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Home , Anton Chigurh, Barry Corbin, Coen brothers, Mary Zophres, Tess Harper, Tommy Lee Jones

5 May 2015 (Series 30:14) Joel and Ethan Cohen, (2007, 122 min)

(The version of this handout on the website has color images and hot urls.)

Winner of four 2008 : Best Motion Picture of the Year for , Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Best Achievement in Directing for Ethan Coen and Joel Coen Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay for Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen Written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (screenplay), and Cormac McCarthy (novel) Produced by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, and Scott Rudin Music by Cinematography by by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen (as Roderick Jaynes) 2008 Best Achievement in Directing for No Country for Old Men Wrangler Foreperson ( unit) Jason Owen (2007); and 2008 Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay for No Assistant to Mr. Burwell Dean Parker Country for Old Men (2007). Joel has 23 producer credits, 23 Weather Guru Larry Rice writing credits, 19 director credits, and 14 editing credits. Ethan Animal Training by Cheryl Shawver and Victoria Vopni has 24 producer credits, 27 writer credits, 19 director credits, and Gunsmith Joe Freeman 14 editor credits. The two usually edit under the name “Roderick

Jaynes.” Some of their films are 2013 Inside , 2010 ... Ed Tom Bell , 2009 , 2008 , 2007 Javier Bardem ... No Country for Old Men, 2004 , 2003 Intolerable ... Llewelyn Moss Cruelty, 2001 The Man Who Wasn't There, 2000 O Brother, ... Carson Wells Where Art Thou?, 1998 , 1996 , 1994 The ... Carla Jean Moss Hudsucker Proxy, 1991 , 1990 Miller's Crossing, Garret Dillahunt ... Wendell 1987 , and 1984 . ... Loretta Bell

Barry Corbin ... Ellis Roger Deakins () Rodger Boyce (b. May 24, 1949 in Beth Grant Torquay, Devon, Ana Reeder England) has been Kit Gwin the cinematographer

for 75 films and Joel and Ethan Coen (director, writer, producer) (b. Joel television shows, Daniel Coen, November 29, 1954; Ethan Jesse Coen, September including 2013 21, 1957 in , ) won 4 Academy Awards: Prisoners, 2012 1997 Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Skyfall, 2010 True Grit, 2010 , 2009 A Serious Fargo (1996), 2008 Best Motion Picture of the Year for No Man, 2008 Revolutionary Road, 2008 The Reader, 2008 Doubt, Country for Old Men (2007), which they shared with Scott Rudin; Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—2

2007 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert “Baretta” (TV Series), and 1970 Love Story. He has also directed Ford, 2007 , 2007 No Country for Old Men, 4—2014 , 2011 “” (TV 2005 Jarhead, 2004 The Ladykillers, 2003 House of Sand and Movie), 2005 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and 1995 Fog, 2003 , 2001 A Beautiful Mind, 2001 The “The Good Old Boys” (TV Movie)—and wrote 3, including 2014 Man Who Wasn't There, 2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou, 1998 The Homesman (screenplay) and 1995 “The Good Old Boys” (TV The Big Lebowski, 1997 Kundun, 1996 Fargo, 1995 Dead Man Movie, teleplay) Walking, 1994 The Shawshank Redemption, 1994 , 1993 The Secret Garden, 1992 Thunderheart, 1991 Barton Javier Bardem ... Anton Chigurh (b. Javier Ángel Encinas Fink, 1991 Homicide, 1990 Air America, 1988 Pascali's Island, Bardem, March 1, 1969 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Gran 1987 White Mischief, 1986 Sid and Nancy, 1984 Nineteen Eighty- Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain) won the 2008 Academy Award Four, 1983 Another Time, Another Place, 1980 Van Morrison in for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for No Ireland (Documentary), 1980 Blue Suede Shoes (Documentary), Country for Old Men (2007). He appeared in 53 films and 1977 Marquis de Sade's Justine, and 1975 Mothers Own television shows, including 2015 The Last Face (post-production), (Documentary short). 2015 The Gunman, 2013 , 2013 Scorpion in Love, 2012 Skyfall, 2010 Eat Pray Love, 2010 Biutiful, 2008 Vicky Cormac Cristina Barcelona, 2007 Love in the Time of Cholera, 2007 No McCarthy Country for Old Men, 2004 The Sea Inside, 2004 Collateral, 2002 (writer—novel) The Dancer Upstairs, 2000 Before Night Falls, 1999 Second Skin, (b. Charles 1999 Between Your Legs, 1997 Dance with the Devil, 1997 Live McCarthy Jr., Flesh, 1996 Love Can Seriously Damage Your Health, 1995 July 20, 1933 in Mouth to Mouth, 1993 Golden Balls, 1993 El amante bilingüe, Providence, 1991 High Heels, 1986 “Segunda enseñanza” (TV Series, 9 Rhode Island) is episodes), and 1981 El poderoso influjo de la luna. the author of 11 novels—The Josh Brolin ... Llewelyn Moss (b. Josh J. Brolin, February 12, Orchard Keeper 1968 in Los Angeles, California) appeared in 58 films and (1965), Outer television shows, some of which are 2016 Hail, Caesar! (post- Dark (1968), production), 2015 Everest, 2015 Sicario, 2014 Inherent Vice, 2014 Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, 2013 Oldboy, 2013 Labor (1973), Day, 2012 3, 2010 True Grit, 2010 You Will Meet a (1979), Blood Tall Dark Stranger, 2010 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, 2009 Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985), All the Women in Trouble, 2008 Milk, 2008I W., 2007 American Pretty Horses (1992) - , 1, The Crossing Gangster, 2007 In the Valley of Elah, 2007 No Country for Old (1994) - The Border Trilogy, 2, Cities of the Plain (1998) - The Men, 2006 The Dead Girl, 2005 Into the Blue, 2004 Melinda and Border Trilogy, 3, No Country for Old Men (2005), Melinda, 2003 “Mister Sterling” (TV Series, 10 episodes), 2000 (2006), and The Passenger (unpublished)—3 screenplays—The Hollow Man, 1999 Best Laid Plans, 1999 The Mod Squad, 1996 Gardener's Son (1976), The Sunset Limited (2011), and The Flirting with Disaster, 1994 The Road Killers, 1989-1992 The Counselor (2013)—and 2 plays (1995), and The Young Riders (TV Series, 67 episodes), 1986 Thrashin', and 1985 Sunset Limited (2006). The Goonies.

