#27 NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

       Alfred Hitchcock talked about "The Chase" being the key element to any great suspense movie. He talked about the chase taking many forms, but at it's core it's one character running from someone or something. At it's simplest The Cohen Brother's "No Country For Old Men" is about one great chase. It is a chase so flawlessly executed, with incredibly rich themes, and amazing characters that it transcends a mere suspense movie and reaches the peak of cinematic experience.

      The movie opens with the voice-over of a west texas sheriff, talking about his lineage of lawmen, and the fact that in the old days some of them never even wore a gun. We see a series of beautiful shots of the wide open west texas plains. The sheriff talks about crimes these days that are hard to fathom, the world making less and less sense. That to be a lawman in this day is to put your soul at hazard, to say "ok, i'll be a part of that world." Just as he is saying this we see a shot of Anton Chigur, the symbol in this film of the unfathomable world he's talking about, riding away in a cop car. This is a poetic opening that prepares us thematically for what is about to happen in this film. With the visions of the wide open plains it reminds us of a western, a place that is timeless, that hasn't changed, and the overriding theme of this movie, in the end, is that the sheriff of this unchanging county no longer belongs in this world, like the westerns where the cowboys no longer belong to a more complicated time.

      I can't continue talking about the movie without talking about it's main force, the almost god-like opposing force of will, Anton Chigur. Without the brilliance of this character and the performance by Javier Bardem this movie is an average suspense movie. Imagine "The Silence of the Lambs" without Hannibal Lecter and the performance by Anthony Hopkins. It's that significant. We feel the immovable power that is Chigur. He occupies almost all of the space in every scene that he appears in. You can't take your eyes off of him and you kind of want to because he's fucking scary. In his eyes you see absolute, single-minded cold willfulness. You look at him and you know to be afraid, but not to run because what's the point? He'll win. He creates a haunting atmosphere with just the look in his eyes or the way in which he speaks his words. Anton Chigur is the world moved on into a realm that the sheriff can't understand and fears to understand, and never before can I remember a film where one man symbolized so much. He is truly one of the greatest villains on screen ever. The brilliance of this character translates to the power of the main theme of this movie. The world in this movie has met an opposing force that can't be defeated, a colder, darker time.

      Chigur's first victim, the deputy who has him in custody, utters his last line to his superior on the telephone. "I've got it under control.", before he is brutally strangled. Our first real look at Chigur as the camera hovers over his face is a man on fire, eyes bulging, a kind of demon. The title of the movie "No Country For Old Men" translates to a world where the type of man living in this simple, old fashioned region can't understand or defeat a force such as Chigur or that which he represents. He continues to confront and then kill or threaten to kill the men in this world. Most of the men are older, but it is as much about what the men represent as it is about age. Lewellyn, the main protagonist, is symbolically represented as one of these old men because he symbolizes what they symbolize. He is old fashioned, a bit of a cowboy, lives a simple life and has a simple charm.  

      Chigur carries with him an air gun and it's significance to the overall theme of the film is told brilliantly in a conversation between the sheriff and the wife of Lewellyn, Carla Jean. The sheriff tells her how one of the local owners of a slaughterhouse used to kill the cattle by shooting them in the head, but one thrashed around once, the bullet grazed it's head, ricocheted and hit him in the shoulder. He says "Even in the contest between man and steer the issue isn't certain. course they slaughter steers a lot different these days. They use an air gun. Shoots out a rod about that big and the animal never knows what hit them." The air gun that Chigur uses represents his indestructability. The certainty that you won't survive. Evil has constantly been fucked over by good age after age. Evil has found the perfect instrument in Chigur and Chigur in this air gun. These are darker times. 

     Let's cut to the chase. The setup is a man named Lewellyn who happens upon the deathly remains of a drug deal gone wrong and a bag with a lot of money. After thinking about it very briefly he decides to take the money and goes home. If this was the end of it the story might have turned out differently. The lone survivor of the bloodbath, a dying man, had asked him for water, and later that night we get the same camera hovering over Lewellyn that we saw when we first encountered Chigur. He has awakened and decided to bring water to this man. As the camera revealed Chigur earlier it now reveals Lewellyn and he is a good man, the type of man who will risk his life to bring a dying man water. He knows that there is a good chance that he could die doing this but he does it anyways. He tells his wife Carla Jean "I'm fixing to do something dumber than hell but i'm going anyways. Tell your momma I love her." "She's dead." "Then i'll tell her myself." He gets to the man and the moment he realizes that the man has died he looks up and sees that he's not alone. There's a truck next to his on a hill in the distance. He sees some men letting the air out of his tires and the great chase is about to begin.      The chase is the meat of the movie and it's executed with precision, detail, and imagination. The truck on the hill suddenly lights up like a devil with it's headlights, rooflights, and searching strobelight glaring in the night. There is the loud rumble of the truck, the sound of crackling thunder, and we see a single bolt of lightning in front of the racing Lewellyn. He barely escapes after getting shot in the shoulder and he enters a river, paddling his way down current. The men's vicious dog has also entered the river and slowly paddles after him in probably my favorite image from the whole movie. It's a foreshadowing of what he's about to encounter from Chigur, a menacing will.

     My favorite part of the chase, and the most suspenseful and terrifying moment in the film is when Chigur, who has been hired to get the money back, is using a tracking device to find Lewellyn. Lewellyn, unknowingly is being tracked because there is a device inserted in his money bag. So Chigur knows, and more importantly for the building of the tension, so do we, when he is close to Lewellyn. The tracker begins to beep, and then beep more rapidly when it's close to the money. Just as Lewellyn finds the device in his hotel room, and realizes that he's being tracked, he hears the door of the hotel open and voices in the lobby. He calls the desk clerk. No answer. This is a bad sign and the tension builds. We hear footsteps coming down the hall and then we hear the beeping. The tension is now like a vise. The beeping becomes more rapid and we see the dark shadow of Chigur underneath the door. This scene seems influenced in some way by the last scene in Rear Window but uses a little more imagination and takes it to the next level. Awesome.

      The chase is told with very little dialogue. It continues to gradually build the story and the tension by simply showing the hunter and the hunted in fine detail with nothing of insignificance added. There is no meat left on the bone. It's tight and even though each scene slowly takes it's time the pace feels like a bullet.

      And suddenly we get the rug pulled out from under our feet and realize that this has been the sheriff's story all along. We cut to the sheriff in the midst of the chase and he discovers the dead body of Lewellyn at a motel. It's a shocking conclusion to Lewellyn's story and further emphasizes Chigur's power and Lewellyn's powerlessness. He didn't even get to finish his own story. We discovered it through the sheriff's eyes. It also changes our view of the film from a tale of the good guy running away from the villain, to a tale of a world in which the villain has complete control, and the old men are powerless against him.

      The movie ends with the sheriff discussing, with his wife, a dream that he had the night before. "I was with my father, both back in the older times, going through this pass in the mountains. He rode on past and kept on going. He had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down. When I rode past I could see he was carrying fire in a horn. In the dream I knew that he was going on ahead and he was fixing to make a fire somewhere in that dark and I knew that whenever I got there he'd be there." It's a sad yet hopeful ending. The sheriff is outmatched and done with the fight but there is still a place of comfort waiting for him and his kind.