At the beginning of No Country For Old Men, Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) is arrested on a desert road in West Texas. In the police station, he throws his handcuffed hands around the neck of the cop and strangles him. They fall back on the floor and for more than a minute, the cop thrashes about like a fish gasping for water. Too familiar with Hollywood action films, I munched my popcorn unflustered by the mayhem, enjoying it. Finishing the job, Anton washes his hands, bloodied at the wrists. Then they frame a top shot of the cop's still legs, all around him on the linoleum floor are streaks of black arcs. Marks from the soles of the cop's shoes. I sat up and put away the popcorn.
Numbed by decades of action films, what viewers crave is to still feel something, something beyond mere amusement. Walking out of many films, I say to myself – yeh, the fight choreography was neat and so was that car chase. But where is the pounding heart, and the sweaty palms that I remember from teenage days? Like increasing the dosage for addicts, the filmmakers make action sequences bigger and louder, which only makes it more fake. I think the key is to focus on the little details, the subtle moments that make us forget it's just a movie. That's what the Cohen Brothers do in this film, over and again – through great dialogs, lingering camera shots and silent scenes.
The plot is simple. A welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), during a hunt, chances upon a drug deal gone bad – dead bodies everywhere, trucks strewn with bullets and a box of two million dollars cash. He takes the money and runs, and they send a ruthless killer after him. The local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), a melancholic aging man, tries to help Moss.
Javier Bardem is a master Spanish actor who owns every role he did, particularly the one in the brilliant film, A Sea Inside. Here he plays a guy who is the "greatest badass" or put another way, "someone who has no sense of humor." Bardem bring his own sophistication and subtlety to the role. Walking out of a house after his most heartless killing (we don't know if he spared or killed her), he stops in front of the doorway and lifts up his legs to see if there are any blood stains on the sole of his shoes.
But the film is not just an intense Western that is all style and panache. Sure there are many high-octane actions scene but the movie doesn't indulge the viewers entirely. It constantly shifts from the theatrical – chased by a dog, Moss dries his gun, loads and fires at the kink of the time – to the real. And from the real to the absurd – one cop says to another, "He kills a man and goes back to the place two days later to shoot another. Who walks into a crime scene? How are we supposed to catch a man like that?"
The Cohen Brothers are primarily storytellers, great ones at that. Maybe that's why, many characters in their films, staring at their comrade or straight into the camera, begin to narrate anecdotes and little stories.
Film is a visual medium and these anecdotes sometimes pose a problem. In The Big Lebowski, we begin with a big narration on The Dude. But the narrator is off-screen and on camera, an active Jeff Daniel keeps our eyes busy. That worked great. No Country For Old Men takes three long forays into monolouges, two with a tight close up of the narrator. I spaced out during these moment – maybe it was the stark contrast to rest of the film (visual & fast paced) or maybe it was the Southern accent.
Later, I read up the monolouges online. The prose is brilliant, but I don't think it has a place in film. When I character in a book describes his dream, we visualize it in our minds. But when someone narrates it in a movie, we are left staring at his sullen face. I think the film would have worked better without those diversions. Everything expressed in those words have already been shown through the photography and acting. This is a recurring issue with movies made from novels. There is so much good stuff in the book, you just can't leave out enough.
To use the cliché, the film is loaded – with a cascade of stunning imagery, great acting, and ironic dialogs. And some how it manages to hold up under all that weight. I can't wait to see it again.
Numbed by decades of action films, what viewers crave is to still feel something, something beyond mere amusement. Walking out of many films, I say to myself – yeh, the fight choreography was neat and so was that car chase. But where is the pounding heart, and the sweaty palms that I remember from teenage days? Like increasing the dosage for addicts, the filmmakers make action sequences bigger and louder, which only makes it more fake. I think the key is to focus on the little details, the subtle moments that make us forget it's just a movie. That's what the Cohen Brothers do in this film, over and again – through great dialogs, lingering camera shots and silent scenes.
The plot is simple. A welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), during a hunt, chances upon a drug deal gone bad – dead bodies everywhere, trucks strewn with bullets and a box of two million dollars cash. He takes the money and runs, and they send a ruthless killer after him. The local sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), a melancholic aging man, tries to help Moss.
Javier Bardem is a master Spanish actor who owns every role he did, particularly the one in the brilliant film, A Sea Inside. Here he plays a guy who is the "greatest badass" or put another way, "someone who has no sense of humor." Bardem bring his own sophistication and subtlety to the role. Walking out of a house after his most heartless killing (we don't know if he spared or killed her), he stops in front of the doorway and lifts up his legs to see if there are any blood stains on the sole of his shoes.
But the film is not just an intense Western that is all style and panache. Sure there are many high-octane actions scene but the movie doesn't indulge the viewers entirely. It constantly shifts from the theatrical – chased by a dog, Moss dries his gun, loads and fires at the kink of the time – to the real. And from the real to the absurd – one cop says to another, "He kills a man and goes back to the place two days later to shoot another. Who walks into a crime scene? How are we supposed to catch a man like that?"
The Cohen Brothers are primarily storytellers, great ones at that. Maybe that's why, many characters in their films, staring at their comrade or straight into the camera, begin to narrate anecdotes and little stories.
Film is a visual medium and these anecdotes sometimes pose a problem. In The Big Lebowski, we begin with a big narration on The Dude. But the narrator is off-screen and on camera, an active Jeff Daniel keeps our eyes busy. That worked great. No Country For Old Men takes three long forays into monolouges, two with a tight close up of the narrator. I spaced out during these moment – maybe it was the stark contrast to rest of the film (visual & fast paced) or maybe it was the Southern accent.
Later, I read up the monolouges online. The prose is brilliant, but I don't think it has a place in film. When I character in a book describes his dream, we visualize it in our minds. But when someone narrates it in a movie, we are left staring at his sullen face. I think the film would have worked better without those diversions. Everything expressed in those words have already been shown through the photography and acting. This is a recurring issue with movies made from novels. There is so much good stuff in the book, you just can't leave out enough.
To use the cliché, the film is loaded – with a cascade of stunning imagery, great acting, and ironic dialogs. And some how it manages to hold up under all that weight. I can't wait to see it again.
1 comment:
Good post.
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