Tommy Lee Jones ... Ed Tom Bell (b. September 15, 1946 in Woody Harrelson ... Carson Wells (b. Woodrow Tracy San Saba, Texas) is the winner of the 1994 Academy Award for Harrelson, July 23, 1961 in Midland, Texas) 2015 The Hunger Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Fugitive (1993). He has Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (post-production), 2015 By Way of appeared in 77 films and television shows, including 2016 Helena (post-production), 2015 Triple 9, 2014 The Hunger Mechanic: Resurrection (post-production), 2015 Criminal (post- Games: Mockingjay - Part 1, 2014 “” (TV Series, 8 production), 2014 The Homesman, 2013 The Family, 2012 episodes), 2013 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, 2013 Free Lincoln, 2012 Emperor, 2012 , 2011 Captain Birds, 2012 Seven Psychopaths, 2012 The Hunger Games, 2011 America: The First Avenger, 2010 The Company Men, 2007 In the Friends with Benefits, 2009 Zombieland, 2008 Seven Pounds, Valley of Elah, 2007 No Country for Old Men, 2006 A Prairie 2008 Semi-Pro, 2007 Battle in Seattle, 2007 No Country for Old Home Companion, 2005 The Three Burials of Melquiades Men, 2007 The Walker, 2006 A Scanner Darkly, 2006 A Prairie Estrada, 2003 The Missing, 2002 Men in Black II, 2000 Space Home Companion, 2005 North Country, 2005 The Big White, Cowboys, 2000 Rules of Engagement, 1998 U.S. Marshals, 1997 2003 Anger Management, 2001 “Will & Grace” (TV Series, 7 Men in Black, 1997 Volcano, 1995 , 1994 Natural episodes), 1999 Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, 1998 Born Killers, 1994 The Client, 1993 Heaven & Earth, 1993 The The Thin Red Line, 1998 Palmetto, 1997 Wag the Dog, 1997 Fugitive, 1993 House of Cards, 1992 , 1991 JFK, Welcome to Sarajevo, 1996 The People vs. Larry Flynt, 1994 1989 The Package, 1989 “” (TV Mini-Series), , 1985-1993 “Cheers” (TV Series, 200 1986 “Yuri Nosenko, KGB” (TV Movie), 1986 Black Moon episodes), 1993 Indecent Proposal, 1992 White Men Can't Jump, Rising, 1984 “” (TV Movie), 1982 “The 1991 Doc Hollywood, 1991 L.A. Story, 1989 True Believer, and Rainmaker” (TV Movie), 1982 “The Executioner's Song” (TV 1988 She's Having a Baby. Movie), 1980 “Barn Burning” (TV Short), 1980 Coal Miner's Daughter, 1978 , 1978 The Betsy, 1977 Kelly Macdonald ... Carla Jean Moss (b. February 23, 1976 in Rolling Thunder, 1976 “Charlie's Angels” (TV Series), 1976 Glasgow, Scotland, UK) has appeared in 40 films and television Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—3 shows, among them 2010-2014 “Boardwalk Empire” (TV Series, episodes), 1984 “Hill Street Blues” (TV Series), 1983 The Man 56 episodes), 2012 Anna Karenina, 2011 Harry Potter and the Who Loved Women, 1983 WarGames, 1983 “The Thorn Birds” Deathly Hallows: Part 2, 2008 The Merry Gentleman, 2007 No (TV Mini-Series), 1981 Dead & Buried, 1981 “The Killing of Country for Old Men, 2005 Lassie, 2005 The Hitchhiker's Guide Randy Webster” (TV Movie), 1980 Any Which Way You Can, to the Galaxy, 2004 Finding Neverland, 2001 Gosford Park, 2000 1980 Stir Crazy, 1980 Urban Cowboy, and 1974 The Super Cops. Two Family House, 1999 My Life So Far, 1999 The Loss of Sexual Innocence, 1998 Cousin Bette, 1996 Stella Does Tricks, Joel & Ethan Coen (From The St James Film Directors and 1996 Trainspotting. Encyclopedia. Ed. Andrew Sarris. Visible Ink, NY, 1998. Entry by R. Barton Palmer) Tess Harper ... Loretta Bell (b. Tessie Jean Washam, August 15, Although Joel Coen had worked as an assistant film 1950 in Mammoth Spring, ) has appeared in 98 films and editor on commercial projects and had made valuable contacts television shows, including 2014 Hello, My Name Is Frank, 2014 within the industry (particularly director ), he and his “True Detective” (TV Series), 2013 Sunlight Jr., 2010 “In Plain brother Ethan decided to produce their first feature film Sight” (TV Series), 2008-2010 “” (TV Series), 2010 independently, raising $750,000 to shoot their jointly written “Grey's Anatomy” (TV Series), 2009 “Crash” (TV Series, 10 script for Blood Simple, a neo-noir thriller with a Dashiell episodes), 2009 “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” (TV Hammett title and a script full of homages to Jim Thompson. Series), 2007 Kiss the Bride, 2007 No Country for Old Men, 2006 Though Joel received screen credit for direction, and Ethan for the Broken Bridges, 2006 Karla, 2001 “CSI: Crime Scene script, this distinction is somewhat artificial both here and in their Investigation” (TV Series), 2000 The In Crowd, 1997 The Jackal, subsequent productions. Joel and Ethan cowrite their scripts and 1994-1995 “Christy” (TV Series, 19 episodes), 1992 My New meticulously prepare storyboards in a collaborative effort unusual Gun, 1991 The Man in the Moon, 1991 My Heroes Have Always for the American cinema (the closest analogy perhaps comes from Been Cowboys, 1988 Criminal Law, 1988 Far North, 1987 Ishtar, abroad with the British team of Powell and Pressburger). 1987 “Murder, She Wrote” (TV Series), 1986 Crimes of the Blood Simple was hardly the first film the Heart, 1984 Flashpoint, 1983 , 1983 , made together. Addicted to TV and movies at an early age, they and 1983 “Kentucky Woman” (TV Movie). spent a good deal of their childhood writing films and then shooting them on a Super-8 camera. Movie brats in the Spielberg tradition, Ethan and Joel desired commercial success but were determined to retain control over what they produced. Hence their initial desire to make an independent film rather than continue working in an industry where Joel was already beginning to be established. A hit with many on the /independent circuit but also a commercial success in art houses and cable release, Blood Simple was the perfect choice to achieve this aim. Here was a film that succeeded because of its individual, even quircky vision. Using the conventions popular with American audiences for half a century, the Coens offer a clear narrative, solidly two- dimensional characters, and the requisite amount of riveting violent spectacle (including one scene that pictures a dying man buried alive and another featuring close-ups of a white-gloved hand suddenly impaled by a knife. Blood Simple, however, is by no means an ordinary thriller. The plot turns expertly and unexpectedly on a number of dramatic ironies (no character Barry Corbin ... Ellis (b. Leonard Barrie Corbin, October 16, knows what the spectator does and even the spectator is 1940 in Lamesa, Texas) has appeared in 191 films and television sometimes taken by surprise). Unlike hardboiled narratives à la shows, some of which are 2014 Finding Harmony (post- Raymond Chandler, the narrative delights in its Aristotelian production), 2015 Windsor, 2012-2014 Anger Management (TV neatness, in its depiction of experiences that make perfect sense, Series, 100 episodes), 2014 The Homesman, 2013 This Is Where climaxing in a poetic justice that the main character and narrator, We Live, 2013 Born Wild, 2011 Valley of the Sun, 2011 Sedona, a venal private detective, finds humorous even as it destroys him. 2010 Bloodworth, 2003-2009 “One Tree Hill” (TV Series, 90 Thematically, the Coens offer a compelling analysis of mauvaise episodes), 2009 That Evening Sun, 2007 In the Valley of Elah, foi in the Sartrean vein as they develop characters doomed by bad 2007 No Country for Old Men, 2006 Beautiful Dreamer, 2002 intentions or a failure to trust and communicate (an existentialist Clover Bend, 2001 No One Can Hear You, 1997 The Fanatics, theme that results perhaps from the fact that Ethan majored in 1996-1997 “The Big Easy” (TV Series, 35 episodes), 1997 philosophy at Princeton). Blood Simple’s most notable feature, “” (TV Series), 1990-1995 “” (TV however, is an expressive stylization of both sound and image that Series, 110 episodes), 1990 Ghost Dad, 1989 “Lonesome Dove” creates an experiential correlative for the viewer of the characters’ (TV Mini-Series), 1989 Who's Harry Crumb?, 1987 Under Cover, confusion and disorientation. These effects are achieved by a 1987 “Murder, She Wrote” (TV Series), 1986 “The Twilight Wellesian repertoire of tricks (wide-angle lenses, tracking set-ups, Zone” (TV Series), 1986 “The A-Team” (TV Series), 1986 unusual framings, an artfully selected score of popular music, “Under Siege” (TV Movie), 1986 “The Defiant Ones” (TV etc.). The film genre naturalizes the stylization to some degree, Movie), 1985 “Washingtoon” (TV Series, 10 episodes), 1984 but Blood Simple exudes a riotous self-consciousness, a delight in “Fatal Vision” (TV Movie), 1979-1984 “Dallas” (TV Series, 9 Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—4 the creation of an exciting cinema that offers moments of pure (Barton Fink); exaggerated sounds—a mosquito’s flight, a noisy visceral or visual pleasure. bed, a whirling fan—perfectly express the main character’s self- Though some critics thought Blood Simple a kind of absorption and anxiety (Barton Fink again). pointless film-school exercise, audiences were impressed—as With Fargo, their 1996 release, the Coen brothers return were the major studios who competed for releasing rights to the to the crime drama. Set primarily in Minnesota, the film follows brothers’ next project. The Coens’ an immensely likable and very subsequent films have all been pregnant sheriff (played by Frances made with substantial commercial McDormand, Joel Coen’s wife) as backing, but these films continue to she pursues a couple of dimwitted be independent in the sense that and cold-blooded kidnappers. A none fits into the routine categories macabre thriller veined with of contemporary Hollywood moments of comedy, Fargo features production. In fact, the art cinema the Coen brothers’ trademark tradition of the seventies has been cinematic flair (though the landscape kept alive by the Coens and the few mutes this somewhat) and intelligent other mavericks (e.g. Quentin narrative focus. Tarantino) who have emerged to The Coens appear to have prominence. abandoned for good the stylized realism and Aristotelian narrative The least successful of these films—Miller’s Crossing— that made Blood Simple such a success. But in an era that has is the most traditional. A “realistic” drama (though the scenes of witnessed the commercial success of cartoonish anti-naturalism violence are highly stylized) with a well-developed plot line, this (Dick Tracy, the Batman films), their concern with striking visual saga of Prohibition-era mobsters, like Scorsese’s Goodfellas and aural effects may provide the basis for a long career, though (released the year before), aims to debunk the romantic tradition difficult films like Barton Fink despite critical acclaim, will never of the gangster film most tellingly exemplified by The Godfather gain a wide audience. (1972). The central character, a “good guy” high up in the organization, confusingly seems more a victim of his poor Roger Ebert: “No Country For Old Men: Out in all that dark” circumstances than a force to be reckoned with. The plot is I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five. Hard otherwise dependent upon unbelievable characters and unlikely to believe. Grandfather was a lawman. Father too. Me and him twists and turns. Some elements of parody are present, but are not was sheriff at the same time, him in Plano and me here. I think he well integrated into the film’s structure, indicating that the Coens was pretty proud of that. I know I was. were uncertain about how to proceed, whether to make a gangster Some of the old-time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A film or send up the conventions of the genre. lot of folks find that hard to believe.... You can't help but compare The other films share a different representational regime, yourself against the old timers. Can't help but wonder how they a magical realism that does not demand versimilitude or logical would've operated these times.... -- Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy closure, but has the virtue—for the Coens-of permitting more Lee Jones) stylization, more moments of pure cinema. Raising Arizona and The land is black, swallowed in the shadows. The sky is The Hudsucker Proxy offer postmodern versions of the traditional beginning to glow orange and blue. This is Genesis, the Hollywood madcap comedy; in both films, a series of zany primordial landscape of "No Country for Old Men." We may adventures climax in romantic happiness for the male and female think we're looking at a sunset at first, but the next few shots show leads. Raising Arizona concerns the ultimately unsuccessful a progression: The sky lightens, the sun rises above the horizon to attempt of a zany and childless couple to kidnap a baby; The illuminate a vast expanse. No signs of humanity are Hudsucker Proxy sends up, in mock Capra-corn style, he triumph evident. And then, a distant windmill -- a mythic "Once Upon a of the virtuous, if obtuse, hero over the evil system that attempts Time in the West" kind of windmill. So, mankind figures into the to use him for its own purposes. Barton Fink, in contrast, is a geography after all. A barbed-wire fence cuts through a field. The darker story, heavily indebted to German Expressionism (an camera, previously stationary, stirs to life, and pans (ostensibly influence to be noted as well in the elaborately artificial sets and down the length of the fence) to find a police car pulled over on unnaturalistic acting of The Hudsucker Proxy). The film’s main the shoulder of a highway. There's law out here, too. character is a thirties stereotype, a left-wing Jewish playwright Light, land, man, boundaries, law. Each image builds committed to representing the miseries of what he calls “the subtly on the one(s) before it, adding incrementally to our picture common man.” Hired away from Broadway by a Hollywood of the territory we're entering. The establishment of this location - studio, he embarks unwittingly on a penitential journey that lays - a passing-through stretch of time and space, between where bare the forces of the id both in the apparently common man he you've been and where you're going, wherever that may be -- meets (a salesman who is actually a serial killer) and in himself seeps into your awareness. Not a moment is wasted, but the (abandoning his writing responsibility, he finds himself at film’s compositions have room to breathe, along with the modulations of end at the beach with the beautiful woman whose picture he first Tommy Lee Jones' voice, the noises in the air, and Carter saw in a calendar). Burwell's music-as-sound-design. The movie intensifies and All three of these films abound in bravura stylizations. A heightens your senses. Light is tangible, whether it's sunlight or man dives out of a skyscraper window and the camera traces the fluorescent. Blades of grass sing in the wind. Ceiling fans whir stages of his fall (Hudsucker); a baby’s meanderings across the (not so literally or Symbolically as in ""). Milk floor are captured by a camera literally at floor level (an elaborate bottles sweat in the heat. Ventilation ducts, air conditioners and mirror shot in Arizona); wallpaper peels off a hotel room wall deadbolt housings rumble, hiss and roar. revealing something warm and gooey like human flesh underneath Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—5

