Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
(WARNING: The following article is actually pretty serious and contains massive spoilers from the film No Country for Old Men. If you don't want me to ruin the movie for you, or you are bored stiffless by mildly pedantic film analyses, I'd recommend skipping this one. If you are interested, welcome aboard! I'll be taking a close look at several movies--from structural and thematic viewpoints--over the next several months.)
Joel and Ethan Coen are clever filmmakers. They like to do stories that appear straightforward, but are actually complex and full of subversion. Most of their movies contain distracting, whimsical (or horrifying) antics, which allows for great spectacle. However, at the end of the day there's not much confusion--the Brothers are not exhibitionists, and those flashy tricks are only for fun. Rather, the Coens' films tend to show a focus on characters. They go in depth, and plot often becomes secondary. Such is the case in No Country for Old Men, one of the pair's strongest efforts. It contains several different plots, and each of them is centered on a specific character. The players in question are Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), an average man turned thief and fugitive, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a serial killer, and Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), an honest, aging man in a world filled with violence.
The movie is a gripping heist picture for the majority of its running time (following Llewelyn and Chigurh), but close to its end it transforms into a philosophical commentary about death. The shift occurs when Sheriff Bell usurps Llewelyn as the main protagonist, and the questions posed at the beginning—such as “who will take possession of the money,” and “will good or evil prevail”—become irrelevant. At that point only the Sheriff and the case before him remain, and the rest of the film is about his struggle with fear and fatigue, brought on by a lifetime of trying to beat crime.
More so than the other characters, Ed Tom Bell is conflicted and uncertain about where he stands. As such, he is the one that requires the most development. At the film's beginning he's somewhat in the background, trailing Chigurh's path of carnage almost half-heartedly, as though he doesn't truly believe it. As the body count rises he begins to get more involved, but eventually Llewelyn, the person he tries to protect, dies before he can make his final move. The Sheriff realizes afterwards that even with all his years of experience, he out of his depth, and he elects to leave the case unresolved. In the last few scenes, the Coens use imagery and metaphor to suggest an explanation for Sheriff Bell’s behavior, and in doing so they justify his final decision to abandon the case.
The film’s most vivid and insightful scene occurs after Llewelyn’s offscreen death - it is Sheriff Bell’s return to the scene of the crime. Late at night, when the motel is dimly lit, Bell backtracks and combs the murder site over again. Because he has already searched the room—and because he opts to go alone at an odd hour—his going back can only be an irrational choice, based on a gut feeling. When Bell pulls up to the motel in his patrol vehicle, he seems to be certain he will find something, perhaps an overlooked piece of evidence, or a clue to Chigurh’s (Javier Bardem) whereabouts. A closeup shows the Sheriff’s face full of apprehension and fear. He exits the vehicle reluctantly, almost choosing to stay behind and turn around. A series of medium shots show him ambling to the door. When he gets there he freezes, and the medium shots again give way to closeups, alternating between the maw of the severed lock (Chigurh’s trademark) and the Sheriff’s face, which becomes obscured by low-key lighting. The shadow stresses his uncertainty, and the image of the lock is a point of view shot that, when repeated, conveys nervous fixation. These closeups, however, also serve as a preamble to the next few shots, which show Chigurh lying in waiting.
The threatening images of Chigurh waiting behind the door are most likely false, but they have great significance. At first, they are actually difficult to make out. The shots are cast nearly in complete darkness, with one, narrow box of light and a small, glowing circle (to indicate the other side of the lock) providing the only illumination. In the first one, only the barrel of a gun and the edge of Chigurh’s mouth can be seen. In the second, the light from the lock is gone, and Chigurh’s eyes are wide and menacing. Between the two shots is another closeup on the sheriff’s face. This juxtaposition suggests that the two events (Chigurh waiting, Bell standing outside) are happening simultaneously, but more than likely the images of Chigurh are from a different point in time, or are entirely imaginary. There is also an image of the gun barrel pointing at the lock, but Chigurh would have to be directly behind the door for that to be real, and when Bell pushes the door open he finds the room completely empty.
The emptiness of the room is ultimately what defeats Sheriff Bell, and sends him away from crime scenes for the rest of his days. He stands backlit in the threshold after opening the door. Large cast shadows in his image spill across the wall and fill the frame as the camera pans. The superimposed silhouettes of Tom Bell are an ominous presence, but—like the impressions of Chigurh—they are only projections the Sheriff brought in with him. After the enormous buildup, all he finds in the room (discounting an unlocked window and a detached vent panel, which are evidence of the crime) is his own anxiety and imagination in effect. He denies it at first, but after he turns on the light and searches the bathroom, Bell has no choice but to admit he was wrong. He reaches the bitter conclusion that after years of handling tough cases, he no longer has a firm grasp of reality. There is no dialogue to communicate this, but his body language and expression speak loudly. When he discovers that he has fallen out of touch, he heaves a sigh and sits down in resignation. Only after that does he decide to give up the chase.
Later, in the film’s final scene, metaphor becomes the driving force for describing Ed Tom Bell’s condition. The dialogue detailing Ed Tom’s dreams, the mise en scene, and the background noise all suggest a growing nearness to death. The dream imagery is especially important. In Ed Tom’s second dream, he and his father ride on horseback through a snowy mountainside. Traditionally, snow is a symbol for death, and the father’s pushing past Ed Tom also seems to indicate a kind of passing on. Ed Tom understands, in this dream, that he and his father are headed to the same place, which can only be the next world. While he relates the strange tale he is pictured plainly in a medium closeup, with none of that surreal imagery accompanying him. However, through the window behind him there are two trees, one of them bent over but full of green, and the other shriveled and leafless. They are background objects, but they too represent the duality of life and death, as does a persistent ticking noise, audible from the beginning of the scene. The sound—presumably from an unseen clock—is a reminder of time. Ed Tom, in his old age and retirement, has little left, and the film reaches its conclusion as he accepts that.
By using figurative speech in dialogue, and making clever use of imagery, the Coens are able to lend convincing depth to their character. Ed Tom Bell is a stoic hero, unlike Llewelyn and Chigurh, so subtlety is appropriate for him. His sections favor existential drama over the explosive, violent conflict found elsewhere in the picture. In many ways Bell is the film's hero, but he never triumphs; instead he backs down and wises up. The hallucinatory crisis in the motel and the icy wasteland found in the dream both imply that Bell is ready to move on, and, like so many other clever turns in the movie, they are wonderful, expressive vehicles for the Coens’ imaginations. It is interesting to note, however, that Bell's mental dilemma makesNo Country For Old Men's resolution somewhat anticlimactic. Indeed, by the end, larger issues such as good and evil have fallen by the wayside. This is because the film’s emphasis is not general; instead, the Coen Brothers decide to focus on what they do best – character study, with a touch of the cerebral and bizarre.
Thanks for reading! There will be more like this--although perhaps some of them will be more fun--in the near future. Stay posted for more.