No Country for Old Men

As with many Coen brothers films, regional influences feature strongly here. Here, as was the case for Fargo, the regional influence is exhibited strongly in the accents of the characters. While this lends a merited note of authenticity, there is occasionally a trade off between such authenticity and ensuring that a wide audience can understand the actors. Tommy Lee Jones, notably, seems to push his speech from the back of his throat and past the immobile lips of his narrow mouth as though the words are reluctant to leave. Jones’ character is central to the “message” of the film, in the sense that he is the most likely candidate of the film’s characters to qualify as one of the titular “old men”. However, this centrality is not immediately obvious, partly because the focus in the first half of the film lies elsewhere.

Nearing retirement, Jones’s sheriff is often, we sense, a channel for what might be McCarthy’s own sentiments. That the audience might make such a judgement is a failure of the film, I feel. The brief hunting and tracking scene in the desert is distinctly reminiscent of scenes in McCarthy's other works. Javier Bardem’s character, apparently invincible, and possessing an extraordinary facility with the stuff of the world, and an unflinching moral code which he enforces with a brutal zeal, brings to mind the character of the Judge in Blood Meridian. Both characters are, to some degree, philosophical vehicles that allow McCarthy to explore his concerns. Bardem's character's dialogue is highly metaphysical , e.g. “he’s not here in the sense you mean”, “if the rule you live by got you to this point, what use is your rule?”. This character is extraordinary in many ways, not least in terms of his weapon of choice, and the filmmakers and Bardem do a good job in communicating his other-worldliness.

After events lead us to Mexico the Coens relieve the mounting tension, inserting some solid humour, to give the impression that the young anti-hero has “made it”. However, this turns out not to be the case. Rather the young man, who could be seen as implicity responsible for the “collateral damage” visited on those around him as he flees his relentless cold-blooded pursuer, definitively has not “made it”, and his prospects quickly take a turn for the worse. The film’s pace is uneven, and following the murder of the young man, there is an apparent loss of direction and the audience momentarily seeks purchase among the remaining characters.

At this point in the script it is perhaps helpful to suppose that the plot means different things for the audience and the writer, as one gets the sense in the final stages of the film that what interests the writer is not the plight of the young opportunist, but the exploration, in an oblique and metaphysical manner, such concepts as ethics, the role of chance in our lives and how the passage of time affects our sense of place in the world. It is regrettable that this exploration is not balanced with the plot, in that some of the plot twists, which are intended to support this exploration, are unrealistic to the extent of detracting from the audience’s willingness to commit to the piece as a whole.

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