"To me, style is just the outside of content, and content You can say it's my job to fight it but I don't know what the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human it is anymore. More than that, I don't want to know. A man would body—both go together, they can’t be separated." -- Jean-Luc have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, OK, I'll be Godard part of this world.... "No Country for Old Men" has been called a "perfect" "OK, I'll be part of this world." Those words, the end of film by those who love it and those who were left cold by it. Joel Sheriff Bell's introduction, resonate throughout the movie -- a and Ethan Coen have been praised and condemned for their expert world in which one's life or death may be determined by a coin "craftsmanship" and their "technical" skills -- as if those skills had toss (a mix of luck and chance and, perhaps, fate), and where nothing to do with filmmaking style, or artistry; as if they existed one's soul is at hazard by choosing to engage with it. At least, apart from the movie itself. Oh, but the film is an example of that's the way Sheriff Bell sees it. And he wants to opt out. "impeccable technique" -- you know, for "formalists." And the Everything ahead can be traced to its origins in these cinematography is "beautiful." Heck, it's even "gorgeous." ... opening moments: characters chasing or haunted by forces they But what do those terms don't understand, meeting up with mean if they are plucked out of destinies they didn't see coming. the movie like pickles from a And it doesn't matter whether they cheeseburger? How is something were looking for them or trying to "beautiful" apart from what it evade them. does in the film? (See uncomprehending original- "It's a dangerous thing to release reviews of "Barry say what a picture is. I don't like Lyndon" and "Days of Heaven," pictures that are one genre only." - for example, in which the - "beautiful" was treated as I've used the term something discrete from the "existential thriller" (and/or movie itself.) When somebody "epistemological thriller") to claims that a movie describe movies such as overemphasizes the "visual" -- "Chinatown" and "Caché." It's a whether they're talking about useful term because it can be used or or the Coens -- it's a sure sign across genres and it describes the nature of the "thrills" the movie that they're not talking about cinema, but approaching film as an has in store. "Chinatown" is also a period American detective noir elementary school audio-visual aid. When critics (and viewers) and "Caché" is a modern French intellectual puzzle and "No refer to the filmmakers' application of "craft," "technique," and Country for Old Men" is a contemporary Texas Western chase "style" (can these things be applied, casually or relentlessly, with movie, but they're all inquiries into the nature of knowledge and a spatula?) without consideration of how these expressions existence. They all ask: "What do we know and how do we know function in the movie, we're all in trouble. A composition, a cut, a it?" Is there a more worthy or essential question? dissolve, a movement -- they're all manifestations of craft (or skill), technique (the systematic use of skill), style (artistic At the station, a deputy is on the phone, describing the expression). mysterious "oxygen tank" thing his arrestee was toting. Behind How salty was my beautiful then... Hey, I specifically him, out of focus in the background, is Anton Chigurh ("shi- asked for a regular cheeseburger, hold the ketchup and no "style"! GUR," Javier Bardem), the man he's talking about, who silently What does the "craft" (not Kraft) taste like? Isn't the "technique" rises and moves forward. The deputy hangs up and, in the very also part of the texture? same motion, the prisoner lowers his hands over the lawman's It's the old Cartesian schism between body and mind, head, choking him with his handcuffs. As the two fall back onto only aestheticized into an illusory (and impossible) split between the linoleum floor, the shock of the moment is amplified by the form and content, style and meaning, craft and art. You may as expression on Chigurh's face: His icy glare is aimed not at the well try to take the VistaVision out of "The Searchers" and put it man he's strangling but at the ceiling. He's not even looking at the in a bowl, extricate the editing and hang it on the shower rod, man he's killing, even as the handcuffs cut into the deputy's neck remove the and place it over there, next to the radiator. and Chigurh's own wrists. The struggle is recorded on the Which brings us back to the opening of "No Country for institutional linoleum tiles, a frenzy of black heel marks like an Old Men" and the process of putting the pieces together; losing or Abstract-Expressionist painting. Man's violence always leaves its following a trail (of blood, of crime, of one's father and the "old- traces on the ground. timers"), navigating an uneasy passage between past and future. It It doesn't much matter what Chigurh is, and feels like, and it is, what the movie is "about." even less who he is. He's not a character (say, a compulsive Sheriff Bell has been pondering these bewildering murderer who acts to gratify his primal -sexual needs). changes and portents, in voiceover, as the movie's landscapes He's a catalyst, who represents different things to different people: have unfolded: evil, chaos, "the ultimate badass." Chigurh, with the nearly vowel- ...The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its less-sounding, unpronounceable name, is a Western figure of measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be mythical stature, like 's "Pale Rider" or The Man willing to die to even do this job -- not to be glorious. But I don't With No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy -- or Frank Booth want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I () or Mystery Man (Robert Blake) in David don't understand. Lynch's movies. Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—6

