Tuesday, December 04, 2007

No Country For Old Men: Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers

****WARNING! FOLLOWING POST MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS, PEANUTS!!!****


I just finished reading Corman McCarthy's book No Country for Old Men and it only increases my awe at the Coen brothers' accomplishment. They have taken the most potent plot elements, exchanges of dialogue, and themes from the book, thrown them onto the screen with the technical panache they are know for, while leaving behind McCarthy's excessive philosophizing and meandering. To use a metaphor from the classic film Monster Squad, they melt down the raw silver of McCarthy's prose and shape it into a hollow tip bullet, perfect for killing werewolves.

One of the big things aiding the Coens was their choice of material. Unlike writers like Kurt Vonnegut or Joseph Heller, who utilize the narrative voice to communiate a lot of the psychological and philosophical themes of their works, Cormac McCarthy, in this novel, at least, lets the characters and plot mechanics express the themes. This means that the work is perfect for translation to film: it's just a job of putting the action and dialogue up there on the screen. If that's all the Coens' had done, they probably would have made a good movie. What makes No Country a great movie is their incisive editing and reshaping of the material to create maximum visceral impact. In fact, they seem to have more faith in the potency of McCarthy's tale than the author himself does.

In his attempt to write a novel focusing on the existential horror of ordinary folks staring into an abyss of idiot fate and human cruelty, McCarthy laid out a tale that obliterated the expectations of the reader. He starts with one of the most cliche of all crime thriller plots: regular joe stumbles across large sum of money (or drugs), criminals pursue him in order to regain it. There have been literally* jillions of books and movies made utitlizing this premise, from Charley Varrick to True Romance, and it carries with it certain expectations, mainly that it will end in a climactic show down between the regular joe and some avatar of criminality. McCarthy fills these roles with the vivid, compelling characters of Llewellyn Moss and Anton Chigurh, and sets them on a collision course...and then he has a bunch of nondescript Mexicans kill the protagonist before he can have his showdown with Chigurh...and only two thirds of the way through the book. This ingenious subversion of audience expectations is the most effective representation of McCarthy's theme, and the Coens smartly keep it intact. Even more smartly, they trust their mastery of film craft to convey this theme without resorting to the didactic dialogue that plagues too much of the book. Although at least eighty percent of the dialogue in the film is drawn verbatim from the book, most of the character exchanges last much longer in the book, and to the detriment of the characters, themes and narrative momentum. The laconic cowboy aphorisms of that pepper the movie are compelling and witty in small doses, but tend to induce reader fatigue after pages and pages of the same clipped, obtuse rhythms. More importantly, the prolonged disquitations turn the character of Chigurh, who, in the form of Javier Bardem, ranks in the top echelon of film bad guys, into a grumpy freshman philosophy student, not a being of pure will and a symbol of implacible, unreasonable death.

Take the scene, early on in both the film and the book, when Chigurh has a conversation with a hapless gas station attendant. As the two characters talk, it becomes clear that Chigurh is deciding whether or not he is going to kill the attendant. To that end, he asks the attendant to call a coin toss. When his guess of "heads" turns out to be correct, Chigurh allows him to live, and gives the attendant the quarter, telling him that it's his "lucky" quarter. In the film, when the attendant tries to put the quarter in his pocket, Chigugh tells them not to, because in his pocket the coin will lose its specialness, become "just a coin...which it is" in Chigurh's words. It's a film scene of unbearable suspense, and that last line echoes in the viewer's head long after it has been spoken. Those few words contain a universe of meaning; that coin, like the attendants life, is extraordinary and unique...and, at the same time, completely anonymous and mundane, depending on who is beholding it.

Contrast the way the Coens' end this scene with the way the scene ends in McCarthy's book. Most of the dialogue is identical, but when the attendant tries to put the "lucky" quarter in his pocket, Chigurh doesn't respond by telling him to put it "anywhere not your pocket, where it will get mixed up with the others and become just a coin...which it is." Instead, he says:

"Anything can be an instrument. Small things. Things you wouldn't even notice. They pass from hand to hand. People don't pay attention. And then one day there's an accounting. And after that nothing is the same. Well, you say. It's just a coin. For instance. Nothing special there. What could that be an instrument of? You see the problem. To separate the act from the thing. As if the parts of some moment in history might be interchangable with the parts of some other moment. How could that be? Well, it's just a coin. Yes. That's true. Is it?"

