No Country For Old Men

I saw this movie Wednesday night, and sat down to write about it, but discovered that it was virtually impossible to say anything meaningful about it without giving away particular plot points. So I’m afraid that I’m going to have to issue a spoiler alert - I’ll do a bit of general review first, then launch into the meatier stuff.

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy - and if you haven't read this one, then run, don't walk - and concerns a young man named Moss, who comes upon some abandoned vehicles and several dead people while out hunting antelope. He goes down to investigate, employing the tracking skills honed by all that antelope hunting, and finds a satchel filled with money. He has the obligatory moment of indecision, then makes off with the bag. What follows is the pursuit of Moss by a varied cast of characters, some looking to kill him and others looking to help him.

Josh Brolin does a fine job playing Moss, if there is perhaps nothing exceptional about the work; and Tommy Lee Jones is probably perfectly cast as county sheriff Ed Tom Bell, who is working on being run-down by life; but it is Javier Bardem, as hitman Anton Chigurh, who steals the show. Chigurh has been hired to hunt down the money, which in turn leads him to hunt for Moss. Bardem plays the part stoically, with nuanced facial expressions that convey menace and danger in the calmest possible way, and his dialogue is searching and methodical. Nothing - nothing - is inconsequential to Chigurh. Bardem will be nominated for an Oscar in the supporting category for the role.

Joel and Ethan Coen will also be nominated for their masterful direction of the film (and for film editing), and Roger Deakins should be nominated for his work behind the camera, as well. It would have been easy to rush this job into a fast-paced action thriller, but doing so would have destroyed the suspense that McCarthy so carefully worked into the story. In the same vein, the camera tends to linger on scenes, or parts of scenes, drawing the viewer’s eye to clues being picked up by the characters almost in real time.

If there is a flaw to the film, it is only this - that the character of Bell is not as fully formed in the film as it is in the novel. A good deal of what we learn about Bell comes in the falling action, in the novel version of voice-overs and in conversations with his uncle, Ellis (some of which is shown, in truncated form, in the film). In defense of the Coen brothers, however, Bell is minor character compared to Chigurh and Moss; and the additional portions extending the character of Bell would have added length to the film. Clocking in at a shade over two hours, the film is neither too long nor too short, and I think that the Coen brothers were wise in their choice to truncate Bell rather than Moss or (especially) Chigurh.

Okay...spoiler time. There’s just no good way to go into the theme of the film - fate - without also discussing what happens to the two main characters in the end. Perhaps the greatest metaphysical question in human history is whether or not we are all characters in some preordained cosmic drama - whether our decisions can change the course of our lives, or whether all of the choices we will ever make have already been decided.

There are strong arguments for both cases in this film. It is certainly fate that leads Moss to the abandoned vehicles and the dead people - a drug deal gone bad; but he has three - count ‘em, three - opportunities to make decisions that will affect the outcome. The first comes when he finds the remains of the drugs. His first decision is to investigate. Said investigation (along with good tracking skills) leads him to the satchel filled with money. His second decision is to take the satchel. Between those two decisions, he comes upon a dying man in one of the trucks. Moss’ third decision, later that night, is to go back to the scene with a jug of water for the man, who sputtered out the word agua when Moss found him in the truck - even though Moss knows that he is, in his own words, “fixin’ to do somethin’ dumber’n hell.”

Sure enough, when Moss goes back to the scene, he is discovered by a band of Mexicans who were in some way part of the drug deal. He flees on foot, but leaves his truck behind. His last chance to hold control over the situation was deciding whether or not to go back to the scene. Once he is spotted and flees, leaving his truck behind, he has also, in effect, left his freewill behind. His only choice now is no choice at all - simply do what it takes not to get killed. He escapes, then returns to his wife and tells her to pack for a trip from which they will never return. Moss ruminates by way of explaining the situation to his wife, “At what point would you stop looking for your two million dollars?” He considers for but a moment. “There ain’t no such point.”

The balance of the film finds Moss running from the Mexicans and from Chigurh; and though Chigurh has been hired to find Moss and get the money back, it is the Mexicans who bag Moss. Both the Mexicans and Chigurh have receivers that pick up a signal from a transponder hidden in the money, but Chigurh is the more menacing, the one who gets into Moss’ head and drives him, almost like a cattle rustler. Surely it was Moss’ fate to end up as he does - gunned down in a motel room - right?

Not so fast. I said there were strong examples of both fate and freewill in the story. Moss was the example of fate. Chigurh is the example of freewill. Early in the film, he is arrested and taken to a police station, where he slips his cuffed hands under his legs and then calmly strangles the officer who arrested him. Near the end of the film, after confronting Moss’ wife Carla Jean and offering her a coin toss (you’ll have to read the book to find out exactly what happens), Chigurh is driving away when the vehicle he is driving is struck by another vehicle at an intersection. Chigurh pays one of the young boys who witnessed the accident one hudred dollars for the boy’s shirt, then fashions a sling out of the shirt to support his left forearm, which sustained a compound fracture in the accident. Chigurh then walks away.

The traffic accident is fate, but Chigurh chooses to walk away from it rather than wait for an ambulance one of the boy witnesses says has been called. It could be argued that Chigurh’s fate lies in another story, but within the context of this story, Chigurh controls fate - his own, the fate of Moss, the fate of Carla Jean, the fate of the gas station proprietor who also is offered a coin toss, the fate of Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson as another hitman, though he is hired to get the money back by protecting Moss).

Thus the question of whether fate can coexist with freewill. Or does the devil, if he really exists - because Chigurh seems in many ways supernatural - still walk the earth? Big questions - and no ready answers. The film is open-ended in a couple of ways that the book is not, and by crafting the film in such a way, the Coen brothers have extended and deepened the story and theme, making a film that is greater than its source material - a rare achievement.