Chigurh is indeed a "psychopathic killer" (of don't appear to have an answer, maybe that's enough of an answer. whoever or whatever gets in the way of his relentless quest), but Or maybe it's a superfluous question. he's also the shadow coming across the desert toward Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) as he's up on the ridge hunting antelope with a Chigurh often mirrors his victims before he kills telescopic rifle, and the specter of which Sheriff Bell says, "it's them. They face him and they face their own mortality, eye-to- hard to even take its measure." His "principles" (as one character eye. He often violates their space before he violates their flesh, describes them) are completely beyond the laws, and the and it's deeply disturbing: the handcuffs around the neck, the tube comprehension, of civilized men. to the head of the motorist, his shadow darkening the hall space Chigurh sees himself, however, as destiny under Llewelyn's door, feet on the bed in the hotel room of his personified. He is simply the Reaper, who does what must be nemesis Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson). Wells is dead as soon done... because that's what he does. The way he sees it, he is not as Chigurh looks away from him, at the ringing phone, where the the one responsible for the decision to kill or not kill. There are man he's really stalking is on the other end of the line. rules and he must enforce them, if only because he's the only one who understands them (as far as he's concerned). So, he doesn't choose to kill or not kill; but if fate puts someone in his way, then The sense of intimate incursion is especially so be it. unsettling when he enters the trailer of Llewelyn and Carla Jean. We've been here before, the night Llewelyn comes home from his hunt, seen him take a beer out of the refrigerator and plop down on the couch (shot head-on) next to Carla Jean. It's a funny, "Raising Arizona" kind of domestic image. But when Chigurh enters this mobile home in the daylight, after they've fled, we watch him take a bottle of milk from the fridge and sit down in the center of the couch from nearly the same camera angles. He's insinuating himself into their head-space. He drinks their milk, and it's obscene. He may as well be drinking their blood. (Later, a cat drinking a puddle of spilled milk will provide all the visual information we need to know that there's a corpse in a pool of blood behind a hotel counter. And it's more upsetting than seeing With chilling clarity, Chigurh addresses the fate of a the gory details.) Moments after Chigurh has disappeared, Sheriff folksly roadside gas-station proprietor: "What's the most you ever Bell and Deputy Wendell arrive to inspect the scene, but this time lost on a coin toss?... Call it." The befuddled man protests that he the angles are different. We're just seeing what they see, and doesn't understand "what it is we're callin for here," that he "didn't nothing more. put nothin up." Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is reluctantly playing catch-up "Yes you did. You've been puttin it up your throughout the whole picture. Moss and Chigurh -- single-minded, whole life. You just didn't know it. You know what date is on this driven -- are linked at the beginning of the movie, with two shots coin? ...1958. It's been traveling 22 years to get here. And now it's (cinematic shots and fired shots) and the phrase, spoken to an here. And it's either heads or tails and you have to say. Call it." anonymous victim: "Hold still." In "No Country For Old Men," As far as Chigurh is concerned, he's just the that's what the dead do. If you're alive, you keep moving. coin, the means. The toss, and the call, those are beyond his control -- and, frankly, beyond his concern. (Touch of genius: Brief notes on a few other motifs that permeate the Note how effectively the uncrinkling of the candy wrapper on the movie: counter adds to the tension of this scene. Chigurh tightens his fist, then lets go. The rest just happens.) Boots on the ground. Many shots of feet, from overhead Bell isn't talking about his job, and he's not or boot-level. You can't quite tell where they're going or what may being fatalistic. Unlike Chigurh, he's human, and he's seen enough intersect their path. Apprehension builds: What will appear in the human nature to know that we laugh in recognition of horror and frame next? A spreading pool of blood, perhaps? Also, the sense absurdity, maybe even in the moment we find ourselves on the of gravity, of flesh in contact with the ground, or leather in contact brink of the abyss. It's not an inappropriate response, and contrary with the land, weighs heavily in the film. (In what at first appears to the claims of some of the Coens' critics, it doesn't automatically to be a surreal mirage, we actually see through the holes in a dead signal approval of murder, or denial of responsibility. Chigurh man's soles, a man who has run until he dropped.) Chigurh is himself doesn't laugh. Laughter requires a form of empathy that strongly identified with the ground, the craziness and violence he doesn't possess. Chigurh is by no means the focus of "No rooted in and rising up from below the surface (natural and man- Country For Old Men" (it's more about the other characters' made). responses to his presence), but he bothers some people because Trails of blood. Blood is spilled upon the earth, but is they don't know who he is or what he represents. And that's just also in the earth, as men are of the earth and will return to it. You fine. Ask yourself, "What does he seek?" (in the words of his half expect blood to seep up from the ground like Texas oil, this movie-killer antithesis, the cannibal psychologist Dr. Hannibal land is so saturated with ancient blood. Blood serves as a sign -- a Lecter)... and where does that get you? He seeks $2 million in a mark upon the land of some wound, and a portent of the future. leather satchel. As Joel Coen once said to me in an interview Men follow trails of blood to unknown , or are followed by the about "Barton Fink": "The question is: Where would it get you if blood they leave in their tracks. something that's a little bit ambiguous in the movie is made clear? It doesn't get you anywhere." Sometimes, if certain questions Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—7

