Sasa Majuma
14 March 2008
Gaborone — A confirmation of gratuitous violence
'No Country for Old Men' (2007) is coming soon to the New Capitol Cinemas. This film received eight Academy Award nominations and walked off with four Oscars (Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Script to the Coen brothers and Best Supporting Actor to Javier Bardem). It has won 69 other prizes.
Nothing surprising in this. It confirms the thesis that American movies are addicted to gratuitous violence and that when it is 'done well' it is honoured. Violence must be in the American blood and to show that crime pays, killing people at the flip of a coin (heads you live, tails you die) is all part of the ethos of a violent nation, still practicing an 'eye for an eye' in most states (the movie is set in Texas in 1980-when George W. Bush was governor and his retributive justice made sure that hundreds of people were executed).
In 'No Country for Old Men' one loses count of how many people Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) kills. That most of them are innocent is also irrelevant. Is this a justification for the killing of innocent civilians, women and children in Iraq and elsewhere? The role of the hit-man, a psychopath without scruples, is extremely well acted, and if a prize is given for adroitness in portraying an evil character, then perhaps Bardem deserves his Oscar? Oddly, Anton Chigurh does have principles. He will freely kill anyone who crosses him, including those who hire him to kill. For a homicidal maniac to get away with murder time after time gives what kind of message to people? The only punishment inflicted on him is a wound in the leg and later, a bone showing though his left arm. What is his saving grace? He does not kill everyone. The man who selects 'heads' for the toss of a quarter wins his life. The lad who sells the killer his shirt lives to defend his profit. Any other redeeming features? Well Anton Chigurh has an unusual way of killing people. When he is not blazing with his 12 gauge automatic shotgun with a giant silencer, he uses a tank of compressed air that blasts a deadly plug-hold still while I give you a beauty treatment.
The movie opens with the murder of a policeman. Anton Chigurh has been taken into custody, but soon is on his way. It shifts then to Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a welder out hunting, who wounds an antelope and in tracking it comes in the aftermath of a shoot-out between two forces. The two million worth of heroin in the back of a utility is too much for him to take. But the pilot's case with two million in one hundred dollar bills is fair game. This quickly makes Moss a target. His mistake is returning to the scene of the shoot-out with water for a dying man and he is discovered by two gangsters. Moss seems to have a golden touch.
Though wounded, he eludes them and kills the dog sent after him. But he knows, from the plate number of his utility, that they will find out who he is on Monday morning and be after him and their two million in his mobile home in Desert Aire Trailer Park. Moss sends his wife, Carla Jean Moss (Kelly Macdonald) off to her mother's home far away. He fails to understand that there is an electronic beeper hidden in the pilot's case and that it will pull Anton Chigurh right after him. He does sense that something is amiss and whenever he caches the case, he does so away from himself. When he checks into room 138 at the Del Ross Regal Motel he buys a 10-gauge shotgun, promptly saws the barrel off and takes two rooms to have a decoy. More killings take place and our loose cannon pursues Moss as he crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico. One wonders why Moss never took to the air and made a real getaway? But then this is a modern-day Western, stuck on the ground.
The men who have hired Anton Chigurh are not satisfied with the pace being followed to retrieve their two million, so they hire Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) to find their funds. Now there are three people following Moss. The third, and most lackadaisical, also narrates the movie - he is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), old enough to know better and to be ready to retire. The Sheriff's spiel is philosophical and rambling and meant to entertain. Western Texas, even in 1980, is still the Wild West. It is not hard to guess right from the beginning that the Sheriff will always get there too late. Why, he even takes his wife, Loretta's (Tess Harper) horse to see the site of the first big shootout. His pet phrase to her as he goes to work is: "I dedicate daily anew to truth and justice".
Carson Wells, who calls himself a 'day trader' is the first to catch up with Moss. He tries to explain to him that Anton Chigurh is not someone you can deal with. "He can take on all comers ... He'd kill you for inconveniencing him. (If he didn't kill him for pronouncing his surname as 'Sugar'). Finally they converge on El Paso, Texas - that is where there is a major international airport. In the Desert Sands Motel, Moss is propositioned by an attractive young woman (Ana Reeder) by the swimming pool. But he has not lost sight of his goals, or his concern that his wife is in danger as Carson Wells told him Chigurh would also destroy her.
The Sheriff has finally got himself out of his dorp. "This country is hard on people" is the closest he gets to the title of Cormac McCarthy's novel. It seems that the Coen brothers have followed it as close as they could. So without ever having read a Cormac McCarthy western, you will get a good taste of what they are like. They go nowhere, have no real redeeming features, no moral, but rank up there in the sky with the masters of American fiction. It is all in the detail, the landscape and the telling that count. Cormac McCarthy is now 75. He began his life in Rhode Island, but moved west for his education and future. 'No Country for Old Men' (2005) is his ninth Gothic Western out of 10.
It is two hours and two minutes long. It is rated 16+ for violence, violence and more violence. The directors, who also wrote the script and edited it are Joel and Ethan Coen. The cinematographer is Roger Deakins. The music is by Carter Burwell. This 'borderland' flick was filmed in New Mexico at Albuquerque and Santa Fe, in Texas at the dorp of Marfa and in Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande, and in Mexico at Piedra Negras and Coahuila - all great territory.
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