Blog Entry #8: First Impressions of No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men is an interesting movie so far. I like how it seems to combine the western genre with the thriller/suspense/mystery genres. The film also includes very little music or sound at all. This production decision adds to the suspense and takes away any preconceived notions about music from other thrillers (such as how the music often changes to a recognizable tune every time the killer is going to appear). You really never know when Anton is going to strike until you see him on the screen.

While watching, I felt as though I was on the run with Llewellyn and feared for my own life along with his. The sequence of events in the movie really reinforces the idea of “the chase” or “the hunted” as we talked about briefly in class. It is no surprise then that one of the taglines for the movie is “There Are No Clean Getaways.” As Llewellyn was always looking over his shoulder waiting for the other shoe to drop, so was I. In my opinion, the Coen brothers do a good job of involving the audience in the film (perhaps without said audience even knowing it is happening). The involvement and strong character-to-audience relationship (how close or distant the audience feels from the characters they are watching) seems to be done through cinematography decisions such as camera angles. In the scene where Anton is strangling the police officer, all you see is the officer’s shoes scraping against the floor. This scene characterized Anton as psychotic and unpredictable right from the get go. Because I only saw the officer’s shoes, it was as if I could not save him even if I wanted to. This made Anton scary and prepared me to witness more of his unstoppable and unorthodox killings in the following minutes.

I also noticed how the three major characters, Sheriff Bell, Llewellyn, and Anton all seem to be telling their own separate stories -they have their own motives, although all of these are related to the central plot. They have yet to share any screen time together…

The filmmakers choose to portray the passage of time in a unique way with a start and a finish to the day, but really no middle-day to night, night back to day. It was like there was no time for Llewellyn to do anything but run and always focus on being one step ahead of his chaser. He was no longer a free man, but a fugitive. He could never relax and take a breath all because he decided to keep the money rather than turn it into the police.