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The Genius of the Coens
iView Author:
KP
(NYC, USA)
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Witheld
The Genius of the Coens
I finally gave into the hype and went to see No Country for Old Men. It exceeded the hype. The Coen brothers have outdone themselves in an entirely new way and the Oscar was well-deserved. Bardem and Brolin are outstanding as the psychotic killer, Anton Chigurgh and Llewelyn, a fairly shrewd country bum.
The movie starts with a lovely ode to what is to come. Tension, pregnant spaces…both physical and auditory…force you to stop squirming in your chair and focus. The barren Texan landscape, the gradual introduction into dialogue … all capture what the film is about in its entirety. Most of the scenes are in the sprawling, bleak landscapes of Texas or in tiny, claustrophobic motel rooms. The tension between the spaces used adds to our nerves. In the bleak empty fields you desperately want shelter…for yourself, the cameras and the characters…and in the motel rooms, the exact opposite desires take over…you want space, you want to run out and away. Both the large open spaces and the tiny rooms are cold and lack intimacy. The spaces seem to silently echo the city sheriff’s (Tommy Lee Jones) views on humanity. The whole idea of the said vs. the unsaid is very reminiscent of Pinter’s plays (but generally more coherent!).
Similarly, for the most part, the dialogue used leaves us feeling abandoned…we want to understand and empathize but Chigurgh just want to fuck with us. The dialogue is curt and short and the characters seem to be using it to veil themselves. We aren’t meant to understand them…especially Chigurgh. He is quiet, terse, and impossible to know. He plays games with the people he encounters and he plays with the audience. There are long silences where we want to be comforted by voices and explanations. The explanations rarely come…they are occasionally delivered by Jones’ character and I actually found those bits rather dull and tiresome.
Bardem and Brolin bring a devastating sex appeal to the violence that they embody. The acting is nearly perfect and makes you desperately want to understand and know them. Bardem is terrifying as the cold-blooded killer but let’s face it, he’s also kind of cool. He’s the ultimate laid-back relaxed sexy alpha-male. I’m sure quite a number of women want to tame this unpredictable killer (ok, maybe that is Bardem more than Chigurgh). He is a violent mystery and that mystery is very appealing.
Thanks to the camera angles and the tense silences, you unexpectedly find yourself in the middle of a suspense story that has you reacting to a horror story. The brilliant thing is that you know what is going to happen, you almost know how it is going to happen but you are still on the edge of your seat with your fingernails digging in to the chair. (I realised that I started this piece with a spoiler alert but I’m not sure any number of spoilers actually has the power to spoil this film).
There were a few holes in the story but they all seem trivial in the face of this masterpiece. I was initially annoyed that the Coens didn’t allow us to see some of the most crucial deaths. Llewelyn deserved a magnificent death scene…but, in retrospect, no death scene could have been magnificent enough to do him justice.
This is one of the best films that I have seen in a long time. Indian cinema has miles to go I’m afraid. At least we the viewers can find satisfaction somewhere.
11 Responses to “The Genius of the Coens”
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If you have seen Full Metal Jacket then you may remember Pvt Joker’s war face that Sgt Hartman asks him to scream out three times during the introduction of the soldiers. We see Chigurh’s war face only once when he kills the cop by choking him by the handcuffs. Rest of the times we just simply believe that he has killed them. Including Carla Jean.
BTW what plot holes?
My review: http://passionforcinema.com/no-country-for-old-men-2007/
Its sad that even writers of prestigious iView see a contemporary masterpiece after the “Oscar Approval”. I guess they are drawn by their fellow film buffs with conversations about Kafka, Satyajeet Ray and maybe even Lynch so much that I guess they are forgetting to embrace something thats so current perhaps thinking it is impossible that something this magnificent can happen.
Good cinema is not history!
I was just wondering !!
If Anton chigurh is the supporting character … who is the lead ??
Is it a must for a film to have a lead? Who’s the lead in Crash?
No i am saying the film shud have a lead !!!
but i am just wondering … if Bardem in NCFOM could almost qualify for a lead .. or may be not !!!
#######SPOILERS BEFORE####################
##########SPOILERS BEFORE###################
:d:d
@Saurav, please meet Rocky (comment 10) on
http://passionforcinema.com/mith-yeah-ho-ya-na-ho-sawaal-yehi-hai/
and settle it ;)
The lead in the movie is obviously Tommy Lee Jones. The whole movie is basically told from his perspective… its his cowardice, his fear and his philosophy that resonates throughout the whole movie and why the movie is called “No Country for Old Men” in the first place. Its his realization of his own cowardice and helplessness that makes him retreat into his own fold and retire. The two dreams he describes at the end gives the viewer ample backing to come to such a conclusion. The genius of the Coens of course is the ending I believe, where they made their trademark concept of “chance” and “fate” play a bigger role and thus shatter a lot of conclusions the viewer might have come to prior to that.
guys, found a strange interpretation of the film while browsing the net. It goes like this:
Anton Chigurh is not real. His existence is only in the mind of the sheriff. All the deaths are actually the result of different crimes by different people but the sheriff, at the end of his career, fearful and fed up with the crime and violence, is building up a picture of the ultimate horror in crime, in the form of Anton Chigurh. Remember that anyone who meets Chugurh is either dead or the sheriff does not visit them for investigation(at least not shown in the film). There is really no proof of Chigurh’s existence. No eye-witnesses.All his actions are the representations of the Sherif’s mind.
I have not read Mccarthy’s novel. Dont know how much this goes with the original intention of the author.
@ rudro,
The movie begins with Chigurh being caught by a cop, who eventually ends up dead. In the movie the state cruiser being abondoned the dead cop are mentioned by Ed Tom. Carson Wells is sent out to search Chigurh by a businessman. Carson remembers the exact date he previously met Chigurh.
Cormac himself mentioned to Coens that he wanted the name Chigurh because its sort of untraceable ethnically. Meaning Chigurh could be anyone. Could be an ultimate personification of evil. Its his terror. Ed Tom mentions that he sent a boy to gas chamber who killed a 14yr old girl.
The point is not whether Chigurh is real or not but the ethical roots with which the Old cowboys built the old western. That old western country is dying with new outlaws’ principles which are incomprehendable by those old cowboys.
@RK
yeah..that guy has a point..lol