Doors, ducts, drains, holes. Take these portals, quietly to his kitchen, recalling two dreams that came to him in passages, barriers, hiding places, out of the movie and it's about one a night: 20 minutes long. They're all about revealing evidence or disposing Both had my father. It's peculiar. I'm older now'n he ever of it. What is behind the door? What does one see -- from either was by twenty years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, side -- when the door opens? One of the movie's signature shots is first one I don't remember so well but it was about money and I the "Searchers"-like figure silhouetted in the doorway, the think I lost it. outsider on the threshold between civilization (in the form of The second one, it was like we was both back in older trailer or motel) and wilderness. Chigurh blows the deadbolt locks times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a out of doors to get them open, using a slaughterhouse implement night, goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and that leaves holes (in human heads, too) but no telltale shell or snowin, hard ridin. Hard country. He rode past me and kept on bullet behind. When Sheriff Bell returns to the scene of a crime goin. Never said nothin goin by. He just rode on past and he had and decides to face the incomprehensible, air sucks through a his blanket wrapped around him and his head down, and when he blown lock as if it were a puncture in the wall of hell. The Coens rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used have always been plumbing experts, and here they use it to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the exceptionally effectively. Cool, white porcelain fixtures contrast color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on with swollen, bloody wounds. Flesh hurts. ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in Looking and seeing. A man looks at something. We see all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got what he's seeing: a herd of antelope through the scope of a rifle; there he would be there. Out there up ahead. two trees, the only shade for miles; an empty room. We return to And then I woke up. his face, appraising the sight. It's a simple POV set-up (a form of I can't imagine a more perfect and eloquent conclusion what David Bordwell calls "intensified continuity") and it's a for this film, which begins and ends by acknowledging Ed Tom's familiar unit of American film grammar. It also essential to the dreams and illusions, but some audiences have been vocal in their experience of this particular movie: seeing (or not seeing) what's disapproval. What does the ending do? For one thing, it shows us ahead, surveying it, understanding it, acting on what you a man who has retired, who has said he will not be part of the understand, and maybe not seeing what (or what else) is coming. world he described in the opening, and who now sits indoors, in a Running through all of the above are recurring spoken cozy kitchen, where the wild outside is just a view through a lines about "pre-visioning" the future, as Carla Jean's mom puts it: window. "Will there be anything else?" "You don't understand." "Do you And yet, he's still comparing himself to the "old-timers," know where I'm going?" "You know what's going to happen and still coming up short. It follows another scene in a kitchen, now." "You know how this is going to turn out, don't you?" "This swarming with feral cats, belonging to Ed Tom's cousin (and his is what will come to pass." "You don't know to a certainty." "You granddad's former deputy), Ellis, who sits in a wheelchair, having can't stop what's comin'."... Even the most mundane conversation been shot by a man who died in prison. "What you got ain't nothin may have ominous overtones, and they take on the haunting new," old Ellis tells Ed Tom, trying to shake him loose from his quality of blank-verse incantations. nostalgia. "This contry is hard on people.... You can't stop what's comin. Ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity." Ed Tom had his moment (in the scene before this one), when he crossed the yellow tape and entered the blue door of the dark motel room. Inside: Nothing. Just a loose vent and a dime -- a coin tossed. Heads. Chigurh disappeared into the shadows... of the room next door. And that was it for ol' Ed Tom -- the most he ever put up on a coin toss, and the most he ever will if he can help it. So, we go out on accounts of two dreams. The first one, about lost money -- could be about a coin toss, or $2 million, or any number of things. But it's about loss. Maybe the loss of the way Ed Tom looked at the world, and his relationship to it, in his opening monologue. Or maybe it's just that he's discouraged, and now retired. Because "No Country" is structured as a multi-layered The dream about the father is also many things, but it's chase sequence -- Moss chasing the dream of a big lucky score; definitely "The Road," McCarthy's 2007 post-apocalyptic novel Chigurh chasing Moss; Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) and about a father carrying the fire to keep his son alive in a world of Sheriff Bell independently chasing Chigurh through Moss; desolation. Ed Tom is now older than his father ever was, but in everyone chasing the unseen future of whatever's next -- you may his dream his father is still out there, ahead of him, keeping the not realize, until it's all over, that we never see any of the three fire going in all that dark and all that cold. I read that (as I do the main characters (Moss, Chigurh, Bell) in direct, face-to-face final paragraph of "The Road," about the trout) as a sign that there confrontation. The closest they come is a near-collision of is something to put up against the darkness, and maybe that's all Chigurh's boots and Moss's pickup truck on a dark street. there is: that hope. The movie seems to be building to an apocalyptic Then you wake up. climax... and the big bang is not so much a whimper as an ominous whisper. Wells is dispatched almost peripherally, with his back to the camera. Chigurh slips off into a suburban neighborhood, his fate unaccounted for. And Ed Tom retires Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—8

by its divergence from the area-specific dress codes adhered to by all other cast members. What he wears is alien, in the same way that his behaviour is alien. The straight lines and heavy fabrics of his clothing – in particular his jacket – mean that despite the violence of his journey, Chigurh never appears ruffled either physically or mentally. In contrast, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) dresses in apparel recognisable as belonging to the Deep South. He sports a variety of beige and brown check shirts, faded yet practical jeans and a pale straw cowboy hat. His clothing has the typical v- shaping to pockets and yokes that is so conspicuously missing from Chigurh’s, showing his alliance with the land; the country that has always been his home. Interestingly, Llewelyn is also the male character who changes outfits most often within the film as he loses composure along with certain items of dress. Llewellyn’s clothes are often dishevelled or sullied; dirty, torn, soaked with Bonnie Radcliffe: “Reading Costume Design in No Country for water and sweat, soiled in blood and frequently abandoned. His Old Men” (Clothes on Film) unkempt and increasingly wild appearance reflects his confidence The Coen brothers’ story of a drug deal gone wrong and the and management of the desperate situation – he is a man with a chaotic game of cat and mouse that follows is an exploration of steadily slipping grasp of control. masculinity in all its guises. Through divergence of clothing, Sherriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is third of the costume designer shows many variations of three central male characters. Seen only in his uniform (with the character and motivation and pinpoints the story within a time and exception of the very last scene, where he has retired), Sherriff place – rural , 1980. Bell is shown to be a man who has made his work his life, and is The first shots of No Country for Old Men (2007) becoming weary of his calling. He feels ineffectual against the welcome us into the Texan landscape, the sky awash with muted great evil represented by Chigurh, something which is hinted at by blues and oranges before the scorching sun rises to reveal a the blending of his beige uniform with the barren, sun bleached landscape of pale brown sand. Not only does this evoke the sands of the Texan deserts. His deputy, while dressed in the same wilderness and subsequent loneliness of the setting, but it uniform, opts for short sleeves rather than long, a white round introduces the key colours, notably tones of beige, brown and neck t-shirt visible beneath his shirt. He is more excitable, ready blue. Throughout the film, these colours are to be revisited for action with a deep seated belief in what he is doing. Sherriff repeatedly. Bell, however, has become deeply jaded through years of service. We are introduced to the psychopathic killer Anton While Bell and the other police officers wear actual Chigurh (Javier Bardem) from behind as he is lead in handcuffs to uniforms, Llewelyn and much of the supporting cast could also be a police car. The shot does not reveal his face, instead drawing said to be wearing a uniform of sorts – a uniform of time and attention to the handcuffs on Chigurh’s wrists and the police place. They are all dressed mostly in a colour palette consisting of officer’s gun belt as they dominate the frame. What is beige, brown, cream, blue and denim. The costumes of the immediately evident is the contrast between the arresting officer’s supporting cast heavily feature the v-shaping of yoke and pocket, sand coloured uniform and Chigurh’s dark jacket and trousers. We jeans, overalls, checked/plaid shirts, cowboy boots and Stetson are denied a glimpse of Chigurh’s face until the moment he style hats. Chigurh is one of very few characters in the film to go strangles the officer to death using his handcuffs. Contrast of bareheaded. This serves a dual purpose: firstly, it marks him out colour is again apparent as the two men writhe on the floor, as an outsider and secondly, it shows his imperviousness to the highlighting the helplessness of the police officer. hostility and heat of his surroundings (note: he also retains his The darkness of Chigurh’s outfit is in line with the tried denim jacket for most of the film, seemingly un-affected by the and tested costume tradition of bad guy in black, hero in white, temperature). The three main male characters never actually share but with much greater subtlety. Darkness is effective for a villain any screen time, so are never directly comparable. The contrasts because it brings to mind the idea of something hiding in the between them however are highlighted by the colour repetition shadows; something that cannot be understood or captured. It within the supporting cast; Llewelyn and Sheriff Bell fit in, makes a person more mysterious, it can cause them to blend in or Chigurh does not. stand out as desired and carries with it connotations of fear and Another male presence is Carson Wells (Woody death. However, Chigurh never actually wears black. The Harrelson), the man sent to track down Chigurh. Brash and self- darkness of his ensemble, in comparison with the sand bleached assured, Carson is not a hunter, farmer or cowboy, as shown in the beiges of those surrounding him, is enough to evoke all those grey suit he wears throughout. Yet, while his costume veers away thoughts of darkness while lending his character much greater from the familiar beige, it does conform to v-shaping and is worn intricacy. with a cowboy hat and boots, marking him out as a middle man. Chigurh chooses a dark wash denim jacket, cut to sit just He is the only character with previous knowledge of Chigurh, and above the hip with straight, strong lines that eschew the ‘western’ as such he neither fits in nor stands out. style V-shaping favoured in the pockets and yokes of traditional Female characters do not feature heavily in the film. Texan clothing. Beneath this he wears a dark brown shirt with Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), Llewelyn’s wife is presented as a spear point collar and simple dark navy polyester trousers. His worried bystander, her most decisive action being asking for help boots are dark maroon snakeskin and are arguably the most from the Sheriff. However, she is not presented as a coward – her flamboyant part of his ensemble. This outfit is almost conspicuous courage is evident during her meeting with Chigurh at the end. Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—9

