No Country for Old Men (2007)

 

No Country for Old Men (2007)

 

Two words that Crime, and most other Pulp fictions, seem to conceptually confuse is “Nihilism” and “Existentialism.” They are too often used interchangeably, or use Nihilism primarily when an Existentialist statement goes awry.

 

Nihilism, espoused by German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, is “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.” Nietzsche wrote about it before the two World Wars, which he didn’t live to see, and his work was weirdly adopted by the Nazis, who liked its cruelty, but seemed to miss a lot of its points. To quote Nietzsche, “All superior men who were irresistibly drawn to throw off the yoke of any kind of morality and to frame new laws had, if they were not actually mad, no alternative but to make themselves or pretend to be mad.” Nietzsche believe in an Übermensch, a Superman, beyond Good and Evil, and superior for that very reason.

 

Existentialism (mostly) came later, as Modern Existentialism was a reaction to the Horrors of the two World Wars, reflecting a collective shock that an organized Evil could so define Humanity, as well as a creeping realization that the road towards our Redemption didn’t lie is past Principles or Authorities, nor Personal Arrogance, but to acknowledge we are small in this Universe, but even in our smallness, obligated to, well, something (Existential Thought starts with Existential Dread, the disorientation we feel when we start to suspect life has no meaning, but the Dread is only the starting point, Existentialism is the emotional and intellectual discipline of how to deal with it). It was espoused by much nicer people than Nietzsche, like Albert Camus and Victor Frankel, as a “a philosophical theory or approach which emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will.” It has similarities with Nihilism, but it’s more Humanistic, more Moral, and reacts to the presented evidence that life has no meaning with, “Well, dagnammit, create the meaning yourself, that’s what Free Will is for!” Frankel was especially important regarding the last part, and he was a Neurologist and Psychiatrist, responsible for creating Logotherapy, which stressed that “Man’s Search for Meaning” (title of his most famous book, published in 1946) was a central motivational force and huge factor in mental health.

 

Existentialism’s relationship with Nihilism seems akin to, in Ancient Greece, Stoicism’s relationship to Cynicism. Stoicism is a philosophy preaching that “virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason … that governs nature, and … [being] indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain,” and is now mostly associated with Christianity and Military Discipline. Meanwhile Cynicism, which is slightly older, was weirdly anti-social and self-isolating, a philosophy often embraced by beggars who sometimes proved to be people who had renounced their great wealth, arguing that as “reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame, and even flouting conventions openly and derisively in public.” (Leading Cynic, Diogenes of Sinope, had the dual reputation of being among the hardest Philosophers to personally tolerate because of how he behaved, but also told the funniest jokes of those committed to this Intellect-obsessed profession.)  To oversimplify, a Stoic speaking to a Cynic, or an Existentialist speaking to a Nihilist, were both saying to their near cousins, “I get your point, but the has to be more to being human than that.”

 

Neither Nihilism nor Existentialism are particularly happy philosophies, both assume a lonely existence always threatens and have little faith in God or an afterlife, but Nihilism seems to only find joy in the Apocalypse, while in Existentialism one can find contentment more mundanely by simply not surrendering to the Dark Night of the Soul. During WWII Camus risked his life for the French Resistance, while Frankel’s main struggle at the same time was to find a reason to go on while imprisoned in a Nazi Death-Camp. The earlier, and mostly pampered (though sickly for most of his life), Nietzsche was dominated by a sister who deliberately corrupted his later works after went he insane and died from inadequately treated Syphilis.

 

I find Nihilism self-indulgent, ultimately fatalistic, but unwilling to say-so. Existentialism, to a degree, embraces fatalism, but comes out of that embrace purposeful; in Existentialism the inevitability of disappointment and failure is never an excuse for surrender before actual death. “For Camus, suicide was the rejection of freedom. He thinks that fleeing from the absurdity of reality into illusions, religion, or death is not the way out. Instead of fleeing the absurd meaninglessness of life, we should embrace life passionately.”

 

The connection between Ancient Stoicism and Modern Existentialism runs deep. In cinema, it is most obvious in the “Revisionist” Westerns of the 1960s & ‘70s, which re-examined the presumed Stoic Morality of the Western Hero, but made everything darker, more violent, with victories likely to be Pyrrhic and heroes not uncommonly dying alone -- but even in the bleakness, the idea that some Morality and Human Dignity does exist is un-betrayed, even as the world and other humans betray the human demonstrating the same.

