Among the greatest ever made

Rating: 10/10 (9 June 2013)

I imagine it must have been quite a shock when No Country For Old Men was first released, not just for the incredibly graphically violent content, but also for the fact that the Coen brothers had here crafted a masterwork even greater than Fargo.
The plot is similar on the surface to that "homespun murder mystery", but No Country is, on the whole, a very different film. Rather than holding an identifiable, lovable protagonist as the moral and cinematic center of the tale, it focuses with detached awe on its villain - a creature of purest evil, Anton Chigurh. The film sets up the ultimate in sadistic villainy, refuses ardently to glamorize or glorify him in any way (as other great films like The Silence of the Lambs and The Dark Knight were wont to do with their charismatic antagonists) and then simply allows him to get away with it. Why? To what purpose? Is it condoning his gut-wrenchingly horrifying actions? Is it suggesting that Chigurh is worth admiration for his fierce commitment to his so-called principles?
No. The film does not glorify, condone or celebrate evil, but it shows us a society which does, even if it does so unwittingly or begrudgingly. Chigurh commits unspeakable acts of evil. He may well have been a serial killer if he'd lived twenty years before the film took place. Instead, he's become a valuable tool of an industry which thrives on violence. A criminal empire which is slowly degrading and destroying modern society as we know it (or knew it back in the 80s). And, ultimately, old fashioned morality and principles of justice and fair play are powerless to stop it.
Consider this scene (which left me very confused upon first viewing). Ed Tom Bell, the wizened Texas Sheriff played brilliantly by Tommy Lee Jones returns to the scene of Llewellyn Moss' murder, searching for Chigurh. For the first time, he has his gun out and up. He waits, the nerves clear on his face. We see Chigurh, masked by shadow, but unmistakable, hidden within the room. Waiting. Ed Tom bursts open the door. Gun lowered, his shadow spreads out across the room. There is no- one there.
Upon my third viewing, I decided that the nature of Chigurh's ghostly and inexplicable disappearance between shots is of less importance than the anticipation it creates. Whether he was ever really there or (as I'm inclined to think) it was the Sheriff's imagination preparing him for what was about to unfold, the point is that the viewer expects a battle. A gunfight between good and evil - recompense for the murder of Llewellyn and for dozens of other innocents. Satisfaction for Carla Jean. They do not get it. The good vs evil archetypes have been played out, and we can no longer be certain of evil's defeat. Perhaps that is our fault for nurturing it as long as we have, as a counterpoint to the morality we hold dear - as a distinguishing feature, to reassure our notions of rightness. Whatever the reason, evil has evolved, almost to the point where we can no longer comprehend it.
No Country is a fundamentally pessimistic work. It laments a world where evil is not punished and is allowed to escape even the interference of fate itself (see the decidedly non-fatal car crash at the end, from which Chigurh escapes with no more than a broken arm.). The violence and the villain are despicable, because they are part of a world which is seen as such by the Coens and by Cormac McCarthy. But this pessimism does not reduce my enjoyment of it one jot - much like similarly pessimistic and violent works such as Taxi Driver or Psycho, which are philosophically despondent but visually electrifying.
This is one of the greatest films ever made. It is a sickening portrait of a sickening world, told with such deft skill and visual genius by the Coen brothers that it is impossible to look away. I count it among the likes of Citizen Kane, Vertigo, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now and Raging Bull as one of cinema's greatest artworks. I have seen it four times now. I can guarantee at least another four viewings lie in the near future.