Review: No Country for Old Men

Seen three times and 6/15/15

4/4

The most valuable thing I gained from my fourth viewing of No Country for Old Men is realizing that it's not about Llewelyn; it's not about Anton, nor Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff, nor the great cat-and-mouse game. No Country for Old Men is about evil. It is also about the degradation of society. That Llewelyn dies off-screen and in a middle section of the movie shows us how the narrative here is secondary. The character of Anton Chigurh personifies evil at its purest, most beautiful and untouchable form. He is no villain; he stands by his principles as well as anyone in the senseless world does, and he deserves to be respected for that. Tommy Lee Jones is our insight into the thematic core of this story; he is an older man who has witnessed the decay of society firsthand; being a sheriff, he has even seen the villains of the world grow deeper and darker and greater. He can't wrap his traditional head around the apparent lack of principles driving these men, but what he doesn't see is that either everyone has principles or no one does; he is perhaps immensely disturbed to find that he and the psychopath may be in the same boat.

The Coen brothers' film is fantastic in every way. They understand the message of the book, and portray it with brilliant consistency and artistic vision. They are gifted enough to even place their signature humor amidst a story so coated in blackness. The lack of music is perfect to communicate the blank brutality of this world. The performances are terrific, and the characters even better. This time, surprisingly, I was more interested in the sheriff, and even in Llewelyn, than in Anton. I was fascinated by the sheriff's simple expectations for the universe, and his both naive and wise acceptance of the succession of events. He absorbed them plaintively, with a firm knowledge that he was completely lost. He is a hero in my view, definitively.

The film is a minimalist reflection on God's absence from this world, and the subsequent free evil. The darkness is unrestrained and unstoppable: frightening and expected. It rules in this film, but the character of the sheriff gives me the hint that sometime in the future it can be fought, with the correct understanding of it.