Death and the Masters

Rating: 9/10 (12 April 2008)

Every film buff from Barnsley to Bluff knows the Coens are true auteurs; their remarkable canon of quality movies a study in theme continuity and near flawless scripting, storyboarding, casting, photography and direction. With the meticulously designed and directed No Country, the brothers can claim perhaps a more interesting title: American cinema's new masters of suspense. M. Night Shyalaman eat your heart out! Much of the comment since No Country's release has focused on its subversive translation to screen of genre-bending western/noir story themes and Javier Bardem's galvanizing performance as the cow-eyed, abattoir gun wielding psycho with a '70s serial killer's hairDON'T. But for me, the most satisfying element in No Country is the element of suspense: the scares that grow not from the abundant scenes of brutal violence, but from a creeping, incremental tension. The Coens apply a classical thriller technique that Alfred Hitchcock liked to call "pure cinema". (See Brian De Palma's April 2008 UK Empire Magazine interview for more on this.) At several points the Coens call to mind Hitchcock's masterpiece Rear Window, not in content but in design. We see and hear what the actors see and hear, and watch them react. There is no simpler or more pleasurable movie-viewing experience. The sound design, in particular, is masterful; one category where Oscar got it wrong (both prizes went predictably to Bourne Ultimatum). Ambient noise of buzzing street lights, wind and the rumble of pick up trucks generates the noirish borderlands atmosphere, while ricocheting bullets ratchet up the frights during the superbly shot and edited shoot-out and chase scenes. Visually, shot after shot feeds information to the audience with a minimum of fuss (my personal favourite: the "Free HBO" motel sign, instantly placing the characters in 1980 America). Brolin and Bardem, in their long cat and mouse non-dialogue sequences, show themselves to be fine silent actors, while delivering on the talking scenes when called upon to do so. Bardem's strangled spanglish monotone is wonderfully inventive; no more so than during his terrific coin-toss scene at the Texaco station, where he modulates his voice and uses facial expression to bedazzle the hayseed behind the counter with weird, nightmarish, Alice-in-Wonderland-like nonsense speak. "Now is not a time." But time to watch No Country again!