Things Happen

Rating: 10/10 (17 October 2008)

The best movies are the ones you can watch over and over and learn something new from every time. It empowers us as viewers to play an active creative role -- the movie becomes an organic form, shifting under different lights, constantly assuming new shape. Kubrick is the best at this. The Coens are up there too.
The narrative model here is like Fargo. A tangential crime is committed, but is part of something bigger. The cop picks up that trail and pieces things together, going slowly from tangent to body. The cop is always one step behind us (the viewer), but he's wiser, because he knows the world. He's our Virgil, and our conscience, and this is a very clever narrative device. The sheriff's voice carries us through the action, sets it up with his voice over, seals it at the end, and dots the arc with milestone tales which weave their way into the fabric of the master tale.
The visuals. The expansive landscape shots are beautiful, but beauty isn't enough. They reinforce the contrast between heaven and earth (or hell, depending on your cosmology). The camera moves slowly, contemplatively in all directions, probing. Jackson Pollack is everywhere -- the granular landscape dotted with shrubs; the deer's blood spattered on the dirt plain; Chigur's blood on the sidewalk; blood sprayed on the wall, shower curtain; even the buckshot in Llewlyn's shoulder and Chigur's leg. There's an affinity here with the amorality of modern art, and Pollack's notion of chance (let the paint fall where it may).
Chance. Brutality and love are two sides of the same coin, and our lives can be defined by either. But the chance here isn't arbitrary -- Llewelyn makes a decision to go bring the Mexican water (if he didn't, he would have lived happily ever after). The choices we make establish the chances we encounter. Life is not a blind road. "Ed Tom" and "Anton" are aurally indistinguishable (good/bad, cop/killer, two sides of the same coin)... they both drink from the same milk bottle. Their TV reflections are similarly vague. What is it that makes a cop and cop, a killer a killer? What brings us to those states? Tommy Lee Jones only plays one role, but this is one of its best incarnations. Javier may go down as one of the greats. Brolin has come a long way since Goonies.