Simple, pastel colours and print t-shirts, shorts and summer Themes of fate, conscience, and circumstance re-emerge that the dresses show a woman who is modest and unassuming. Touches Coen brothers have previously explored in Blood Simple and of florals and embroidery (such as that on her nightdress) reveal Fargo. her romantic side, which serves to highlight her love for The film premiered in competition at the 2007 Cannes Llewelyn, the man she tries and fails to prevent from self- Film Festival on May 19. Among its four 2007 Academy Awards destruction. were for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Costumes also serve as plot points several times within Screenplay, allowing the Coen brothers to join four previous No Country for Old Men, for example when Llewelyn purchases a directors honored three times for a single film. In addition, the teenager’s “Templeton Eagles” windbreaker to cover his own film won three British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) including bloody shirt. Later, Chigurh buys a Best Director, and two Golden young boy’s Lee shirt to use as a Globes. The American Film sling when his arm is broken in a Institute listed it as an AFI car crash. Both men assimilate Movie of the Year, and the items of clothing out of necessity National Board of Review rather than from considerations of selected the film as the best of taste or aesthetics. 2007. When Llewelyn escapes Widely regarded as one the hospital, his gown and cowboy of the best films of the 2000s, boots provoke the suspicion of the more critics included this film on border officer who understandably their 2007 top ten list than any has difficulty trusting someone dressed so bizarrely. On arriving other, and many regarded it as the Coen brothers' finest film to back in the United States, his first visit is to a clothing store, date. 's John Patterson said "the Coens' technical which he also visited earlier in the film to replace his lost boots abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based Western classicism implying convenience and the comfort of repetition. While reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, are matched fighting in a hospital gown may be difficult, new clothing is not by few living directors," and of said essential. However, Llewelyn feels he must be dressed properly to that it is "a new career peak for the Coen brothers" and "as make a stand – preparing his clothing is preparing armour. entertaining as hell…" Chigurh’s clothing never appears ruined by the violence Production that surrounds him. When he slaughters three men in a motel Producer Scott Rudin bought the film rights to room, the first thing he does is remove his presumably bloody McCarthy's novel and suggested an adaptation to the Coen socks as he cannot stand the physical stains of his violence to bear brothers, who at the time were attempting to adapt the novel To evidence on his clothes. After a shoot-out with Llewelyn, Chigurh the White Sea by James Dickey. By August 2005, the Coen is forced to cut his blood stained, bullet hole ridden trousers from brothers agreed to write and direct a film adaptation of No his legs, changing into a similar pair in dark red. While his clothes Country for Old Men, having identified with how the novel have here been affected by the violence, it would be inconceivable provided a sense of place and also how it played with genre to him to allow his appearance to remain this way. His regimented conventions. Joel Coen said of the unconventional approach, apparel makes him seem machine like and inhuman; his crimes "That was familiar, congenial to us; we're naturally attracted to sully neither his clothes nor his conscience. After Chigurh has left subverting genre. We liked the fact that the bad guys never really his confrontation with Carla Jean, he fastidiously checks the soles meet the good guys, that McCarthy did not follow through on of his boots, as if for spots of blood, perhaps giving us a clue as to formula expectations." The Coens identified the appeal of the her fate… novel to be its "pitiless quality." Ethan Coen explained, "That's a Very different types of men are presented in this film, hallmark of the book, which has an unforgiving landscape and and masculinity is shown to be of a varied and somewhat characters but is also about finding some kind of beauty without indefinable nature. While one man in particular stands out as an being sentimental." The adaptation was to be the second of outsider, none of these male characters are easily pigeon-holed – McCarthy's work, following the 2000 film All the Pretty Horses. and this is as it should be. Costume does not shout for attention. It Writing is period costume design, yet quietly so – it serves the narrative, The Coens' script was unusually faithful to their source gently creating a sense of time, place and personality. material On their writing process, Ethan said, "One of us types Characterisation and consequently deep character is complex and into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open Mary Zophres’ use of colour, plus the gradual breaking down of flat." Still, they pruned where necessary. A teenage runaway who costume tells of a sad, desperate battle against evil, pain and appeared late in the book and some backstory related to Bell were corruption. both removed. Also changed from the original was Carla Jean Moss's reaction when finally faced with the imposing figure of No Country for Old Men (Wikipedia) Chigurh. As Kelly Macdonald explained to CanMag: "The ending No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American neo-Western thriller of the book is different She reacts more in the way I react. She directed, written, and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the kind of falls apart. In the film she's been through so much and she . Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. The film stars can't lose any more It's just she's got this quiet acceptance of it." Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin and tells the Richard Corliss of Time stated that "the Coen brothers story of an ordinary man to whom chance delivers a fortune that is have adapted literary works before Miller's Crossing was a sly, not his, and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama as the paths of three unacknowledged blend of two 's tales, Red . men intertwine in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas Harvest and ; and O Brother Where Art Thou? Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—10 transferred The [of ] to the American south in the Caught in that sensual music all neglect 1930s. But No Country for Old Men is their first film taken, pretty Monuments of unageing intellect." straightforwardly, from a [contemporary] prime American novel." Richard Gilmore relates the Yeats poem to the Coens' (Their 2004 film The Ladykillers is based on a 1955 British black film "The lament that can be heard in these lines," he says, "is for comedy film of the same name). no longer belonging to the country of the young It is also a lament The writing is also notable for its minimal use of for the way the young neglect the wisdom of the past and, dialogue Josh Brolin discussed his initial nervousness with having presumably, of the old. Yeats chooses Byzantium because it was a so little dialogue to work with: great early Christian city in which Plato's Academy, for a time, “I mean it was a fear, for sure, because dialogue that's was still allowed to function. The historical period of Byzantium what you kind of rest upon as an actor, you know? Drama and all was a time of culmination that was also a time of transition. In his the stuff is all dialogue book of mystical writings, A motivated You have to figure Vision, Yeats says, 'I think that in out different ways to convey early Byzantium, maybe never ideas. You don't want to before or since in recorded history, overcompensate because the fear religious, aesthetic, and practical is that you're going to be boring life were one, that architect and if nothing's going on. You start artificers spoke to the multitude doing this and this and taking off and the few alike.' The idea of a your hat and putting it on again balance and a coherence in a or some bullshit that doesn't society's religious, aesthetic, and need to be there. So yeah, I was practical life is Yeats's ideal. It is a little afraid of that in the beginning.”. an ideal rarely realized in this world and maybe not even in Peter Travers of Rolling Stone praised the novel ancient Byzantium. Certainly within the context of the movie No adaptation "Not since merged with the short Country for Old Men, one has the sense, especially from Bell as stories of Raymond Carver in Short Cuts have filmmakers and the chronicler of the times, that things are out of alignment, that author fused with such devastating impact as the Coens and balance and harmony are gone from the land and from the McCarthy. Good and evil are tackled with a rigorous fix on the people." complexity involved." Differences from the novel Director Joel Coen justified his interest in the McCarthy Craig Kennedy adds that "one key difference is that of novel: "There's something about it – there were echoes of it in No focus The novel belongs to Sheriff Bell. Each chapter begins with Country for Old Men that were quite interesting for us," he said, Bell's narration, which dovetails and counterpoints the action of "because it was the idea of the physical work that somebody does the main story. Though the film opens with Bell speaking, much that helps reveal who they are and is part of the fiber of the story. of what he says in the book is condensed and it turns up in other Because you only saw this person in this movie making things and forms. Also, Bell has an entire backstory in the book that doesn't doing things in order to survive and to make this journey, and the make it into the film The result is a movie that is more simplified fact that you were thrown back on that, as opposed to any thematically, but one that gives more of the characters an dialogue, was interesting to us." opportunity to shine." Joel Coen stated that this is the brothers' "first Jay Ellis elaborates on Chigurh's encounter with the man adaptation" He further explained why they chose the novel: "Why behind the counter at the gas station. "Where McCarthy gives us not start with Cormac? Why not start with the best?" Coen further Chigurh's question as, 'What's the most you ever saw lost on a described this McCarthy novel in particular as "unlike his other coin toss?', he says, 'the film elides the word 'saw', but the Coens novels it is much pulpier." Coen stated that they have not changed of course tend to the visual. Where the book describes the setting much in the adaptation. "It really is just compression," he said as 'almost dark', the film clearly depicts high noon: no shadows "We didn't create new situations." He further assured that he and are notable in the establishing shot of the gas station, and the his brother Ethan had never met McCarthy when they were sunlight is bright even if behind cloud cover. The light through writing the script, but first met him during the shooting of the two windows and a door comes evenly through three walls in the film. He believed that McCarthy liked the film, while his brother interior shots. But this difference increases our sense of the man's Ethan said, "he didn't yell at us. We were actually sitting in a desperation later, when he claims he needs to close and he closes movie theater/screening room with him when he saw it and I at 'near dark'; it is darker, as it were, in the cave of this man's heard him chuckle a couple of times, so I took that as a seal of ignorance than it is outside in the bright light of truth." approval, I don't know, maybe presumptuously." Filming Title[ The project was a co-production between Films The title is taken from the opening line of 20th-century and Paramount's classics-based division in a 50/50 partnership, Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats' poem "Sailing to and production was scheduled for May 2006 in New Mexico and Byzantium": Texas. With a total budget of $25 million (at least half spent in "THAT is no country for old men The young New Mexico), production was slated for the New Mexico cities of In one another's arms, birds in the trees Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas (which doubled as the – Those dying generations – at their song, border towns of Eagle Pass and Del Rio, Texas), with other scenes The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, shot around Marfa and Sanderson in West Texas The US-Mexico Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long border crossing bridge was actually a freeway overpass in Las Whatever is begotten, born, and dies Vegas, with a border checkpoint set built at the intersection of Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—11

