Throwback Thursday: No Country for Old Men, Revisited

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AUGUST 2014

Elements of a Great Film

Essentially, a movie is a series of scenes. And the great movies have incredibly memorable scenes.

The Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men has many. One standout for me is the scene in which Anton Chiguhr (Javier Bardem) is in the gas station with the unsuspecting owner near the beginning of the film. Bardem says, “What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?” The unsuspecting fellow is confused.

“Call it," the cold-blooded Bardem says.

The man behind the counter is clueless that everything he has ever scrimped and saved for is on the line. “We need to know what we’re calling it for here,” he says.

It’s an impeccable scene that foreshadows much that is to come regarding the nature of this character who is the embodiment of relentless evil. The manner in which Bardem is eating nuts, the manner in which the camera cuts to the squashed wrapper as it unfolds, again foreshadowing the unfolding of something frightening, produces compelling cinema, storytelling in film.

A great film is also about great lines. “Baby, things happen. And you can’t take ‘em back.” Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) tells his wife once he realizes the danger she's in.

Great lines are what screenwriters live for. All the great films have great lines in them. You can hardly think of some of these films without immediately recalling a line... Films like Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz are rich with them. Quote the line and everybody knows exactly what you're talking about.

"We'll make him an offer he can't refuse." Brando as The Godfather is impeccable.

“Houston, we have a problem.” ~ Apollo 13

“You can’t handle the truth.” ~ A Few Good Men

“Show me the money.” ~ Jerry Maguire

“Go ahead, make my day” ~ Sudden Impact

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” ~ Cool Hand Luke

Garbo

Another feature of great films is casting. Not only are the main characters right for their jobs, the incidental characters are superbly selected. Casting is a strong feature of all the Coen brothers' films, and No Country is no exception.

When I first reviewed this film in 2008 I was critical of the casting of Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and I was critical of the limited amount of screen time Woody Harrelson carried. I take back both of these criticisms now, having watched the film several times since its first screening in Duluth. At this point I can't even imagine anyone else in the role Jones played. and had Harrelson been given any further screen time it may have detracted from the film simply because he is such a compelling presence. He had to make an early departure only because this story was about the cat and mouse survival game being played out between Brolin and Bardem.

The ending may be a tad confusing for first time viewers, but the story needed to tie up a lot of loose ends quickly or it could have dragged out. The main conflicts in the film were resolved. And Sheriff Ed Tom was shaken to his core.

Another great line, from the mouth of Tommy Lee Jones: "You can't make up stuff like that."

And finally, among other things, there is the story itself. The essence of story is a moment in time in which the ordinary train of events in a character's life is shifted onto a new track. It may be something incidental, but like the railroad it will ultimately result an utterly different destination.

For Llewelyn Moss, his destiny was altered when he accidentally came across the aftermath of a shootout while out hunting in a remote region in West Texas. The former Viet Nam vet makes a decision that alters everything.

The skill with which the story is told makes all the difference in the world. The characters behave in ways that are believable. The sets, settings, pacing all conspire to keep the believability intact. A written story creates a dream in the reader's mind, and in film the dream is visually expressed, which involves risk. The Coen brothers have been pretty effective at it. Makes one wonder what will be next.

* * *

15 April 2021

I decided to re-share this blog post because I just watched No Country again last night. There are a number of takeaways from the story and one of them is this. That there are some real bad people in this world. They are dangerous and we should have no illusions about this.

My 2011 YA novel The Red Scorpion attempted to make this same point. There really is such a thing as evil.   

Elements of a Great Film: No Country For Old Men

Essentially, a movie is a series of scenes. And the great movies have incredibly memorable scenes.

The Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men has  many. One standout for me is the scene in which Anton Chiguhr (Javier Bardem) is in the gas station with the unsuspecting owner near the beginning of the film. Bardem says, “What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss?” The unsuspecting fellow is confused.

“Call it," the cold-blooded Bardem says.

The man behind the counter is clueless that everything he has ever scrimped and saved for is on the line. “We need to know what we’re calling it for here,” he says.

It’s an impeccable scene that foreshadows much that is to come regarding the nature of this character who is the embodiment of relentless evil. The manner in which Bardem is eating nuts, the manner in which the camera cuts to the squashed wrapper as it unfolds, again foreshadowing the unfolding of something frightening, produces compelling cinema, storytelling in film.

A great film is also about great lines. “Baby, things happen. And you can’t take ‘em back.” Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) tells his wife once he realizes the danger she's in.

The great lines are what screenwriters live for. All the great films have great lines in them. You can hardly think of some of these films without immediately recalling a line... Films like Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz are rich with them. Quote the line and everybody knows exactly what you're talking about.

"We'll make him an offer he can't refuse." It's pure Brando.

“Houston, we have a problem.” ~ Apollo 13

“You can’t handle the truth.” ~ A Few Good Men

“Show me the money.” ~ Jerry Maguire

“Go ahead, make my day” ~ Sudden Impact

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” ~ Cool Hand Luke

Garbo

Another feature of great films is casting. Not only are the main characters right for their jobs, the incidental characters are superbly selected. Casting is a strong feature of all the Coen brothers' films, and No Country is no exception.