 

“No Country for Old Men” is an up-to-date Western, though it’s set more-than two decades before the year film’s release, 2007. It’s a bleak one, way bleaker than the classic Revisionist Westerns that were set in the 1860s - ‘80s. As Ty Burr wrote, it “stands at the pivot of the Old West and the New Avarice, a point in time when the last vestiges of frontier morality have been washed away by a pitiless modern crime wave fueled by drug profits.” We should not be surprised this film came from the Cohen Brothers.

 

Writers/Directors Joel and Ethan Cohen are among the only film makers in the USA that both understand the difference between Nihilism and Existentialism, and care enough about the difference, to dance on the fence in-between. Some of their films love Nihilism (“Barton Fink” (1991)), while others embrace Existentialism (“Fargo” (1996)), and they never seemed confused about what side of the fence they are on.

 

The film is based, surprisingly faithfully, on a novel with the same name by Cormac McCarthy (first published in 2005).  It gives us two Heroes, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) an honorable Lawman nearing retirement and increasingly haunted by how little power he has in a world spiraling out-of-control, and Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) a largely blameless criminal caught up in the captiousness of Fate. There are several Villains, but most important one is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), perhaps the most perfect representation of a violent Psychopath in cinema history. Importantly, it grants no victories to the Heroes, not much to the main Villain either, but instead, in the barren Hell of Texas, asks you which of these characters you’d rather be in the end, because the end comes from us all.  Orr again, “[This] is a film in which wrongs are done and there is precious little anyone can do to make them right again.”

 

We’re first given a monologue by Ed, and the film closes with another monologue by him. Ed’s a larger character in the book, but even here, he’s the moral vertebrae of the sun-dried skeleton of the death-of-dreams. "The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard.” Ed pines for days when some Sheriffs didn’t even wear guns. I guess it is important to say that before the film is over, Ed visits his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin), an already retired Lawman, who gently explains to Ed that he’s lying to himself, that the West was always violent.

 

Even before the monologue is over, and well before we see Ed’s face for the first time, we’re introduced to Anton, who quickly murders the first two people he meets for pragmatic, but wholly empty, purposes. During the course of the film, this unrelenting killing machine uses several inventive weapons, but his clear preference is a pneumatic bolt, the same kind used to kill cattle with at a slaughterhouse.

 

Then the film shifts to Llewelyn, and with that moves into the main story. Llewelyn seems kind-of a decent guy, but also a bit of a loser. Chance gives him an irrational opportunity but that opportunity proves to be a trap, and for the short expanse of the rest of his life, he’s on the run from Anton, while Ed is chasing down both of them.

 

Llewelyn is a ‘Nam Vet and unemployed welder (he claims “retired,” but I distrust that) who lives in a trailer park with his mousey wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald). While out hunting, he stumbles across a massacre. There are shell casings, shattered pickups, giant stacks of cocaine or heroin, a dozen human bodies and a few dead dogs, all gathering flies beneath the merciless sun. There’s also a survivor, begging for water as he’s dying, with a suitcase of money near him.

 

Llewelyn had a clear choice, call the Cops, or take the money and run. Now, had he called the Cops (saving the stranger but losing the money), he would’ve been safe, or if he takes the money (and let the stranger die), he also would’ve been safe. But everything goes to hell when he first takes the money, but then returns to give the dying man water; Llewelyn’s six-of-one-and a half-dozen-of-the-other sets a Drug Cartel on him, and everything else in the plot flows out of that. (Note: I’m describing this scenario from Llewelyn’s perspective, and in doing so, fudging some stuff. Wanna know what I fudged? Watch the damn movie!)

 

Llewelyn’s return to the scene of the massacre sets up of the film’s first chase, which is masterful (Cinematography by frequent Cohen collaborator Roger Deakins, Edited by the Cohens, who oddly used the name Roderick Jaynes in the credits). In the darkness he runs on foot, pursued by a supped-up pickup truck with spotlights mounted on top and men firing at him out the windows. On the distant horizon the sun is disappearing, and there’re flashes of lightening, another storm looming even if he escapes this one. Llewelyn finds a shallow river that’s embankment makes it impossible for the pick-up to follow, he thinks he’s safe.

 

Nope.

 

The face-less bad-guys unleash their crazed dog to chase him through the water.

 

The viciousness of that dog impressed many, and there’s a recorded conversation between Author McCarthy and the Directors Cohen that addressed it:

 

McCarthy: So, tell me about this horrible dog. Was Josh just terrified of this animal? You pushed a button, and it leapt for your jugular?

Joel Cohen: It was a scary dog. It wasn't a movie dog.

