They’re back! After only semi-successful forays into glossy comedy (Intolerable Cruelty) and big-budget remake (The Ladykillers), Joel and Ethan Coen are very much in their own back yard with No Country For Old Men, which is competing for the Palme D’Or here in Cannes.
Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, the 1980-set film follows three interlinked protagonists: trailer-park-dwelling Vietnam War veteran Llewleyn (Josh Brolin), who stumbles across the aftermath of a drugs deal gone wrong in the Texas desert; grizzled cop Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones); and psychotic killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Llewleyn’s decision to keep the $2 million cash he discovers, and especially to return to the scene of the crime with a gallon of water for the sole survivor of the drug-gang shootout, sets a chain of events in motion that combine the Coens’ affection for grisly violence with their trademark black humour.
Brolin provides an empathetic centre as a surprisingly capable opportunist who is nevertheless way out of his depth. Jones is predictably wholly comfortable in his role as a world-weary cop in a Texas bordertown. But it’s Bardem, naughtily stealing every scene with tiny deviations from his otherwise-impassive demeanour, who walks away with the movie. Big laughs ricocheted around Cannes’ Debussy theatre at its first press screening. Woody Harrelson and – Texan accent alert! – Britain’s own Kelly Macdonald have smaller roles.
In its final, ever-more-bleak phases, the film puts genre conventions on hold, and offers two extended conversations, first between Bell and his father, then with his wife. It’s here that the themes of McCarthy’s novel get effectively explored. Sitting at the back and far edge of the Debussy, sound issues exacerbated heavy Texan accents and colloquial language to render these conversations largely indistinct, and I was not the only attendee who was frantically scanning the French subtitles for clues. My feeling that the No Country for Old Men succeeded as a highly original genre piece but not so much as a philosophically rich elegy to more-civilised former times should consequently be viewed in that context.
For the record, here is the opening salvo of trade bible Variety’s verdict:
“A scorching blast of tense genre filmmaking shot through with rich veins of melancholy, down-home philosophy and dark, dark humour, No Country for Old Men reps a superior match of source material and filmmaking talent. Cormac McCarthy's bracing and brilliant novel is gold for the Coen brothers. Result is one of their very best films, a bloody classic of its type destined for acclaim and potentially robust box-office returns upon release later in the year.”
