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Debate! No Country for Old Men

The following email conversation can also be found over filmschoolrejects.com.

*Spoiler Alert* Please see “No Country for Old Men” before reading.

Dear Adam–

What up, bitch? Recently, you and I engaged in some dazzling rhetoric regarding this weeks DVD release of the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winning “No Country for Old Men.” The two of us, along with the rest of the movie-going public, seem to be split into two camps: those who love the film (me) and those who feel it is woefully overrated (you). I thought it would be an interesting exercise to share with readers our two points-of-view.

First off, you recently referred to “No Country” as a “movie about a bag of money” saying that there is a plot but no story. What do you mean by this? I always felt that the story revolved around this plot device. If the movie was, in fact, plainly about a bag of money, there would be no reason to care. I see “No Country” as a fable about greed as well as fate; a simple story with complex themes and characters. We’ve seen movies about bags of money that are simply just violent and stylistic, such as “Payback” or John Cusack’s ‘93 comedy “Money for Nothing.” Isn’t “No Country” slightly more than just a movie about a bag of money?

–Josh

Well, Josh, if you remember, this all started as a debate regarding “No Country For Old Men” vs. “There Will Be Blood” at the Oscars. While I definitely feel that “Blood” was the better film, and deserves the masterpiece status that it’s been granted by most critics more than “No Country” does, I don’t feel that the Coen brothers have necessarily made a bad film. I enjoyed “No Country” a great deal when I originally saw it, and even more so when we watched it again the other night at your house. I’m also an enthusiastic supporter of the source material, Cormac McCarthy’s gripping novel. The problem for me is this: I do believe, essentially, that this is a movie about a bag of money. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with movies that center around bags of money (or boxes or suitcases jammed with the stuff); the problem for me is that people regard “No Country For Old Men” as a profound statement about greed and fate. And I don’t think that it is.

When I first saw “No Country” back in the fall, I was expecting the “Citizen Kane” of money-bag movies. And while the film certainly bests most contenders, I think there’s a better movie that’s yet to be made regarding this endlessly fascinating subject. The Coen brothers have whipped up a riveting thriller, and the picture is way more fun than it has any right to be, but maybe that’s the problem in a nutshell: I enjoyed it too much for me to consider it a genuinely incisive study of human nature and death’s inevitability. Most people are sold on this movie because of Javier Bardem’s performance as Anton Chigurgh, and it’s true that he’s relentlessly watchable. But dude never really scared me - he’s more funny than anything, with his goofy haircut and his occasional desert-dry humor. A lot of critics compared him to Hannibal Lecter in the initial round of reviews, and I can see the sense in that. But this movie needed a Buffalo Bill - a killer that isn’t appealing to us, a killer that actually represents all the ugliness of humanity. If Chigurgh is, as many have speculated, a stand-in for the angel of death, then why does he operate by his own set of principles? Death has no principles.

Aside from the acts of random violence in the first twenty minutes, which are admittedly unnerving, the movie shields us from anything truly vile for the rest of its run-time. There are certainly valid artistic reasons for leaving the death of Llewellyn and his wife off-screen, but that tactic unfortunately also minimizes the horror that Chigurgh is able to inspire in our souls. So he guns down a hotel room full of criminals, or shoots Stephen Root in the throat - it’s nasty and explosive for sure, but there’s a pretty solid argument to be made that those characters deserved what they got. You can’t say the same for Carla Jean, and the Coens cripple themselves when they leave that particular death to our imaginations.

Obviously, the fact that we’re (again) having this conversation would indicate that “No Country For Old Men” is slightly more than just a movie about a bag of money. The question is, how much more?

–Adam

Personally, I don’t find Chigurh to be funny at all. I think he’s slightly abnormal and disconnected, but that only adds to the heightened terror inherent to his professional demeanor. He’s calm and collected and he gives a straight-forward performance that has several layers. I don’t buy the “Angel of Death” argument in the slightest, but I do believe that he’s a consummate professional, to quote Brolin, “the ultimate badass,” and he condescends to his victims by telling them their fates are in their hands.