McCarthy: It was basically trained to kill people.

Joel Cohen: It was basically trained to kill people.

Ethan Cohen: The trainer had this little neon-orange toy that he would show to the dog, and the dog would start slavering and get unbelievably agitated and would do anything to get the toy. So, the dog would be restrained, and Josh, before each take, would show the dog that he had the toy, he'd put it in his pants and jump into the river ...

Joel Cohen: ... without having any idea of how fast this dog could swim. So, the dog was then coming after him ...

Ethan Cohen: ... so Josh came out of the river sopping wet and pulled the thing out of his crotch and said--he was talking to himself--he said, "What do you do? … Oh, I'm an actor."

[Everybody laughs.]

 

The character who most captivated audiences and critics was Anton. Hired by one of the feuding Criminal Organizations to recover the money, he’s soon warring with other Criminals as ferociously as he’s hunting Llewelyn. Anton has a nearly perfectly-flat affect, no conscience at all, a wholly absurd haircut, and is driven by an obsession with personal Rules and false ideas of Fate. There’s also an inhuman serenity about him.

 

Actor Bardem regarding prepping for the role, “The brothers and I would talk about how to portray the man. … We want the violence coming from someplace else that we don’t really know what, where is it. And I guess that was the eyes or the voice or the words or the silences and, in order to do that, I tried to minimize everything, just to be focused on being here with you and not knowing what’s going to happen next.”

 

The crazy hair, a bit like Prince Valiant or a Beatles Mop-Top, proved a master-stroke by the Cohens.  The following three paragraphs are from different interviews:

 

Said Joel Cohen, “It was a photograph of a man sitting in a bar or a brothel in a Texas border town in 1979. So, we actually copied the clothes and the haircut that this person was wearing. It is a haircut that says a lot."

 

Actor Bardem stated, "You don't have to act the haircut; the haircut is acting by itself ... so you don't have to act weird if you have that weird haircut."

 

Actor Brolin, “Right after, we went to the Cowgirl Bar in Santa Fe. Javier just looks at me and goes, ‘Man, I’m not going to get laid for three months.’”

 

As Anton relentlessly stalks Llewelyn, Llewelyn keeps proving he’s got good Hunter’s and Warrior’s instincts. In any other film, Llewelyn would've eventually turned the tables on Aton.

 

Nope.

 

Brolin as Llewelyn proved the hardest to cast, though to the audience, Brolin retrospectively seems obvious. His acting career goes back to his teens and the year this film was released was hugely busy for him, with major roles not only in this film, but also “Grindhouse,” “American Gangster” and “In the Valley of Elah” (in which he co-starred again with Jones).

 

Joel Cohen, "We were very unsatisfied with everyone we saw before he showed up. We needed the same combination we had with Tommy [Lee Jones]: someone with equal weight who could authentically be part of that landscape. Those two things together ... we were surprised how difficult it was, and we weren't happy until he walked in. Without him the whole thing would have been out of whack."

The scenes with the least dialogue generally concern Brolin. He’s a man of few works, and when he occasionally does speak, he’s often alone, voicing an interior monologue that we are not fully party to; stuff like, "Yeah," and "There just ain't no way." Orr again, “Brolin manages … to convey the ego of a man who's been underestimated by others for so long that he's come to overestimate himself.”

 

We can see that an outsider might view Llewellyn as passive, but we get to see he is not. Also, despite his long silences, he gets some of the coolest dialogue in the film:

 

Llewellyn: "If I don't come back, tell my momma I love her."

Carla: "But your momma's dead."

Llewellyn, after a long pause: “Well, then I'll tell her myself."

 

Ed proved the easiest to cast; said Joel Cohen of Actor Jones, “He's from San Saba, Texas, not far from where the movie takes place. He's the real thing regarding that region. There's a short list of people who could play that part at the basic level of the qualities you need: age, screen presence and the need to really inhabit that region and that landscape."

 

Ed only fully comes into the story only after Llewelyn is already on the run. As is the reality of Lawmen, he’s always arriving at a location after-the-fact, for example, arriving at the initial massacre on horseback:

 

Deputy Wendell (Garret Dillahunt): It's a mess, ain't it, Sheriff?

Ed: If it ain't, it'll do until the mess gets here.

 

As a smart Lawman, he keeps picking up the trail that should’ve gone cold, but still always behind. In any other film, he would’ve found Llewelyn in time to stop Anton.

 

Nope.

