No Country for Old Men (2007)

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No Country for Old Men (2007) – J. Coen & E. Coen

I first saw this in the theatre when it was released in 2007 (when I was soon to be 40).  It is set in Texas in 1980 (when I was turning 13).  Watching it again in 2019 (when I am currently 51), its larger theme, about changes in society/the world making it more difficult for “old men” to keep up/stay engaged, struck me a bit harder.  Tommy Lee Jones plays Ed Tom Bell, the old sheriff who comes to feel that the world (of crime) has moved into a new era (new terrain/country) with the scourge of drug-related violence hitting West Texas hard.  He’s ready to retire.  This is not what I remembered about the film.  Instead, I remembered it as a thriller, with Josh Brolin’s scrappy welder, Llewelyn Moss, stumbling onto a drug deal gone wrong, escaping with $2 million dollars in cash, and being pursued by relentless psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh (played scarily by Javier Bardem in a really bad haircut).  After all, the tête-à-tête between Brolin and Bardem takes up most of the movie, as we see their agentic/instrumental moves in detail (e.g., buying tentpoles and taping them together with coat hangers in order to retrieve the bag of money from the air vent in the motel).  The scenes with Jones and his wife or with his old friend (Barry Corbin) seem almost like “asides”, standing apart from the narrative.  Are they really the key to writer Cormac McCarthy’s themes (and the Coens’ screenplay which draws directly from his book)? Certainly, these scenes link us to the title of the book/movie and the sense that the world has become damaged and worse – or simply a “young man’s” game.  However, I’m not sure the air of melancholy induced here and in some of the amazing cinematography by Roger Deakins (at night, particularly) manages to overcome the ultra-violence onscreen (there is a lot of blood and death); I wish it did.  I’m also not quite sure the point that chance rules our lives (certainly a cornerstone of Anton Chigurh’s philosophy and a key factor in most of the major plot turns) is debated well enough.  After all, chance may provide both opportunities and obstacles for us but the way we respond to chance events seems to dictate how they play out.  Or not.  Moss couldn’t escape the inexorableness of his fate once things cascaded.  Perhaps the only solution is to step out of the melee altogether, as Ed Tom Bell chooses to do when he retires – but this may be a luxury for “old men” (and women) and comes only when the time is right (i.e., not at 51).  Until then, we will still have to contend with and attempt to control the “random” changes in our lives and the world, even if it worsens.