats (Online text © 1998-2007 Poetry X. All rights reserved. From The Tower, 1928)

No Country For Old Men is brutal. Mesmerizing. Stark. Bleak. Haunting. Depressing. Upsetting. Annoying. Thought-provoking. Confusing. Beautiful.

In other words, it’s a Coen brothers adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel.

The film opens with scenes of barren but beautiful Texas landscape, with a voice-over by Tommy Lee Jones as the world-weary Sheriff Bell. He recounts the case of a teenager who murdered someone just because he was curious. Bell’s monologue explores the main theme of this film: the nature of the human soul. McCarthy took the title for his book from the first line of Yeats’ poem Sailing to Byzantium, posted above. The poem never reveals the fate of the speaker’s soul and neither does the film. Like the speaker in the poem, Sheriff Bell is on an exploration for which there are no easy answers.

Josh Brolin is the self-reliant Llewellyn Moss who, during a routine hunting excursion, stumbles across the aftermath of a failed drug deal. Moss isn’t upset by the bloody bodies and deserted cars; instead he’s curious. His curiosity leads him to return to the scene, where he tracks the remaining victims and discovers a suitcase containing over $2 million dollars.

After Moss finds the money, the film turns into a slow, steady, suspenseful game of cat and mouse. He doesn’t know who or when or where, but Moss knows that sooner or later, someone is going to come after that money.

That someone is the relentless assassin Chigurh. Javier Bardem is incredible in this role and has created one of the creepiest villains of all time. Unlike Hannibal Lecter, Chigurh doesn’t revel in his wickedness or take delight in terrorizing his victims. He kills because he’s evil. Because it has to be done. Because people are in the way, or because he made a promise, or because of a coin toss.

Moss is on the run with the money. Chigurh is chasing Moss. Moss sends his wife away to hide. The businessman behind the drug deal hires another assassin, played by Woody Harrelson, to follow Moss. The Mexican drug dealers want their money back. Chigurh is stalking Harrelson’s character. Moss’s wife is looking for her husband. Throughout it all, Sheriff Bell is looking for all of them, even though he’s not sure how many people to look for. He knows that it won’t end well for most of them and there’s not much he can do to prevent it.

That’s the way the audience feels, too. There’s no musical score to the film, no aural cues that encourage a particular response or warn of impending doom. I watched this movie with one hand over my face — which is my standard viewing pose for horror movies, which this movie is not — because the suspenseful anticipation kept building and building. I knew things probably wouldn’t end well for most of the characters, but I had to see it through to the end. I had to find out what happened to these characters that I had become so invested in, no matter what happened or how painful it might be to watch (hence the hand over my face).

And then — poof! The movie is over. With key scenes taking place off screen. With storylines unresolved. With questions unanswered. With haunting dialogue by Sheriff Bell that bookends the opening monologue.

The Husband and I instantly and vigorously disagreed about the ending. He thinks it is brilliant to not spoon feed the audience every detail. He says that things don’t always wrap up neatly in real life, so this film’s ending is realistic. He likes being able to interpret the characters’ actions for himself.

Not me. I like my film endings neat and tidy, with everything resolved and all questions answered. I feel like I’ve been cheated by the jarring, abrupt ending. Where’s the last third of the movie? From what I’ve read, the movie is fairly faithful to McCarthy’s book, which also ended without tying things up neatly. Kudos to the Coen brothers for not changing the ending…and damn them for that as well. Perhaps the whole point is that there are no answers. Life is a jumbled mix of good and evil, smart decisions and bad ones, accidents and coincidences. I get that; really I do. I still want answers, though, especially at the end of such an intriguing movie.

We talked about the movie for days afterwards, dissecting every detail. The cinematography was beautiful, the omission of background music a stroke of genius, and the casting absolutely perfect. And the questions; always the questions. What really happened? Why was this particular action shown off-screen? Who ended up with the money? What would have happened if the characters had made different choices?

We plan to see it again over the holidays and will probably still be discussing and dissecting it come Christmas time. After you’ve seen No Country For Old Men, please join the discussion. We need a tie-breaker on some of our questions.

Film Fan Finding: A-