When I first reviewed this film in 2008 I was critical of the casting of Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell and I was critical of the limited amount of screen time Woody Harrelson carried. I take back both of these criticisms now, having watched the film several times since its first screening in Duluth. At this point I can't even imagine anyone else in the role Jones played. and had Harrelson been given any further screen time it may have detracted from the film simply because he is such a compelling presence. He had to make an early departure only because this story was about the cat and mouse survival game being played out between Brolin and Bardem.

The ending may be a tad confusing for first time viewers, but the story needed to tie up a lot of loose ends quickly or it could have dragged out. The main conflicts in the film were resolved. And Sheriff Ed Tom was shaken to his core.

Another great line, from the mouth of Tommy Lee Jones: "You can't make up stuff like that."

And finally, among other things, there is the story itself. The essence of story is a moment in time in which the ordinary train of events in a character's life is shifted onto a new track. It may be something incidental, but like the railroad it will ultimately result an utterly different destination.

For Llewelyn Moss, his destiny was altered when he accidentally came across the aftermath of a shootout while out hunting in a remote region in West Texas. The former Viet Nam vet makes a decision that alters everything.

The skill with which the story is told makes all the difference in the world. The characters behave in ways that are believable. The sets, settings, pacing all conspire to keep the believability intact. A written story creates a dream in the reader's mind, and in film the dream is visually expressed, which involves risk. The Coen brothers have been pretty effective at it. Makes one wonder what will be next.

* * *

Featured eBook of the Day: The Red Scorpion ...my first book length story.

Inside Llewyn Davis Didn’t Do It For Me

The people and places of that early 60’s Greenwich Village scene are legends now. Bleecker Street, Café Wah?, the Kettle of Fish, Gerde’s Folk City, and at its epicenter, The Gaslight Café on McDougal Street. Sean Wilentz, in his book Bob Dylan In America, notes that The Gaslight wasn’t all music. Stand up comics like Bill Cosby and Woody Allen cut their teeth there. Dave Van Ronk, Tom Paxton and Noel Paul Stookey were there. And it’s been fairly well established that Dylan was “found” there... and briefly passes through here as well, perhaps the highlight of the film.

With meticulous care the Coen Brothers tackled the ambitious aim of telling a story that would re-create this time and place. The much talked about film is Inside Llewyn Davis, which currently has a 7.9 rating at imdb.com, a rating that I consider generous. And to demonstrate how wrong I am, the critics at RottenTomatoes average an 8.6 out of ten.

My first difficulty here is that I heard just a little too much hype going into it so that unrealistic expectations were raised. The soundtrack was supposed to be every bit as fabulous as O Brother Where Art Thou, which I still listen to now and then, but I dunno. I have the real music of the time and that resonates well enough for me. And then that second stumbling stone: the main character at the center of the story itself is no hero. He’s a self-centered jerk.

From an aesthetic point of view the film has fabulous cinematography. Every shot, especially in the first section of the movie, is a work of art. The casting was good, too, though many of the negative reviewers on imdb.com dissed John Goodman’s slot in the film.

The fictitious Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a Greenwich Village folk singer trying to make ends meet while attempting to maintain a foothold on the bottom rung of that ladder that leads upward to the brass ring. Davis has already had a recording, but his partner took his life afterward, leaping from the George Washington Bridge. Now Llewen Davis wants to go it alone. The obstacles are many, the biggest one being himself.

At one point in his odyssey, Llewyn Davis is in a restroom stall reading the graffiti and his eye fastens on the words, “What are you doing?” This may have been intended as cheap bathroom humor, but I imagined it might foreshadow a turning point in Llewen’s life. Sadly, I was mistaken. The arc of the story goes from flat to flatter. I mean, why are there no signs of introspection? Why is this character apparently so clueless regarding the manner in which his own decisions have created his own predicament? And this is essentially the heart of the film’s problem. His bad behavior keeps him from winning our sympathy.

The film is ambiguous on another score. Is this a work of art in which we’re supposed to draw our own unmanipulated conclusions? The irony here is that we do not really see much of what is going on inside Llewyn Davis. And what's with the reviewers calling this a comedy? Robbie Collin in the Daily Telegraph called it "a perfectly pitched melancholic comedy" and Wikipedia calls it "an American comedy-drama."

The Free Dictionary defines comedy as "A dramatic work that is light and often humorous or satirical in tone and that usually contains a happy resolution of the thematic conflict." It didn't.

Dictionary.com offers this definition: "a play, movie, etc., of light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion." It wasn't and it didn't.

Seeing the period recreated was a delight for sure, especially when you’ve been in those neighborhoods. In one scene there’s a Packard, a fifties car that was built by my grandfather from Warren, Ohio.

I had one other complaint regarding this film so full of guitar scenes. I have never known a guitar player who didn’t first tune his instrument. Guitars aren’t pianos, yet not once in this film do we see Llewyn pull out his six-string and first strum a note to see if it’s in tune. Did anyone else have a problem with this?

Though the film failed to inspire me, I’m not sorry I went. There were takeaways. The music was good. And it was nice to see those streets again.    Five stars out of ten.