 

Another major character is Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) dispatched by one set of Criminals or another when Anton proves himself too troubling. Dandyish in the biggest, whitest, Stetson hat in the whole film, he not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. His inclination is to negotiate, or maybe merely lie and cheat, his way out of this conundrum.

 

Nope.

 

The unfolding film is quite violent, but also deliberate in how it slows down its own pace. Apparent inaction and silence dominate, but the “inactions” are full of detail and anticipation, and the “silences” are really stretches without dialogue or music, instead using ambient noise (a distant freeway, a candy wrapper crinkling, a light bulb being unscrewed), meaning this film’s concept of “silence” sound is actually prominent. Several important confrontations happen off-screen, while the more trivial ones that we’re shown fore-warn us how bad what we don’t see really is. I think what is most striking about the film is that its stylized violence is played against a remarkable narrative leanness, it’s a complex tale told as if it it’s simpler than it actually is. Plot contrivances often are employed to make dumb stories at least convoluted enough to justify a one-and-one-half hour running time, but here, we have an epic tale disguising its epic-ness because the characters themselves don’t see everything, so they don’t recognize how deep they are in it.

 

Hell, with Llewelyn having more enemies than he could count or was even aware of, and it isn’t even Anton who catches him in the end. When Ed arrives at that fateful scene, the Cohen’s deliberately frustrates the audience because it, once again, the shoot-out was off-screen and Ed was after-the-fact.

 

Of the five main characters, Carla gets the least on-screen time. This is a man’s film (said Ethan Cohen, "We were aware of the basic link just by virtue of the setting, the south-west, and this very male aspect of the story. Hard men in the south-west shooting each other - that's definitely Sam Peckinpah's thing"), so Carla is regulated to reacting to their actions, but that does not mean she’s inessential. Near the end, after Llewyn’s death, she is confronted by Anton and she displays more insight than any of the others do, and with that, also demonstrates the film’s most important break with the novel.

 

There’s a scene long before Aton confronting Carla that sets it up. Anton wants to kill an un-named Gas Station Proprietor (Gene Jones) for no reason but whim. The Proprietor clearly finds Anton disturbing, but tries to put on his best professional face before this strange customer. Anton encourages him to engage in a coin-toss game, but refuses to explain what the stakes are. The scene stretches out for almost five minutes, and eternity for a dialogue scene in commercial cinema, and the suspense is near unbearable. In this scene, the dialogue mostly comes from the novel.

 

Then, when Anton finally confronts Carla, the mousey girl proves she is no fool, she knows he’s there to kill her even though there is no point to the violence anymore. It’s the same coin-toss game, and in the novel, she plays along and loses, but in the film, she shocks us with a defiance that exposes every lie of Anton’s empty life:

 

Anton: This is the best I can do. Call it.
Carla: I knowed you was crazy when I saw you sitting there. I knowed exactly what was in store for me.
Anton: Call it.
Carla: No. I ain’t gonna call it.
Anton: Call it.
Carla: The coin don’t have no say. It’s just you.
Anton: Well, I got here the same way the coin did.

 

There’s a progression through the world-views of the three male leads:

 

Ed’s old-school, Moralistic and clearly a Stoic. He leaves this film the most intact, but as he’s recognizing how marginal he’d become, so he’s the most disappointed. "I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't."

 

Llewelyn has Morals as well, though not as strong as Ed’s. He harms no one not threatening him, tries to bring water to the dying stranger, takes steps to protect his wife, and turns down an opportunity for extra-marital sex while on the run. But he comes from the later, less hopeful, age than Ed, and more willing to cut corners. He never mentions or prays to God, but does take full responsibility for his actions. He shares with Ed that he’s a rugged individualist and he doesn’t die for his sins really, only because his world is more eroded than Ed’s. Also, strangely, he seems more alive, more a man, while on the run, reminding me of some of Camus’ statements that he felt most alive while facing death in WWII. He’s our representative of Existentialism.  

 

Anton is the emptiness of life without meaning. He has no Moral code, just stupid, self-invented, Rules that grant him more power because he creates an illusionary image about how Fate works, denying that his actions are an expression of his own will, just the fulfillment of a nature. He is Nihilism incarnate, a parody of the Übermensch, and Carla called him on that.

 

It is a film of exceptional visual poetry mostly born of the Cohens’ obsession with landscape, which is true of many of their pictures. “Blood Simple” (1984) was set in a similarly bleak and empty Texas. “Raising Arizona” (1987) showed the same sensitivity towards … well … which state do you think they filmed in that time? And “Fargo,” their most similar film to this one, treating snow-covered Minnesota much like they did a Texas desert.

