American Violence – a Critical Film Analysis of No Country for Old Men
Rosalind Harrell
Film 1010
Final Paper
American Violence – A Critical Film Analysis of No Country For Old Men
A violent contract killer, a blue-collar welder, and a weary sheriff are all players in the ensemble No Country for Old Men. The Coen Brothers adaptation of the novel written by Cormac McCarthy is a multi-genre, visual buffet about a man’s strength of will and dedication. It’s about death, fate and American violence. It is set in 1980 and centers around the chaos of questionable decision making and killing without a purpose or at the very least killing without ethics. Every Coen Brother movie has utilized violence as a way to enhance realism, entertainment and narrative. Each of their films employ bloodshed in various ways, but No Country For Old Men effectively serves all of those elements to articulate the nature of American violence: dirty, bloody, unforgiving and unrelenting. The mise en scene, sound design, cinematography and editing dance together to inspire a different way to look at how violence is a part of our history and how we sometimes only question it’s existence when we personally fall victim to it.
The film opens like all of the Coen Brother’s films with an establishing shot of the landscape of wide-open emptiness and the vast Texas plains. A narration breaks the silence by informing us about the way things used to be. Tommy Lee Jones’ character, an experienced lawman, named Sheriff Ed Tom Bell pontificates on the easy breezy times of lawfulness in the past, while we are introduced to the films antagonist, Aton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem. Chigurh is an unstoppable killing machine that we are unable to access. We constantly struggle to understand why he is so ruthless, even when it is unnecessary and the film does a great job of not letting us in on his methodology. It is not enough that people die or that blood flows, the Coen Brother’s emphasize the trivial details in death. The high-angle shot of Chigurh’s
Film 1010
Final Paper
American Violence – A Critical Film Analysis of No Country For Old Men
A violent contract killer, a blue-collar welder, and a weary sheriff are all players in the ensemble No Country for Old Men. The Coen Brothers adaptation of the novel written by Cormac McCarthy is a multi-genre, visual buffet about a man’s strength of will and dedication. It’s about death, fate and American violence. It is set in 1980 and centers around the chaos of questionable decision making and killing without a purpose or at the very least killing without ethics. Every Coen Brother movie has utilized violence as a way to enhance realism, entertainment and narrative. Each of their films employ bloodshed in various ways, but No Country For Old Men effectively serves all of those elements to articulate the nature of American violence: dirty, bloody, unforgiving and unrelenting. The mise en scene, sound design, cinematography and editing dance together to inspire a different way to look at how violence is a part of our history and how we sometimes only question it’s existence when we personally fall victim to it.
The film opens like all of the Coen Brother’s films with an establishing shot of the landscape of wide-open emptiness and the vast Texas plains. A narration breaks the silence by informing us about the way things used to be. Tommy Lee Jones’ character, an experienced lawman, named Sheriff Ed Tom Bell pontificates on the easy breezy times of lawfulness in the past, while we are introduced to the films antagonist, Aton Chigurh played by Javier Bardem. Chigurh is an unstoppable killing machine that we are unable to access. We constantly struggle to understand why he is so ruthless, even when it is unnecessary and the film does a great job of not letting us in on his methodology. It is not enough that people die or that blood flows, the Coen Brother’s emphasize the trivial details in death. The high-angle shot of Chigurh’s
Cited: Brophy, Philip “Blast of Silence.” Film Comment; Mar/Apr2008, Vol 44 Issue 2 pp 16 Corrigan, Timothy, Patricia White The Film Experience: An Introduction. Mass 2009 James, Nick “The Coen Brothers.” Sight & Sound 17.7 (2007): 20-22. Rowell, Erica The Brother Grimm: The Films of Ethan and Joel Coen. Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2007