Take, for instance, the gas station sequence. Why is this great? Leading up to the gas station sequence we’ve seen Anton choke a police officer to death in one of the most beautiful and horrifying strangling scenes I’ve ever seen and non-chalantly mosey on up to a man and shoot air directly into his brain so he can steal his car. We’ve seen instances of this ultimate badass, this shadow, this figure in the dark. Seemingly, this gas station attendant has no chance, because he had remembered seeing Anton come through there before. Anton never lets anyone get away with seeing them, but leaves their fates up to a coin toss. Yes, it’s psychotic and humorous, but it’s not schtick. The coin toss is the ultimate decider of fate. Without going too deep here, as much as this movie is about greed, it’s also about gambling. It could’ve been the rolling of the die for all extensive purposed, but the coin toss represents the way the characters gamble with their lives. “What’s the most you’ve ever lost in a coin toss” can be interpreted as life being a gamble. Anton is not the merchant of death and he isn’t supernatural, but your fate is in his hands. In life we’re constantly calling heads or tails in the air; life is a gamble, and the Coens are asking us to ask ourselves what we’ve been putting up.

With Carla Jean, she’s the innocence in this movie, and Llewellyn Moss took that away with his own stubbornness and greed. When Anton says to Moss he’ll spare Carla Jean, there’s nothing to suggest he won’t. In the DVD featurette, Brolin is asked to sum-up the main characters–he says there’s a good guy, a bad guy, and Llewellyn is in-between. He’s going after the American dream, and even though I believe his intentions are not bad, he didn’t earn this money. Carla Jean pays for Llewellyn’s decisions, and Anton gives her choice that she refuses to make. Carla Jean is the strongest moral character in the film (alongside Ed Tom Bell), she refuses to dance with the devil and becomes a martyr for it. And even though it’s schmaltzy to use words like “devil” and “martyr” it really shows that this is MUCH more than a movie about a bag of money.

What’s wrong with being entertaining. If the Coens had dwelled on what they wanted us to think about the film, they could’ve slowed it down, given us more exposition, and added 20 minutes worth of exasperated explanation as to “what” Anton is and “why” this bag of money serves to further the story. Instead what we get is a furiously entertaining 2 hours infused with humor, terror, vulnerability, and visually-pleasing action. You know what else had all this working for it–”The Departed.” Six months from now, when you own both “No County for Old Men” and “There Will Be Blood,” which are you going to be more likely to watch on a Saturday afternoon?

–Josh

Honestly, I’ll be more likely to revisit “There Will Be Blood,” because of the way it reveals itself in new ways with each viewing. I don’t feel that way about “No Country;” the film is existential to its core, and what’s on the screen is all that there is. And there’s nothing wrong with this, or with being entertaining. The problem is that I never felt an emotional connection with any of the characters, and that’s a big problem for me when I’m watching what is, essentially, a character study. You mention “The Departed,” and what that movie had going for it, in addition the attributes you already listed, were two characters that you could completely empathize with despite their failings. I don’t feel any which way about the characters in “No Country,” because there’s virtually nothing to them - they’re placeholders in a McCarthy’s Great Statement.

