No Country for The Big Lebowski

Rating: Null/10 (18 January 2008)

"Lebowski" began with a tumbleweed blowing across a desert. It went where the wind took it, its fate entirely dependent on how the breeze blows. The essence of film noir is in this idea of cosmic (in)determinism, our everyman heroes trapped in a noir plot, buffeted by chance, hopelessly battling against a conspiratorial, wholly indifferent universe.
With "Lebowski" the Coens transplanted noir fate to the life of a lazy bum. Whilst someone like Sarah Connor battles fate in "The Terminator", or Bogart battles his way out of a cosmically convoluted plot in "The Big Sleep", Jeffery Lebowski was content to simply lets it all wash over him. All these variables, they don't bother him. He's a tumbleweed in a noir web, practising inaction, pacifism and happy acceptance. In short, he's just too damn lazy to care about the events revolving all around him. The Dude just abides.
"No Country" also begins with a barren dessert, and also rehashes themes found in virtually every Coen flick. Here, a guy called Llewelyn Moss stumbles across a bag of money. He takes it, leaving behind a bleeding gang member. Later that night he feels guilty and decides to take a bottle of water out to the wounded man. Ironically, it's this act of kindness which gets Moss in trouble. The rest of the film is one long cat and mouse chase sequence, akin to "The Terminator", in which Moss runs from a psychopathic killer called Chigurh.
Like "The Terminator", Chigurh symbolises the inevitability of death (or rather, the cold, indifferent weight of the universe). Death being that one fate which we are all resigned to. Observe how Chigurh kills his prey with a cattle gun, urging them to "be still" whilst he blows off their heads. This is mirrored to Moss firing at antelope with his hunting rifle, urging them to "be still" before he shoots. Both hunter and hunted are killers, but only one is successful. Moss misses his antelope.
The notion of a cattle gun also dehumanises Chigurh's prey. To Chigurh, Man is a mere animal which he has no moral qualms slaughtering.
The film ends with a Sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) no longer wanting to be part of this ugly world of men. To do so, he says, would put his soul at hazard. His answer is to retire. To stop trying, a defeatist stance which runs across the Coen's filmography (Barton Fink mocks socially conscious artists, all their films express the futility of planning and "A Serious Man" finds futility even in serious thought etc). A clock ticks away during this scene. The clock is a cinematic symbol long linked with death (it's also present when Chigurh kills the wife). And yet, though the clock is present throughout the scene, a green tree looms over the Sheriff's shoulder. This symbolic Tree of Life appeared earlier in the film as a dead Mexican's other tree of choice. Dual choices appear throughout the film. Two options, two rooms, two trees etc.
The Sheriff's then articulates two dreams. The first dream is "all about money". That dream is the film we've just witnessed, and conveys the Sheriff's belief that he's failed as a law enforcer. The second dream is about his father lighting a fire in the night to starve off the cold. This is symbolic of man fending off nature by providing his own light.
"No Country" is a slick and stylish film, with enough mysticism to make it feel grand, but at it's core it's no different to any other noir essays on determinism. The Coens have their Sheriff do the same thing as every tragic noir hero, embracing defeatism and giving up trying. While "The Lebowski" was an original take on noir, "No Country" seems content to just wallow in the bleakness. Which is fine. But it makes you frustrated that the Coens don't do or try something more. Thematically the film comes across as no more than Clint Eastwood's "High Plains Drifter" or "PaleRider", so what we're responding to is, as always, only that Coen brothers style.
Compare this to some modern neo-noirs like "Femme Fatale" and the "Terminator" movies, both of which actively challenge this idea of noir fate (though both are still mostly formalist games rather than genuine, socially progressive noirs). Yes, man is subject to chance, but De Palma's film argues that art empowers man, imbuing him with godhood, whilst Cameron's argues that the future can be dependent on us, that man can conquer his own mistakes (genetic, technological etc).
So the problem with "No Country" is that it isn't sincere as a film dealing with the bleakness. It's a kind of trite existentialism. The Coens are never sincere as artists and only clever as stylists. Here they don't really deal with the darkness, it is merely an excuse to serve up Gothic violence.
Incidentally, "No Country's" climax presents the flip-side to "Fargo's". Both Jerry Lundegaard and Llewelyn Moss meet their dooms at a motel. At this point the Coens ditch their elegant cameras and go for shaky, pseudo-documentary realism. Afterwards, in both films, a Sheriff comments on the "darkness" of the world. In "Fargo", Frances McDormand comments on Jerry's doom, whilst here, Tommy Lee Jones comments on Moss' death. Frances ultimately has a very positive, snuggly view of the world, whilst Tommy has a more negative, fatalistic view. Significantly, Frances character, like all successful Coen heroes, is a bit of a short sighted idiot. Throughout the Coen's filmography, it's the Forrest Gumps of the world who escape Chigurh.
8/10 â€“ Slick, stylish, superficial.