 

The poetry was so strong that the Critics became unusually poetic. What follows is a few snippets, and I apologize, during the writing process, I lost the names of a few of these Scribes. You’ll note that though most were most captivated by Anton (Bardem), they also acknowledge that it was Ed (Jones) who gave the film gravitas:

 

“The ghost of our history looms behind everything here except the assassin, who's something horribly new and who demands we call our fate on the flip of a coin.”

 

“In the end, the film's central image is Ed Tom's expression of bottomless sorrow. It's the grief of a man for a land his fathers tamed and in which he now walks as a stranger.”

 

“[T]here's only one thing that comes for all of us. For some people it will be sudden and unexpected, perhaps the violent outcome of an unlucky coin toss. For others, it will accumulate over time, enough time for them to recognize what's been lost, to fall out of step with the world.”

 

Orr again. “Jones's lined face conveys pride and acumen, as always. But there's a weary patience as well, as if each crease and fold his features have accumulated contains a lesson he might rather not have learned.”

 

Rodger Ebert, “[T]he movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are in the face of implacable injustice. The movie also loves some of its characters, and pities them, and has an ear for dialog not as it is spoken but as it is dreamed.”

 

“No Country …” made an extraordinary impact on the Oscars, with four major wins and another four major nominations. The wins were Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor (Bardem). It’s a shame that it lost Best Cinematography, but the winner, “There Will Be Blood” was pretty solid competition. I was more disappointed that the by-the-book Spy Thriller, “The Bourne Ultimatum” beat “No Country …” for Best Editing, Sound Mixing, and Sound Editing, because I found “No Country …” undeniably superior in all those categories.

 

The two categories that need the closest examination are Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, because the official Nominee for both was Skip Lievsay, but in both, key to the beauty was his seamless collaboration with Carter Burwell, who composed the Musical Score.

 

Burwell was asked to score a film virtually without music, and what music was there was meant to be subliminal. The total running time was 122 minutes, but the music was only 16, including the closing credits. That made it, just barely, applicable for the Oscars, but though much praised, it still didn’t make the final five nominees. Its key achievement was the integration of music and sound effects, something more-and-more films are trying to achieve, but few are succeeding at. Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” (1963) had no Score to speak of, but the great Composer Herman Berman instead created a sound-scape of mostly electronic bird calls that substituted for all music. Something akin to that landmark was achieved here. This approach accentuates the emptiness of the landscape and demands the audience listen that much harder. Ethan Coen, “Even in a movie like this where people think the sound is minimal, it’s actually maximal in terms of the effects and how they’re handled.”

 

Burwell , "There is actually a little music … It’s sparse. There are a few synthesizer drums that almost sound like and almost could be sound effects, because they blend in with the sound effects of the movie ... It made more of the background effects and the sound effects. When the music is there, it’s just there to set the mood, and that seemed to be the right mode in this case."

 

Both Burwell and Lievsay are long-time Cohen collaborators and so have worked on at least 12 films together. Lievsay called the picture, “quite a remarkable experiment … Suspense thrillers in Hollywood are traditionally done almost entirely with music. The idea here was to remove the safety net that lets the audience feel like they know what’s going to happen. I think it makes the movie much more suspenseful. You’re not guided by the score and so you lose that comfort zone.” And in a different interview, “That was an experiment in what we called the edge of perception … Ethan especially kept asking us to turn it lower and lower.”

 

Burwell describes his approach to nocturnal driving scenes, “The idea was to use the music to deepen the tension in some of these transitional scenes, when there’s not much going on. The sounds are snuck in underneath the wind or the sound of a car. When the wind or car goes away, the sound is left behind, but you never hear it appear.”

 

Lievsay, “The better we do our job, the less people realize what’s going on. I think a lot of people think the sound just comes out of the camera.”

 

The keenest use of sound involves Llewelyn holed up in a Motel room, knowing that Anton is closing in, but even knowing that, full of uncertainties regarding how and when. His (and our) senses heighten when he hears an obscure, distant noise. He calls the lobby and we hear the ringing both through the telephone handset, and from the front desk downstairs. No one answers. Then there are footsteps in the hall. Ethan Coen, “Josh’s character is straining to hear, and you want to be in his point of view, likewise straining to hear.” There’re more sounds after that, but I won’t give them away, but they keep adding up, like sentences in a paragraph, and the sentence will likely be death.

 

Before I leave you, let me give you a poem, it is the source of the novel and film’s title:

 

"Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats

 

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.