And it is indisputably McCarthy’s statement, which is another problem that I have with the film. The Coens did very little to make the material their own; they mostly just stayed out of the way. Obviously they made very good choices throughout, and presented the story in a visually compelling fashion, but I question why they were attracted to it in the first place. I feel like, to a certain degree, every Coen brothers movie suffers this from same problem - not just a lack of moral ambiguity, but (more importantly) thematic ambiguity. I don’t understand what they’re trying to tell me, and since I’m a pretty smart guy with a mind that veers toward the seriously analytical, that makes me think they’re probably not trying to tell me anything at all. I think the tendency with these dudes is to make everything so obvious on the surface that the knee jerk reaction is to try digging deeper, and that eventually dooms most of their movies for all but the most oblivious fan boys. From “Blood Simple” to “No Country,” everything in their oeuvre is meticulously crafted and deeply enjoyable, but a consistent smart ass tone undermines everything that they’ve achieved. It’s dialed way down in this particular instance, but it’s still there - when we’re not marveling at the wondrously photographed scenery or viscerally thrilling carnage, we’re usually enjoying a laugh at the expense of a hotel clerk, boot salesman, or (worst of all) Barney Fife-like deputy. “No Country For Old Men” is nowhere near as condescending as their pictures usually are, but there’s enough sneering humor there to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall I think the movie is intellectually fraudulent, and the brothers Coen have fooled everyone yet again. If this movie were made by anybody else, and it hadn’t garnered so many accolades and awards, I could carelessly enjoy it for the amazingly well-done genre piece that it is. But because it comes with the McCarthy/Coen pedigree, and all of the baggage that such a distinction entails, I feel it’s been granted a status that it simply doesn’t earn. All of your arguments are valid, but none of them are compelling - you’re just describing what happens. And that’s not a put down; I’ve had all of those thoughts, and I believe you’re correct in your evaluations. But I think we’d be having a very different discussion if we were talking about “There Will Be Blood,” because that movie poses much harder questions and doesn’t let the audience off the hook quite so easily.

I guess the gist of my argument is that “No Country” is wrapped up too neatly. It’s too easy to justify why it’s “great,” which makes me extremely suspicious of its true greatness. That may sound like an argument headed straight up my own ass, but think about it: shouldn’t a true masterpiece perplex us in ways that we can’t easily explain? Every debate about this movie can be settled quite easily by going to the source; the same can’t be said for “There Will Be Blood” because that film makes us look inside of ourselves for answers. The Coens have told us a great story, and they’ve done so like the master craftsmen that they are, but Paul Thomas Anderson has the courage to actually engage us in the dialog. He relies on a receptiveness and thoughtfulness in the audience that the Coens would never dare bank on; they’re convinced that we’re imbeciles.

–Adam

And I LOVED “There Will Be Blood” as well. I’m glad to see that we’re pretty much on the same page as to how we’ve viewed and analyzed the film. You want the Coens to challenge you on a level that Anderson did, and I put my trust in the Coens to deliver thoroughly pleasing story-telling. Mainly, though, I wanted to keep this about “No Country” and not veer into “There Will Be Blood” territory because I’ve only seen that film once. Maybe we can have a discussion in the same vein when “Blood” gets released on DVD. My initial critique about “Blood” is that its performances are top-heavy. Besides Daniel Day-Lewis, no one really stands above the fray, whereas I feel “No Country” boasts several terrific performances that are all on the same plain (with the exception of the hilariously miscast Woody Harrelson).

If you’ll allow me to make a sports analogy, “There Will Be Blood” is like this year’s NBA East with two teams touting the league’s best records while the others flounder, whereas “No Country” makes up the competitive NBA West where seeds 1-8 are separated by half a dozen games. I feel like “No Country” is a more balanced film. “Blood” is definitely great, and I’ll need to see it more times to see if it eclipses how I feel about the Coens’ genius film. I know Tim boasts that “Blood” is far-superior to “No Country,” but his arguments fall flat with me because he also said “Blood” is a movie he may never want to watch again. One-timers can be great, but I don’t feel like you can go on the internet and defend a movie you wouldn’t be willing to watch at least one more time.

Thanks for engaging in this discourse with me, Adam. It’s nice to subject the film to more than just a boilerplate review with bulletpoints and really delve into it’s significance as a work of art.

–Josh

It’s been a pleasure to hash this out with you, and I’m extremely glad Tim wasn’t here to distract me with outrageous one-liners about his penis. I’d like to emphasize, one final time, that I don’t necessarily view “No Country” and “Blood” to be in competition with each other - it’s true that I prefer one to the other, but they’re both astounding achievements and I have a feeling that they’ll supply plenty of enjoyment to both of us for years to come. It’s almost a shame that they both were released in the same year and thus had to duke it over those little gold statues, but if that’s really a problem, I guess I’m happy to be inconvenienced.

It’s a shame that either film had to lose out on Hollywood’s big night - perhaps the Academy should’ve just handed top honors to “Juno,” and we could all sit in the same boat of outrage.

–Adam

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