NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

No Country for Old Men is the much-anticipated return to form of the Cohen Brothers. Back on familiar ground, the unforgiving yet poetic landscape of North America and her inhabitants as they run around in their silly, vain and frenetic way. But there is love and there is loyalty and there is compassion. There is fear, there is pursuit and there is unflinching wickedness.

The story is adapted by the Cohens and Cormac McCarthy from his novel of the same name. Set in the eighties in rural Texas, it is the story of Llewelyn Moss played with understatement, subtlety and elegance by Josh Brolin. Last seen as a rotten cop in the Ridley Scott feature American Gangster he plays a trailer living drifter, very much in love with his equally enamoured wife Carla Jean played by a note perfect Kelly MacDonald. Out hunting antelope, where the deer and the antelope play, he stumbles on a drug deal gone badly wrong and walks away with a couple of million dollars in cash. Well wouldn’t you at least be tempted? This in itself is not his mistake. His act of hubris comes in the form of an act of compassion: his humanity is his undoing.

Nemesis comes in the form of Anton Chigurh, a paradigm shattering screen baddie played apparently effortlessly by a masterful Javier Bardem. Harry Powell, Max Cady, Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, Keyser Soze and now Anton Chigurh. If this is not an Oscar for supporting actor, I don’t know what is. His apparent ease with killing people, literally, you will see, like cattle is sobering, and yet the brooding menace of his performance is intoxicating. I saw this picture a month ago and still I think of him several times a day.

It would be wrong for me not to mention Tommy Lee Jones who plays the world weary Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Really, it’s his story and charts the changes between the old world of community and general good will which he feels declining into the casual cruelty and unsentimentality of a wanton and ruthless criminality. The illusion we often seem to share in our dotage of a golden age perhaps. Truthfully I thought him a bit old for this role: cops tend to get pretty early retirement. But his beautiful craggy face, his charm and his being a native Texan make him a natural and excellent choice.

I must also bring to your attention the utterly breathtaking cinematography of Roger Deakins, who has long had an association with the Cohen Brothers. Fargo, O Brother, where Art Thou? also feature his work. His ability to consign the majestic and sweeping beauty of landscape and also its relentless harshness is lyrical and is most definitely one of the main characters in this beautifully made film.

At times I felt myself wondering whether this film really was as good as I thought it was. Was I just being bamboozled by technique? Anyway, how can such a response detract? Small matter. The Cohens are such adept and sophisticated exponents of their medium that they can take apart and reconstruct the genre making it pregnant with primal and everyday themes raising the bar several notches.

Hats off to the Cohens, this is film making at is best. See it at all costs.

Ben Lee