The West which was elected the best of the 21st century

Western films are almost as old as cinema itself, evolving outside the Far West programs from the end of the 19th century and in transition to Celluloid at the time when the adventures of the American border were evolved in myth. It is fair to say that the genre had a few rocky patches over the 125 years which followed approximately (especially in the 80s after the debacle of the “door of the sky”), but these films never really disappear – the westerns are deeply anchored in our cultural psyche. The 21st century filmmakers always find new ways to keep the genre relevant, whether it is to use the western spaghetti format to fight against racism and slavery (“Django Unchained”) or re-enable the borders of a new border to address the evils of the modern world (“sicario” and “hell or high”). Meanwhile, the Coen brothers used the classic scenario of white hats against blacks as a neat metaphor to explore violence that afflicts society and the chance of fate in “No Country for Old Men”.

Cliner at number six on the list of “best 21 -century films” of the New York Times and regularly appointed as one of the best Western of the last 25 years, “No Country for Old Men” was an amazing return to form for Joel and Ethan Coen in the mid -2000. Following two of the worst comedies in their career (“intolerable cruelty” and “The Ladykillers”) by Cormac McCarthy in 2005 as inspiration for one of their best films. The brothers and sisters had already adapted the equipment of others, such as “The Glass Key” by Dashiell Hammett for “Miller’s Crossing”, but they previously put their unique coenesque rotation. On this occasion, the brothers kept it quite faithful to the book and produced what was largely considered to be their most mature film to date.

Abandoning their LOQUACE dialogue and their eclectic soundtracks, the film was a return to the wide open Texes spaces and to the fatal silences of their congress beginnings, “Blood Simple”. The usual pessimism, which was previously offset by eccentric humor, bizarre violence of violence and eccentric twists and turns, is tightening in something sadder and deep. Everyone has just eaten it. “No Country for Old Men” was a critical and commercial success and won four of the eight Oscars for which he received nominations, including a prestigious triple for the brothers (best film, director and adapted script). Let’s take a closer look.

Located in Texas in the early 1980s, “No Country for Old Men” opens with the aging sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) lamenting about the old time when legislators like him did not need to wear a firearm. Approaching retirement and struggling to understand the violent modern world, his last case will strengthen his pessimism: while he speaks, we look at one of his deputies is brutally murdered by Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a mysterious assassin whose weapons of choice are a captive bolts pistol and a chinale halshor.

Elsewhere, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is in the desert hunt when he stumbles on a macabre scene. A drug agreement has turned into a bloodbath leaving only one fatally injured survivor, a bunch of medicines and a bag containing $ 2 million. Moss brings the money back and goes to his house by his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), but returns later in the night, feeling guilty of having ignored the plea of ​​dying for water. It is too late, and Moss narrowly escapes only from his life when other gang members arrive to recover the money.

Sending Carla Jean to stay with her mother for security, Moss heads for Mexico with the booty. Chigurh is hired to recover the money, helped by a hidden monitoring device inside one of the packages. Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), a bonus hunter, offers to protect the foam in exchange for money, but meets a similar spell when he meets the killer. Bell is also in the case of the cartel shooting, after late after Chigurh and its prey to the south. But can he intervene in time to save Moss and his wife?

“No Country for old men” is one of the most assured films and full of Coen suspense, a neo-Western of such elegiac power that he ultimately silenced the criticisms who rejected them as young sarcastic betting who were all in style and no substance. It was also a leaflet, authorizing in the first two decades of their career, removing most of their usual stylistic quirks and letting history make the story. By working with the director of photography Master Roger Deakins, the frame is often filled with empty landscape expanses, which suggests that the presence of humanity is only fleeting. The cause of the sisters was helped by uniformly excellent performance, in particular Brolin, Jones, and the Oscar -winning Bardem, which portrayed Chigurh with a serene sense of malice.

On the surface, “No Country for Old Men” is another of the fogs of Coen Brothers for a silver bag, a familiar trope which allows them to explore humanity in its bankability, its greed, its absurdity and its presence to the whims of destiny. In their world, a merciful choice like saving the life of a man (“Miller’s Crossing”) can be just as dangerous as contrary to ethics (“a serious man”) – it is all the same for the cosmos, and there is no way to know the arbitrary result until you have called your call. What happens happens, and this idea is reinforced by the ordinary motif of the circular or rotary objects of the sides such as the hats, the hula hoops, the Tumbleweed, the hair ointment boxes. Here, the chance and the fate of the brothers are summed up in a single draw.

Anton Chigurh is human. We see him bleeding, which suggests that he is deadly. However, he moves through the film as a supernatural self -proclaimed agent of destiny, sometimes deign to save someone’s life if they are able to properly call heads or tails. It seems almost from another world when it pursues the foam tirelessly and kills someone else who puts himself on his way, but, significantly, even he is subject to the same forces of destiny. Revealing, after a victim refused to participate in a draw, the result is postponed to him because he is involved in a thickness of a random deadly car.

“No Country for Old Men” is one of the best Coen Brothers films and also their darker to date, which captures the tear and uncertain mood in the years that followed the September 11 attacks. We are all intended to die, and our life is only shortened or prolonged by the choices we make. Against this theme, we obtain a classic Western white hat (Ed Tom Bell) and a black hat (chigurh), but the chances are stacked in favor of the evil while the latter takes place while Bell is still two movements behind the action. On the other hand, the concept of good is almost an outdated concept because Bell fears his own non-all in a world that he can no longer understand. Moss is just caught in the middle, a man just trying to keep a step ahead of the fate he decided for himself when he left with the money.