So, what would you "Call it?"

Rating: 10/10 (7 April 2011)

I'm still not entirely settled on Fargo, even after the third viewing. O Brother Where Art Thou is still a little hazy for me, after the second. Even The Big Lebowski took four or so solid sessions to bring me around. There is no doubt about it: the Coen brothers, awesome as they are, don't exactly make the most accessible films. Sometimes, you just have to work at them.
No Country For Old Men took me one look to know that I loved it. The other six were just to love it all the more.
This is an undoubtedly brilliant film, complex and yet told with such tempered minimalism and restraint that you really have to immerse yourself in it. Every time I watch No Country I find a new layer of it to appreciate and contemplate, new complexities and quirks in the characters and their choices, new hidden nuggets of dialogue that I might have missed the first time.
Just this last time, I realized as Chigurh went into his motel room at the Del Rio that the reason he placed his hands on both sides of the bathroom wall was to measure its width, so as to determine if a bullet would pierce it in the ensuing firefight. I smiled, and a little chill ran down my spine. I felt as if I'd just had a small encounter with him and we'd exchanged some private understanding.
Small moments like this, and dialogue like "Age'll flatten a man" and "It's not often that you see a Mexican in a suit", and small moments like Moss's reaction to finding the satchel filled with $2 million: "(sighs)...Yeah..." These are just some of the reasons why I love this film.
The performances are uniformly brilliant, and I don't mind saying that, as chilling as Bardem is as Anton Chigurh, I find Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell to be the standout in No Country. No one can teach you to speak with that jilted, sporadic intonation that they have way down south, you have to know it and know it well to carry it as convincingly as he does. He brings character to simple throwaway lines such as, "Somebody unloaded on that thing with a shaawt-gun!"
The allegorical sensibilities and underlying themes in No Country are infinite, ranging from fate vs. choice vs. randomness, to our ongoing battles with the nature of this world, a cruel and unforgiving place where we wear our mortality on our sleeves for all to see...
Unless you're Chigurh.
Maintaing Lee Jones as the stand-out performer, Chigurh is undoubtedly the most fascinating character. Is he human? Is he just some arrogant douche bag whose thus far been incredibly lucky? Is he Death? Did he kill Carla Jean?
The ending of No Country has been criticised somewhat for it's abruptness and intentional abstruseness. But every time I hear that final line ("And then I woke up.") and see that final exchange between Bell and his wife, and that final shot of Jones staring enigmatically of into space, the tumultuous country framed perfectly behind him in the widow, and then cut to black...
Shivers, man. Maaaaajor shivers!
P.S. If the ending to No Country p!ssed you off, DO NOT watch A Serious Man.