Okay, I took film studies classes throughout the seven years I spent in college, so I sat down and thought about what I might have said if say, Professor Bhalla had asked me for my opinion of No Country for Old Men. I'll be honest - I might have thought the movie is garbage, and not worth the money I spent on it, but I would have kept film-making techniques in mind and said a thing or two about moral privation or something like that....
That was a long time ago. Now, however, I think I have joined the ranks of the non-ivory tower residents who just went "Huh?" or "It's over?" or "What the hey-ull?" as the man with the thick Southern accent seated next to me said when the end credits started to roll.
The movie is apparently about how evil has gotten more complicated and tougher to deal with since Tommy Lee Jones' character, an old sheriff looking to retire, last experienced it. Javier Bardem's character, Anton Chigurh, is supposed to be the new face of this magnified evil, shooting pretty much anyone who happens to be in his way, just because he can - and because he has a cool silencing device attached to the nozzle of his gun, with which he also blows locks off doors.
Unfortunately for Llewelyn Moss (played by Josh Brolin), who stumbles upon a briefcase full of cash at the scene of a drug deal gone really, really bad, Chigurh wants that money too. This leads to a cross-Texas chase, where it becomes evident that both men are clever, and that Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff is cleverer still.
While the menacing calm with which Chigurh carries out his killings is disturbing, I am not sure why anyone would consider him remotely as evil as say, Hannibal Lecter. Perhaps Lecter was too fictional, too unrealistic for people to relate to, but there are hundreds of other movie characters, including Robert de Niro's Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, who send a real chill down my spine and induce more fear than Bardem's coin-tossing killer. Oh, he's smart all right, and he plays mildly interesting mind games with several people, some of them his victims, but frankly, it's hard to take a guy with that hairstyle seriously.
Perhaps members of the Academy, who thought this film was worthy of the coveted Best Picture award, or maybe Hollywood in general, felt a certain nostalgia for classic film noir. I'm not saying that the Oscars or the SAG Awards have to be about Spiderman 3, but why is Hollywood so eager to act like it went through film school last year?
I don't know if Bardem deserved the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, but in my opinion, Kelly Macdonald deserved at least a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, if not the actual award, for her portrayal of Carla Jean, the simple, but courageous wife of Llewelyn Moss. It may well be that I felt most sympathetic towards her because her expression of utter bewilderment matched that of the audience. In truth, her interaction with Chigurh towards the end of the film was one of the classiest performances I have seen.
But even Macdonald's performance isn't worth the ten dollars and two hours you might spend on this movie.
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