Saying shit like this, Chigurh should be holding a goddamn baton of french bread, not a compressed-air cattle stungun. There's no way that a mini-monologue like that could stick with you. There's too much stuff there, too much abstract rumination, all of it stripping the mystery and terror away from a character who never leaps off of the page the way that he does off of the screen. In the end, I just think that the Coens trusted the plot structure and characters to convey the apocalyptic dread and desolation that McCarthy was striving for, while McCarthy himself felt compelled to overdetermine the themes by hammering them home in conversation after conversation. It's understandable, in a way. The sort of terror and sense of vulnerability McCarthy is going for is much easier to convey cinematically than in prose. He probably felt the need to lard Chigurh's murder spree with soliloquies because he didn't have the chilly intensity of Javier Bardem's coal-black eyes to help bring out the darkness.


*okay, not literally

8 comments:

Robert J. said...

After this review, I have to think that this might be the Coens' finest work yet. I haven't seen all their films, and am not nearly the fan that you are, but I do know that this film kicked my ass 9 different ways, and then left me to die. No soundtrack? Best move ever. Javier Bardem? Completely hatable and frightening.

I'm sorry I don't have more to say right now, but this post definitely has me wanting to think, talk, and read about it -- and read the book.

Also, at NCFOM, I finally saw a trailer for There Will Be Blood. Holy Fuck. What a winter for movies.

matthew christman said...

Yeah, that trailer was pretty amazing, as was this movie. I'm glad you liked it, but I'm not really surprised: I really don't think that a discerning movie fan could not be blown away by this thing unless they were being a contrarian douchebag.

I'm really impressed by the way that the Coens, who have spent twenty years riffing on genres and techniques, were able to so effortlessly assimilate a bleak, windswept world view as Cormac McCarthy. In a way, it makes sense, because all of their work deals with a lot of his pet themes: the cruelty of fate, the corrosiveness of greed, etc. I hope we can talk on the phone soon: I want to jaw on this sucker.

Jesse Gant said...

I have no idea if Rob has taught the "movie scene" idea he had for his class yet, but the "Quarter" scene might be a good one for Matt to take apart. I again repeat the claim that this is a scene that somehow has gone under the radar with many reviewers, as most have looked at the ending. But I'm sure you are near the end of the semester anyway, Rob, so it wouldn't make sense to pull something together on that scene right now.

In any case, I keep coming back to this movie for a variety of reasons. It seems to be a hands-down given for a Best Picture nod, and I think Rob is right to mention "There Will Be Blood" as not only a potential critical pairing with this movie, but also an expansion on the darkness that Hollywood seems to be "vibing" with this season. It is due December 25 or so? The preview, which I also saw before NCFOM, had me giddy.

Matt--A specific thank-you for illuminating what McCarthy wrote in the novel. Showing how the Coens handled it in the film reveals how perfectly they adapted their source material. Among other things, I left this movie (each of the three times I've seen it now) with a sense of awe at it as a whole, yes, but I feel increasingly in tune with it as a film. The craftmanship here is undeniably solid, something that obviously others have picked up on.

Have either of you read other of McCarthy's work? I guess this is my McCarthy year, as I've read The Road, Blood Meridian, and am now halfway through No Country. But I'm struck, reading through my historian goggles, at how McCarthy really gets at something about the meaning of the American soul--the violence and depravity of its core values. If I had the time and money, I would write a script for The Road right now and shoot it with the two of you. Not much comedic fodder there, but I really admire McCarthy's fidelity to landscape as a primary character in his works--works that have spanned nearly every epoch of US history now, including its post-apocalyptic state.

Anyway. And then I woke up.

matthew christman said...

I've read No Country and Blood Meridian...but it's been a while with that one. I want to reread it soon, and I also think I'll be reading The Road soon as well. A film version of The Road is already in production, I believe, starring Viggo Mortensen and directed by John Hillcoat, who directed the Australian western The Proposition. The Proposition isn't great, but Hillcoat's handling of the material certainly suggests a skill with landscapes and impact that open spaces have on the human psyche.

I'm interested in reading The Road also because books like Blood Meridian and No Country clearly point towards some sort of apocalypse, and in The Road, McCarthy finally makes it happen.

I have a hunch that, when I finally see There Will Be Blood (probably mid-January in Bushville, USA, since it won't be opening until January 11th here), these two films will end up having a lot to say about each other.

"I can't keep doing this on my own with these...people."

Jesse Gant said...

January 11?! That's a real shame--maybe it's showing in Madison? They just put up a new arthouse cinema at the Hilldale mall, I believe, and perhaps it will open there before Milwaukee. If not, you should riot.

Should have known The Road would have already picked up movie rights...

I was going to suggest that we see There Will Be Blood over Christmas break. But someone seems to have put a cock-block on the cheeseheads.

matthew christman said...

I hope Anton Chigurh caves in your skull with a cattlegun, Adam.

Robert J. said...

maybe it's showing in chicago on the 26th? would it be worth the drive? get erick to go with us, etc.?

matthew christman said...

It most probalby will be showing in Chicago on the 26th. I didn't want to drive down for No Country by myself, but if we both went down, it could be a cool road trip.