Top Films of the Decade: #5 No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men
(2007)



Image #1: Close up. A hand clenches a loaded revolver. Its index finger begins to squeeze the trigger.
Image #2: A flock of birds rise in unison, leaping into flight.

What happened here? Well, we know loud sounds startle birds, and we know guns make loud sounds. Therefore, we deduce that someone fired a gun. Yet we never see the trigger pulled, the gun fired, or the bullet reach its target. And, because these shots stem from The Docks of New York, a 1928 silent film, viewers don't even hear the gun go off. But the images make perfect, intuitive sense as a pair. The first shot informs the second to create a concrete idea in our heads: Someone fired a gun. The filmmaker conveys this information cinematically, not literally. As art critic Rudolf Arnheim wrote in 1933, "What is particularly noteworthy in such a scene is not merely how easily and cleverly the director makes visible something that is not visual, but by doing so, actually strengthens its effect."

Joel and Ethan Coen continue this tradition like no other directors working today. I call it the Cinema of Smoke. If a house burns to the ground, most directors show you the fire; the Coen brothers show you the smoke. We see the consequence (smoke) and deduce the action (fire). The duo make the most of the medium; they use images, sounds, and the clashes between them to tell stories in inventive, uniquely cinematic ways.

No Country for Old Men is the apotheosis of this style. At every turn, Joel and Ethan Coen either visualize the unvisual or leave visuals implied off screen -- all in the name of mastering suspense. Here's just one example of the former: In this instant-classic scene, watch how the filmmakers visualize an abstract idea (a long pause within a conversation of mounting tension) with, of all things, a plastic wrapper (jump to the 2:37 mark).

No Country For Old Men Coin Toss Scene
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Here's the opposite effect at work. In this scene, the directors convey narrative information (the death of a hotel clerk) not by showing his death on screen, but by the dim, evocative ringing of an unanswered phone (58-second mark).



Imagine the tension this scene would lose if it began with a shot of Anton Chigurh murdering the clerk.

Even the explosions in No Country for Old Men appear in the periphery.


These stylistic choices all speak to the Coens' careful control of image and sound. Nothing appears accidental in No Country for Old Men. Cameras don't shake in the name of realism. Characters don't mumble inanities to capture how people talk "in real life." Instead, the Coens fully embrace artifice; they're out to craft the most compelling, heart-stopping thriller they can.

Aside from its formal delights, No Country for Old Men offers the decade's great movie villain in Anton Chigurh. Like Hannibal Lecter in the '90s, Chigurh is a mythical, quotable machine. He grounds the film's foggy nihilism in one frightening bowl cut.

No Country for Old Men plays best as a straight-up suspense film, one designed to reflect an era of anxiety and panic. If you find a stronger genre movie from this decade, please do tell.