A sad and resigned meditation on criminal violence in the American southwest

Rating: 10/10 (11 October 2007)

I was privileged to see this gem at the New York Film Festival and I am still reeling from the experience. The first word that comes to mind when thinking about this film is haunting. This film is absolutely haunting and you will think about it a lot after seeing it. There are long arias of silence in this movie that are thrilling to experience. You do not notice the lack of dialog in this picture because the images the Coen Brothers create are so entrancing. This is a film of quiet and meditative power. The Coen Brothers confidence in their visual finesse is completely in evidence from the first frame to the last. The last time I saw a crime picture this good I was watching the Coen Brothers masterpiece Blood Simple. This time they have created a sort of tone poem of the American southwest. This film is drenched in blood and chaos but it is filmed so artfully that the work eventually trumps the crime genre itself. This movie is all the more amazing in that the Coen Brothers manage to combine the archetypal and the firm establishment of an everyday reality so successfully. The characters have a specificity to them, but are also able to be embody larger themes.
This will not be a film for everyone. This will be a film for people who appreciate the work of Terrence Malick. If you have seen the terrific true crime drama The Onion Field you will have some idea of the power of this film. This is a film that Truman Capote would have appreciated. The plainness and starkness of the sudden violence in this movie reminded me of the bracing wind-blown prose of Capote's masterpiece In Cold Blood. This is not just hyperbole, this film is that good. I have never seen such a melancholy movie that was so alive with the wonder of cinema. There are cat and mouse sequences in this film that would have made Hitchcock or even DePalma, for that matter, weep. The cinematography is breath-taking without being showy. Every shot is perfectly framed and the editing evokes a slow creeping dread. There is almost no music in the piece which is a great choice and really forces you to pay attention to the dark proceedings at hand.
Javier Bardem gives an amazing performance. His performance is all the more impressive when you know that he has admitted to struggling with his command of the English language. His character has several monologues that are well-timed and full of implicit menace. He gives a terrifying portrayal of a complete psychopath who seems to live in a shadow world of duplicity and violence. This character kills most everyone he comes into contact with sometimes prolonging the moment of sadism by flipping a coin and asking his potential victims to call it. His odd prince valiant hair-cut is a great touch and makes him seem even weirder. Bardem has a fantastic scene in which he taunts Woody Harrelson with the grisly fate he has in store for him. He is so intense in the scene he seems to almost up Woody's game a bit. Tommy Lee Jones gives his usual solid performance. His character is a sort of bewildered older cop who cannot really comprehend the violence he has to contend with anymore. It is strange to see Jones play a character who is wise, but whose wisdom was so hard won that it has worn him down to the nub. He has some good lines, but the overall comportment of the character is one of sad confusion. His morality is so offended by his reality that he retreats into the honorable refuge of retirement. Although, in the last scene we get the feeling that he will be haunted the rest of his days by the horrors his eyes have witnessed again and again. Jones seems to be giving his usual clever/sly performance which subverts your expectations when he becomes sad and meek toward the second half of the film. Josh Brolin is becoming a more interesting actor with age. It is hard to believe that he is the same kid from The Goonies. His character Moss is not a coward or a complete fool. He has a soldier's tactical cunning and is able to think his way out of dangerous situations. However, he makes many bad decisions as well. This will be a frustrating character for the general audience because they will want him to become a hero when instead he proves himself to be all too fallible and human.
I have not been very pleased with the commercial direction that the Coen Brothers had been going in of late. I am overjoyed that they have again found some great material with which they could craft this true work of art. To be fair they had a great book by Cormac McCarthy to work with, but they still found a way to make it their own. This movie makes Fargo look very light-hearted by comparison. It will not be a film that everyone can immediately embrace. I do think it will be a film that people will appreciate the more they think about it. The surface of the film is deceptively simple. This is much more than a clever genre film, like the Usual Suspects. There is no Tarantinoesque snarky irony to leaven the brutish and horrible realities of the violence for profit perpetrated in this fictional criminal underground. The maelstrom of violence depicted in the film is larger than the work itself. The film activates the issue, but does not seek to contain it. The enigmatic and open-ended narrative provides no reassurances that everything will be all right.