Esthetic Emptiness Celebrated by the Coens

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2008)

A riveting drama, extremely brutal and at the same time highly artistic. Still, it leaves you with an *empty* feeling; there seems to be no redeeming background to the story, unlike in the Coen Brothers masterpieces _Fargo_ and _O Brother, Where Art Thou?_ -- despite the policeman and wife being *superficially* similar to the policewoman and her husband in _Fargo_ (in reversed mode, so to say).
This movie has superb performances, one of them for the ages: that of Javier Bardem as an insane (or insanely logical and methodical) psychopathic killer. Woody Harrelson gives a great performance, too, however; as do Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin and Kelly Macdonald.
The direction is perfect. Every shot counts; every muscle on the faces of all the actors moves exactly the way it should, following the directors' vision; the actors' enunciation is 100% perfect, and the dialogues, frequently minimalistic, are flawless. This is supreme cinematography in the *technical* sense of the word; the shots are wonderfully composed, with an artistic touch -- no matter the gory subject matter they frequently depict.
The movie's music & sounds are minimalistic; that is exactly right for what the movie strives to convey. The early 1980s period is faithfully and beautifully recreated: dress modes, hair-styles, cars. Although, just as the rest of the movie attempts to avoid genre clichés, so do the film-makers here avoid the usual crutch of playing pop music from the early 1980s in order to set the time period. In fact, the movie is astoundingly minimalistic and effective in its reduced use of non-1980s music and ambient sounds.
Delightful, authentic Texas accent can be heard throughout the movie, remindful of another delightfully dialectal thriller: Billy Bob Thornton's _Sling Blade_ (though the latter's overall quality is superior to the Coen Brothers movie). The accent is believable even though, unlike Lee Jones and Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald is anything but a Texas-born actress, hailing from Scotland!
Just as the Coen Brothers' much earlier _Blood Simple_, _No Country for Old Men_ reminds you of Dashiell Hammett's writings, yet this movie lacks Hammett's ethos of a positive hero (such as the "Continental Op") capable of rising above the dreary circumstances of the world surrounding him. _No Country for Old Men_ reminds you of Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, too, and *shares* its emptiness; the meaningless heaping of corpses -- "I got here the same way as this coin did", says the killer, and through this the movie suggests as if there were no deeper sense to life, no order, no logic; life is haphazard and meaningless -- that seems to be the film's number 1 message.
This movie may therefore be summed up as "esthetic emptiness". _No Country for Old Men_ revels in emptiness, and is a celebration of emptiness. You can see directors having great fun depicting emptiness, always using filmmakers' devices and tools that possess the highest imaginable esthetic value. The question is, however: do we truly watch movies in order to see ugly things depicted beautifully? With *negligible* redeeming value to offset all the ugliness and emptiness? _No Country for Old Men_ will thus appeal primarily to viewers who hold human life to be essentially an ugly, empty, chaotic, and meaningless affair; that should be much the same audience as that applauding Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ and its own heaping of corpses for no apparent reason. In fact, Anton Chigurh in his nonsensical ruminations on life and chance resembles the character of Hamlet, despite Chigurh being a psychopath and Hamlet not. The essential difference between _No Country for Old Men_ and _Hamlet_ is that the former's esthetic values seem incomparably higher; that alone, however, does not render the movie any less empty than it is.
Take away the truly unforgettable character of Anton Chigurh and all scenes involving him -- and you are left with essentially a mediocre thriller with all the other characters that do not seem memorable. Therefore, Anton Chigurh, impeccably portrayed by Javier Bardem, saves the day for the directors and the movie itself. Anton Chigurh makes Hannibal Lecter look like a benign, old-fashioned and *fictional* character, while striking the viewers as chillingly realistic in his perverse logic as displayed in this movie. The moments when various, frequently minor, characters are unfortunate enough to encounter Chigurh, and are just about to get killed -- or not! -- are laden with tension; they are masterfully shot and acted. An effective device of the film-makers is blocking the view to the actual killings more than once, and choosing ellipse, or suggestion, instead of showing every execution Chigurh performs. There are wonderful little scenes: the elderly gas station owner; the middle-aged fat lady with her courageous -- if only she knew that that's what it was -- "Did - you - not - hear - me, young man?". In this regard, Woody Harrelson is especially admirable, perfectly capturing his character's final scenes; equally great is Kelly MacDonald's portrayal of emotional upheaval during her encounter with the killer.
Both of the "coin-flip" scenes are brilliant; both end with a powerful punchline. The later is, "I got here the same way this coin did." -- which, of course, is ultimately difficult to dispute. The first dialogue closes with Chigurh's meaningful and menacing: "Don't put that coin away with the others... It might make you think it's a coin like any other." And then, with a wicked smile, he adds: "Which it is!" That is a great way of showing to what perverse lengths infallible human logic can be abused; there is nothing human in thinking strictly logically; that is machine-like, and can be abused in any way just as any machine can be manipulated arbitrarily. For human qualities to surface, there needs to be something more than logic; and that is precisely what Chigurh lacks.
The awards heaped on this movie may be understood as belated *full* recognition for _Fargo_ -- a movie superior to this one.