Interstate 25 and New Mexico State Highway 65 The Mexican home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go town square was filmed in Piedras Negras, Coahuila. away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, By coincidence, filming in Texas took place not far from somewhere toward that spot you were at before." that of another Best Picture nominee (which was also made by David Denby of criticized the way the Miramax & Paramount), There Will Be Blood, and one day smoke Coens "disposed of" Llewelyn Moss. "The Coens, however from the neighboring shoot forced the production to shut down. faithful to the book," he said, "cannot be forgiven for disposing of In advance of shooting, cinematographer Roger Deakins Llewelyn so casually After watching this foolhardy but physically saw that "the big challenge" of his ninth collaboration with the gifted and decent guy escape so many traps, we have a great deal Coen brothers was "making it very realistic, to match the story I'm invested in him emotionally, and yet he's eliminated, off-camera, imagining doing it very edgy and dark, and quite sparse. Not so by some unknown Mexicans He doesn't get the dignity of a death stylized." scene. The Coens have suppressed their natural jauntiness They "Everything's storyboarded before we start shooting," have become orderly, disciplined masters of chaos, but one still Deakins said in . "In No Country, there's has the feeling that, out there on the road from nowhere to maybe only a dozen shots that are not in the final film. It's that nowhere, they are rooting for it rather than against it." order of planning. And we only Josh Brolin discussed the shot 250,000 feet, whereas most Coens' directing style in an productions of that size might interview, saying that the brothers shoot 700,000 or a million feet "only really say what needs to be of film. It's quite precise, the said. They don't sit there as way they approach everything. directors and manipulate you and We never use a zoom," he said. go into page after page to try to get "I don't even carry a zoom lens you to a certain place. They may with me, unless it's for come in and say one word or two something very specific." The words, so that was nice to be famous coin-tossing scene around in order to feed the other between Chigurh and the old gas thing 'What should I do right now? station clerk is a good example; I'll just watch Ethan go humming the camera tracks in so slowly to himself and pacing. Maybe that's that the audience isn't even aware of the move. "When the camera what I should do, too.'" itself moves forward, the audience is moving, too. You're actually In an interview with Logan Hill of New York magazine, getting closer to somebody or something. It has, to me, a much Brolin expressed that he had "a load of fun" while working with more powerful effect, because it's a three-dimensional move. A the Coens. "We had a load of fun making it," he said. "Maybe it zoom is more like a focusing of attention. You're just standing in was because we both [Brolin and Javier Bardem] thought we'd be the same place and concentrating on one smaller element in the fired. With the Coens, there's zero compliments, really zero frame. Emotionally, that's a very different effect." anything. No 'nice work.' Nothing. And then—I'm doing this In a later interview, he mentioned the "awkward dilemma scene with Woody Harrelson. Woody can't remember his lines, he [that] No Country certainly contains scenes of some very stumbles his way through it, and then both Coens are like, 'Oh my realistically staged fictional violence, but without this violent God! Fantastic!'’ depiction of evil there would not be the emotional 'pay off' at the David Gritten of wonders: "Are the end of the film when Ed Tom bemoans the fact that God has not Coens finally growing up?" He adds: "If [the film] feels entered his life." pessimistic, Joel insists that's not the Coens' responsibility: 'I don't Directing think the movie is more or less so than the novel. We tried to give The Coen brothers acknowledged the influence of Sam it the same feeling.' The brothers do concede, however, that it's a Peckinpah's work In an interview with The Guardian, Ethan said, dark piece of storytelling. 'It's refreshing for us to do different "Hard men in the south-west shooting each other – that's kinds of things,' says Ethan, 'and we'd just done a couple of definitely Sam Peckinpah's thing. We were aware of those comedies'"[ similarities, certainly." They discuss choreographing and directing Musical score and sound the film's violent scenes in the Sydney Morning Herald: "'That The Coens minimized the score used in the film, leaving stuff is such fun to do', the brothers chime in at the mention of large sections devoid of music. The concept was Ethan's, who their penchant for blood-letting. 'Even Javier would come in by persuaded a skeptical Joel to go with the idea. There is some the end of the movie, rub his hands together and say, 'OK, who am music in the movie, scored by the Coens' longtime composer, I killing today?' adds Joel 'It's fun to figure out', says Ethan. 'It's Carter Burwell, but after finding that "most musical instruments fun working out how to choreograph it, how to shoot it, how to didn't fit with the minimalist sound sculpture he had in mind [] he engage audiences watching it.'" used singing bowls, standing metal bells traditionally employed in Director Joel Coen described the process of film making: Buddhist meditation practice that produce a sustained tone when "I can almost set my watch by how I'm going to feel at different rubbed." The movie contains a "mere" 16 minutes of music, with stages of the process It's always identical, whether the movie ends several of those in the end credits. The music in the trailer was up working or not I think when you watch the dailies, the film that called "Diabolic Clockwork" by Two Steps from Hell. Sound you shoot every day, you're very excited by it and very optimistic editing and effects were provided by another longtime Coens about how it's going to work. And when you see it the first time collaborator, , who used a mixture of emphatic you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go sounds (gun shots) and ambient noise (engine noise, prairie Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—12 winds) in the mix. The Foley for the captive bolt pistol used by your nerves." Chigurh was created using a pneumatic nail gun. Style Anthony Lane of The New Yorker states that "there is While No Country for Old Men is a "doggedly faithful" barely any music, sensual or otherwise, and Carter Burwell's score adaptation of McCarthy's 2005 novel and its themes, the film also is little more than a fitful murmur.", and Douglas McFarland revisits themes which the Coens had explored in their earlier states that "perhaps [the film's] salient formal characteristic is the movies Blood Simple and Fargo. The three films share common absence, with one telling exception, of a musical soundtrack, themes, such as pessimism and nihilism. The novel's motifs of creating a mood conducive to thoughtful and unornamented chance, free-will, and predestination are familiar territory for the speculation in what is otherwise a fierce and destructive Coen brothers, who presented similar threads and tapestries of landscape." "fate [and] circumstance" in earlier works including Raising Jay Ellis, however, disagrees "[McFarland] missed the Arizona, which featured another hitman, albeit less serious in extremely quiet but audible fade in a few tones from a keyboard tone. Numerous critics cited the importance of chance to both the beginning when Chigurh flips the coin for the gas station man", he novel and the film, focusing on Chigurh's fate-deciding coin said. "This ambient music (by long-time Coens collaborator flipping, but noted that the nature of the film medium made it Carter Burwell) grows difficult to include the "self- imperceptibly in volume so that it reflective qualities of is easily missed as an element of McCarthy's novel." the mis-en-scene. But it is there, Still, the Coens open telling our unconscious that the film with a voice-over something different is occurring narration by Tommy Lee Jones with the toss; this becomes certain (who plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell) when it ends as Chigurh uncovers set against the barren Texas the coin on the counter. The country landscape where he deepest danger has passed as soon makes his home. His as Chigurh finds (and Javier ruminations on a teenager he Bardem's acting confirms this) and reveals to the man that he has sent to the chair explain that, although the newspapers described won." In order to achieve such sound effect, Burwell "tuned the the boy's murder of his 14-year-old girlfriend as a crime of music's swelling hum to the 60-hertz frequency of a refrigerator." passion, "he told me there weren't nothin' passionate about it Said Dennis Lim of stressed that "there he'd been fixin' to kill someone for as long as he could remember. is virtually no music on the soundtrack of this tense, methodical Said if I let him out of there, he'd kill somebody again. Said he thriller Long passages are entirely wordless In some of the most was goin' to hell. Reckoned he'd be there in about 15 minutes." gripping sequences what you hear mostly is a suffocating silence." Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert praised the narration Skip Lievsay, the film's sound editor called this approach "quite a "These words sounded verbatim to me from No Country for Old remarkable experiment," and added that "suspense thrillers in Men, the novel by Cormac McCarthy", he said "But I find they are Hollywood are traditionally done almost entirely with music. The not quite And their impact has been improved upon in the idea here was to remove the safety net that lets the audience feel delivery. When I get the DVD of this film, I will listen to that like they know what's going to happen. I think it makes the movie stretch of narration several times; Jones delivers it with a vocal much more suspenseful. You're not guided by the score and so precision and contained emotion that is extraordinary, and it sets you lose that comfort zone." up the entire film." James Roman observes the effect of sound in the scene In The Village Voice, Scott Foundas writes that "Like where Chigurh pulls in for gas at the Texaco rest stop "[The] McCarthy, the Coens are markedly less interested in who (if scene evokes an eerie portrayal of innocence confronting evil," he anyone) gets away with the loot than in the primal forces that urge says, "with the subtle images richly nuanced by sound. As the the characters forward. In the end, everyone in No Country for scene opens in a long shot, the screen is filled with the remote Old Men is both hunter and hunted, members of some endangered location of the rest stop with the sound of the Texaco sign mildly species trying to forestall their extinction." Roger Ebert writes that squeaking in a light breeze. The sound and image of a crinkled "the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are candy wrapper tossed on the counter adds to the tension as the in the face of implacable injustice." paper twists and turns. The intimacy and potential horror that it New York Times critic A. O. Scott observes that Chigurh, suggests is never elevated to a level of kitschy drama as the Moss, and Bell each "occupy the screen one at a time, almost tension rises from the mere sense of quiet and doom that never appearing in the frame together, even as their fates become prevails." ever more intimately entwined." Jeffrey Overstreet adds that "the scenes in which Chigurh Variety critic Todd McCarthy describes Chigurh's modus stalks Moss are as suspenseful as anything the Coens have ever operandi: "Death walks hand in hand with Chigurh wherever he staged. And that has as much to do with what we hear as what we goes, unless he decides otherwise. [I]f everything you've done in see. No Country for Old Men lacks a traditional soundtrack, but your life has led you to him, he may explain to his about-to-be don't say it doesn't have music. The blip-blip-blip of a transponder victims, your time might just have come .'You don't have to do becomes as frightening as the famous theme from Jaws. The this,' the innocent invariably insist to a man whose murderous sound of footsteps on the hardwood floors of a hotel hallway are code dictates otherwise Occasionally, however, he will allow as ominous as the drums of war. When the leather of a briefcase someone to decide his own fate by coin toss, notably in a tense squeaks against the metal of a ventilation shaft, you'll cringe, and early scene in an old filling station marbled with nervous humor." the distant echo of a telephone ringing in a hotel lobby will jangle Jim Emerson describes how the Coens introduced Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—13

