The "Anti-Fargo"

Rating: 10/10 (10 December 2007)

The Coen Brothers have created a number of films with followings. There's "The Big Lebowski," a redux of the 1940s detective thriller, and there's "Barton Fink," a tragedy about the nature of salaries. Each of their films, excluding that Clooney movie, is deservedly revered. "Fargo" is my favorite. It's a thriller about the nature of being middle class, where the evils of the middle class created a crisis and the goodness of the middle class perseveres. Fargo's secret is that it follows characters that have souls.
"No Country for Old Men" returns to the circumstances of "Fargo" from a new perspective. This time the Coens ask us to forget about good and evil, and step into the mind of modernity incarnate, a person who is well aware that nothing matters.
This is a trying experience. A man I respect saw this film before me and said, simply, "It's cold." Indeed. The contrasts the Coens draw with the pleasantly bad Steve Buscemi and the angelic Frances McDormand are stark and, I would guess, quite deliberate. Where there was redemption and humor, there is now emptiness. Fargo advises, "Go. Live your life well." No Country states, "Flip some coins." Whether we reference Harry Lime on the Ferris Wheel (lucasaq), Lt. Robert Hearn of "The Naked and the Dead," or whatever else out there that made you think there is nothing, this work is a fine addition to that canon.
"No Country for Old Men" is about the darkness of existence. When you watch the film, remember the first few sequences. A dying man sits in a car begging for water. Another man sees him and walks away to tend to other things. Late that night, he awakens, remembering the thirsty man. He gets up, says goodbye to his wife, fills a milk jug with water, and goes to do the right thing. That was his only mistake. Right wrong, a main character might have quipped, I'm the guy with the gun.