The reckoning of an older generation appearing in the form of an incomprehensible evil.
There are some very resolute crazies out there, and if you happen to find yourself in the path of one of them, you’re going to have to either grow a pair of eyes behind your head or get used to constantly looking over your shoulder. These monsters don’t have any traceable motives, any fears or emotions. Human life is about as significant to them as a drop of rain in a downpour. Goddamn would I love to have a drink with one of them, if they’d nip their desire to twist my neck in the bud for a few hours.
A night of drinking an excessive number of Bloody Marys has left me roaming around in an unfocused state, my attention span shorter than a heartbeat, too tired to stay awake yet too dazed to sleep. I have just about enough concentration to watch a film and so I decided to watch No Country for Old Men (2007) after realising that The Big Lebowski has been taken off Netflix. May I say the amount of blood spilt during the film gave me some pretty vivid flashbacks of the very thing I was drinking the night before. Involving a man who comes across some drug money left behind a deal gone terribly wrong, he finds himself being chased by a calmly psychotic hitman who wants to retrieve the money. This game of cat of and mouse with guns unfolds over the vast American wilderness, an old setting for new crimes and people who make the inhabitants of the old country shiver with terror.
Once the film finished, and I can attribute my bleary state for that, I was almost glad that it was over so I could make some attempt at getting some sleep, and I found the film dragging over the last half hour. But after letting it settle into my mind and ruminating over it for a few hours, I realised just how damn good this film actually is. The subtleties made themselves known to me after I jolted some of my brain-cells into action.
Wide angle shots take in the entire breadth of the frontier now inhabited by cars rather than horses. Characters run across the horizon like ants running away from an insurmountable boot about to squash them. Framing the dusty expanse of the wilderness in a modern setting, makes clear this strange asynchronicity between time and place. There are dozens of extremely subtle moments in the film where the camera moves but I could barely even notice it. Skipping a straight up zoom for these imperceptible gradual close-ups builds such a mounting tension which I was never quite sure was going to break. What this film does best is building this agitation. Dialogue, camera, music and lighting all coalesce into each other slowly, merging and becoming one in a manner that makes your heart thump like a big bass drum.
When I talk about the music, I mean the very sparse use of it. Large parts of the film are completely empty of a musical score, relying solely upon the diegetic ambience which is shattered by sudden gunfire. But the few moments music is heard, it’s quiet and demure, never advertising itself or trying to shove in front of the stage. It knows its purpose here and it embraces it.
Javier Bardem’s performance singlehandedly carried the film for me. Each and every scene with him, I was attentive and wide awake despite my half-awoken state, for I knew little of what he’d do next. His psychotic character pierced my mind with a terrifying spike as he went around killing everyone that he realistically could. His haircut on the other hand is a completely different question, it’s so goddamn ridiculous. It looks like a toupee, I’m not sure whether that’s intentional or not, but I couldn’t take any part of him above his forehead seriously. Everything under the forehead is what nightmares are made out of. His sharp dialogue and blunt tones will break the steely patience of anyone who dares to share a word with him. There are other very entertaining instances of dialogues from other characters in the film like Tommy Lee Jones’ sheriff recounting how a dying steer got the upper hand on someone. For those of you who haven’t been able to catch on, the sheriff is the old man in this inhospitable country, completely outmatched and overwhelmed by a new sick strain of crime and violence which is totally beyond him. His incredulous expressions at the crime scenes and the bloody trail that Anton leaves behind are the countenances of an existential horror, the knowledge that you are just a few paces away from indescribable evil.
Now I wouldn’t want to be chased by someone like Anton Chigurh, my paranoid dispositions just don’t allow me to survive under such circumstances. So, for me this intense game of cat and mouse where the role of hunter and hunted continually shifts is my way of vicariously living through such a scenario. A palpable tether of inevitability binds everyone to Anton’s actions, he’s a force to be reckoned with in the story and anyone who crosses him is going to meet the inevitable bullet to the head. The chase takes them across the desert and into the crowded spaces of town. The way how Anton kills and leaves his actions up to fate and circumstance is a bizarre way of relieving oneself of their conscience and morality, things that are nothing but a burden on our human design.
When traditions and human nature are confronted with something that doesn’t care much for them, they coil up into a ball and look pathetically small. A marvellous display of building, trembling and tumbling tension which kept me on the edge of my anticipation.
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