Chigurh in one of the first scenes when he strangles the deputy further undermining any easy opposition of Chigurh and the who arrested him: "A killer rises: Our first blurred sight of sheriff, and instead exposing a certain affinity, intimacy, or Chigurh's face. As he moves forward, into focus, to make his first similarity even between both."… kill, we still don't get a good look at him because his head rises Reception above the top of the frame. His victim, the deputy, never sees "This is frighteningly intelligent and imaginative." what's coming, and Chigurh, chillingly, doesn't even bother to —Critic Geoff Andrew of Time Out London[ look at his face while he garrotes him." "For formalists—those moviegoers sent into raptures by Critic Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian stated that "the tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design—it's savoury, serio-comic tang of the Coens' film-making style is pure heaven." recognisably present, as is their predilection for the weirdness of —Critic A O Scott of The New York Times hotels and motels." But he added that they "have found something No Country for Old Men received unanimous critical that has heightened and deepened their identity as film-makers: a acclaim. Review aggregator had cataloged 93% real sense of positive critical seriousness, a sense responses from the that their offbeat 265 tabulated (only 18 Americana and negative). Upon gruesome and release, the film was surreal comic widely discussed as a contortions can possible candidate for really be more than several Oscars, before the sum of their going on to receive parts." eight nominations, and Geoff eventually winning Andrew of Time four Academy Awards Out London said in 2008. Javier that the Coens "find Bardem, in particular, a cinematic has received equivalent to considerable praise for McCarthy's his performance in the language: his film. narrative ellipses, Peter play with point of view, and structural concerns such as the Bradshaw of The Guardian called it "the best of the [Coens'] exploration of the similarities and differences between Moss, career so far." Rob Mackie of The Guardian also said that "what Chigurh and Bell Certain virtuoso sequences feel near-abstract in makes this such a stand-out is hard to put your finger on – it just their focus on objects, sounds, light, colour or camera angle rather feels like an absorbing and tense two hours where everyone is than on human presence. Notwithstanding much marvellous absolutely on top of their job and a comfortable fit in their roles." deadpan humour, this is one of their darkest efforts." Geoff Andrew of Time Out London expressed that "the film exerts Arne De Boever believes that there is a "close affinity, a grip from start to end." Richard Corliss of Time magazine chose and intimacy even, between the sheriff and Chigurh in No the film as the best of the year and said that "after two decades of Country for Old Men [which is developed] in a number of scenes. being brilliant on the movie margins, the Coens are ready for their There is, to begin with, the sheriff's voice at the beginning of the closeup, and maybe their Oscar." Paul Arendt of the BBC gave film, which accompanies the images of Chigurh's arrest. This the film a full mark and said that it "doesn't require a defense: it is initial weaving together of the figures of Chigurh and the sheriff is a magnificent return to form." A. O. Scott of The New York Times further developed later on in the film, when the sheriff visits stated that "for formalists –those moviegoers sent into raptures by Llewelyn Moss's trailer home in search for Moss and his wife, tight editing, nimble camera work and faultless sound design– it's Carla Jean. Chigurh has visited the trailer only minutes before, pure heaven." Both Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton from and the Coen brothers have the sheriff sit down in the same exact the ABC show At The Movies gave the film five stars, making No spot where Chigurh had been sitting (which is almost the exact Country for Old Men the only film to receive such a rating from same spot where, the evening before, Moss joined his wife on the the hosts in 2007. Both praised the film for its visual language and couch). Like Chigurh, the sheriff sees himself reflected in the dark suspense, David commenting that "Hitchcock wouldn't have done glass of Moss's television, their mirror images perfectly the suspense better." overlapping if one were to superimpose these two shots. When the Occasional disapproval was voiced, where some critics sheriff pours himself a glass of milk from the bottle that stands note the absence of a "central character" and "climactic scene", its sweating on the living room table—a sign that the sheriff and his "disappointing finish" and "dependen[ce] on an arbitrarily colleague, deputy Wendell (Garret Dillahunt), only just missed manipulated plot", and a general lack of "soul" and sense of their man—this mirroring of images goes beyond the level of "hopelessness." reflection, and Chigurh enters into the sheriff's constitution, thus

Coen—NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN—14

THAT’S IT FOR BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS 30! Join ua in the fall for Buffalo Film Seminars 31:

Sept 1 Pabst, Diary of a Lost Girl, 116 min, 1929 Sept 8 Mayo, Petrified Forest, 82 min, 1936 Sept 15 Montgomery, Lady in the Lake, 103 min, 1946 Sept 22 Chabrol, Le Beau Serge. 99 min, 1958 Sept 29 Tarkovsky, Ivan’s Childhood, 95 min, 1962 Oct 6 Friedken, The French Connection, 104 min 1971 Oct 13 Kasdan, Body Heat, 113 min, 1981 Oct 20 Costa-Gavras, Missing, 122 min, 1982 Oct 27 Joffé, The Mission, 125 min, 1986 Nov 3 Nair, Masala, 117 min, 1991 Nov 10 Miyazaki, Princess Mononoke, 134 min 1997 Nov 17 Suleiman, The Time That Remains, 105 min, 2009 Nov 24 Gilliam, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, 122 min, 2009 Dec 1 Tarr, The Turin Horse 143 min 2011 Dec 8 Powell and Pressburger, A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven, 104 min. 1946

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.