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| Artwork for Film |
It's been five years since this film was released and marked a truly remarkable seismic ripple in the cultural zeitgeist. Everyone from the Simpsons to Saturday Night Live have mocked, parodied, insinuated, or simply mimicked the themes and characters of this film to varying degrees for effect.
As a rule of thumbs, I tend to stray from films that have a tendency to become a time sensitive infatuation, and as such, here I find myself, five years later, on a brisk early fall morning, in a particular mood to finally force myself to watch this film that has been sitting on my shelf for no less than a year.
The
script is chillingly brilliantly, setting the pace for the film itself
from the very beginning. Monotonous at times, slow paced, brilliantly
dialogued with the constant struggle of generational dichotomies. It
even manages to be comedic at times, most notably in its late snipe at
those cantankerous nobodies, "accounting."
The narrative captures you, forcing you to ask questions, to get interested, to want to know more, or less, depending on how you swing.
The editing does a brilliant, deviant job at establishing the pace and tension. A hood ornament leisurely pacing its way to no particular predetermined
destination has never been a more ominous sign of trouble to come.
Morphing into a charging bull that is taking way too long to reach it's
destination, heightening expectation, sliding you unconsciously closer to
falling from the edge of your seat.
The art direction is pristine in its subtlety and attention to detail, down to the ring stains on the motel bedside table, establishing a sense of having been forgotten, of natural solitude, and the unpredictability and serendipitous nature of destiny that drive these otherwise boring and disenfranchised characters on divergent tangents.
In the Coen's universe, even
the cityscape, once the welcomed solace from trouble and preternatural menace, are brown and gray and tanned and isolated. Mirroring
the desert that so ominously framed the catalyst to the narrative.
Not serendipitously, there isn't a single flat character
in the whole film. Not the gas station attendant. Not the hotel desk
clerk. Not the one percent mafiosi. Even Javier Bardem's character, of whom
nothing is known, is mysteriously well rounded, and you can thank Bardem
for that, down to the organic, orgasmic feel of the first killing.
Bardem has embodied his character with a very deep growl here, very subtly menacing and disconcerting.
No Country introduces a Bardem that is as far away from the enchanting, wayward artist from Vicki Cristina Barcelona, and closer to the emotionless killers of 70s and 80s horror films. Yet Bardem's psychopath is more chilling than Michael Myers or Jason Voorhees ever could be.
By the end of his rampage you realize that Bardem's little twitches, his little
anachronisms, his meticulous characterization, down to his way of
killing, even his modus operandi, is one of a clean freak, and that's
creepy.
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| Still frame from Simpson's episode, creepy haircut et al. |
A killer with a dirt phobia beats a guy with blades on his fingers any day.
Tommy Lee Jones is as chilled as he can get, which is purposely disconcerting. Kelly Macdonald is phenomenal (she's one of my cinephilic crushes) and a natural, even mastering an accent that is as far away from her native Scottish one as any other. And Josh Brolin is the sort of antihero that flips between savant and pure ignorance with so much ease that you cannot figure out whether he's cool because he knows exactly what he's doing, or calm because he has no idea that he has no plan for what's coming.
Buy this film on Bluray, the cinematography is worth it. Otherwise save money and get the DVD, the film will be around for a while. Thankfully.
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