No Country for Old Men: 2007

I'm still processing this film. I watched it on Saturday night with my husband, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. But I'm going to try to write about it in hopes that I'll figure something out.

No Country for Old Men won four Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director for the Coen brothers, Best Supporting Actor for Javier Bardem (so creepily, disturbingly good in his role as Chigurh), and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film is dark. Really dark. As in I can't believe that one person could be that cold-hearted and evil. Bardem convinced me that Chigurh cares about nothing, and any time he was on screen I knew that something awful was going to happen. The film is based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, so I'm thinking that characterization is from McCarthy's original work, but the Coen brothers' writing and directing combined with Bardem's skill make for a character who is so horrific in his indifference to life that it made watching the film uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable when I saw the death and even more uncomfortable when I didn't because those unseen moments seemed worse.

I hesitate to write too much about the film because I don't want to spoil anything. The story is about a sheriff in west Texas even though it seems more about Llewelyn (played by Josh Brolin) who is welder who comes across a drug deal gone bad and takes the money for himself. Llewelyn doesn't think twice about taking the money: it's there and he's there, so why not? Later when his life is in danger, he refuses to give the money up. His defiance seems idiotic at times but then other moments when he manages to escape death seems almost heroic. But then I would remember that he stole drug money, so there's really nothing heroic in that. And it's not like he went to the police to report the drugs sitting in the dry Texas country. Nope. He just takes the money, sends his wife to her mother's home, and leaves town when he realizes his life might be in danger. Llewelyn keeps telling his wife that they are retired now; he's convinced that he will get to keep this money. His arrogance (or is it stupidity) is what stopped me from seeing him as heroic or even a decent person.

I spent a lot of the film thinking about Llewelyn, but at one point, I realized the film isn't about him. It's about the sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones. Typically, when I think of Tommy Lee Jones, my mind goes to Men in Black or silly action movies like Volcano, both of which came out in the 1990s when I watched movies more frequently (high school meant a lot more time for movie watching when I had fewer responsibilities at home). Clearly, neither of those movies show what Jones can actually do as an actor. Or perhaps they do because Jones can be in those and in a film like No Country for Old Men.

Maybe I need to watch No Country for Old Men again. Or maybe I need to read the book. Or maybe both. Because writing this post hasn't helped me as much as I had hoped in figuring out what this film is about. But that might be the point; perhaps I'm not supposed to fully understand these characters, their motivations, and their relationships.