Meursault, the protagonist of pusillanimous Aliens (Albert Camus), after having killed an Arab on a beach, is asked about the reasons that led him to perpetrate such abominable act. He, almost surprised, naturally responds that it was because of the sweltering heat, only that, the heat. It was not for racism, was not to settle scores, or even to avoid being robbed or defend against possible aggression. No, there was a motivation full logic to categorize. Only the heat, the sweltering heat on a tired body. Nothing more.
But the reader, like the judges who interrogated ault Meurs, do not resist thinking that this is absurd and childish response the cause of the murder. Because humans, we understand the world around them under the categories of causality capable of being expressed in terms of logic or at least reasonable . We are not made to admit that anything is right to be, that everything in our life happens behind the common sense that under the guise of interpretation justifying there is only darkness, a absurd that we are reluctant to admit.
Something must have thought the sheriff Ed Tom Bell ( Lee Jones), and nearing retirement, contemplating the cruelty and senselessness that left at each step the existentialist psychopath Anton Chigurh (Bardem ). Chigurh, in fact, not so much a real being, a flesh and blood, subject to motivations, emotions, doubts, but rather an archetype, an ominous allegory l absurd, chance to govern ( or mismanagement, it does not matter) our conscious acts. No wonder it is he who always find what you are looking and not vice versa, that he is reluctant to be caught by the law and order that we all seek to prevail in any civilized society.
my memory long-range-has been a constant (aunq ue tinged or funny game gregería audiovisual) in the films of the Coen (rides a long, long ride, if is that in fact two rather than one) two radial elements in their narratives: on the one hand, targeted and dissolute presence of chance like the wind that shakes its characters, and outrageous pantomime counterpoint to represent, not without arousing laughter , logic and justice in this world (lawyers, politicians, police ,...) On the other hand, the environmental factor as a trigger contingency twists to the action. It is the will that guides and justifies the actions of the characters, but the weight of the t ierra, climate, landscape ineffable still will be there when the story and loved have been forgotten. As the sun embracing the neck of Meursault, always foreign himself, perplexed by the unfathomable equation we write our lives. No wonder the movie starts (as in Fargo ) with a flat desert, before the camera will submit to the autocratic welder Moss (portentous Josh Brolin) following the fatal track.
The apparent sweetness of an old woman in southern Ladykillers, the impending flood of dreams of Odysseus, his crew of fools and an election campaign in O Brother! the Hitchcockian unfold identity in The Note The Big Lebowski, the human factor in the plan of timid car salesman in Fargo , neighborhood life in a hotel as a detour narrative of Hollywood dreams of the young writer Barton Fink Barton , or the sombre ro on a bed that foreshadows the fate of the faithful fool lamb a gangster in Miller's Crossing . Even Blood Simple (also filmed in Texas) the Coens weave of random shortcuts revenge of a cuckolded husband.
Look at the character of the elegant exterminator Carson Wells (Harrelson ), safety, suicide, the accounting logic, his cool analytical each moment ( need a pot in the hotel , admits in one scene). Of no use against what is to come, because nothing happens given to humans. We are condemned to believe us free, to delude ourselves with the myth control of our lives. But as the character discovers Carla (Kelly Macdonald ), it is useless to choose heads or tails , it is useless to choose. Everything is decided beyond us. Nothing is like when man thought he could cheat death, it is no time for heroes, is no time for old .
Perhaps this is this film darker (black say the genre), more pessimistic, more full of melancholy skeptic, among all the brothers . And so the American least, the most introspective and mournful. The most postmodern, but from the nostalgia of a time in the world and its protagonists Reji, as in the old noir, for obvious personal or questionable tañables principles, but principles. The XXI century leaves only, as in the lost generation of postwar perplexity nihilistic silence and leave anything goes because nothing has value.
I stay with the scene end (for many, the worst of this superb film), the revelation of the sheriff (removed with difficulty by his wife) of a dream that is open to differing interpretations, we repositioned the melancholy texture (fatalistic for others) who chaired all the film. Sheriff Tom Bell dreams of a reunion with his dead father, those times when an old police did not need to carry a weapon to defend justice or simply walking down the street. Now everything is different, and perhaps only the horizon of death is the only certainty. Maybe.
No Country for Old is a great movie. It merged with the Coens all the ingredients of his films, but presindiendo the acidity of his previous work. Here we are left alone, without a net to make us understand what is happening, force us to think, perhaps reacting to the barbarism that every minute television news announced.
It is also a great film by the clever use of ellipses, sometimes (as in the swimming pool scene) threatened by the risk of confusing (perhaps with premeditation) to the viewer. The Coens show the minimum, want us to be us who profiles the script in our view, that we place ourselves emotionally to the doom and disappointment, we complete the gaps, to imagine.
Incidentally, the title refers to a more than appropriate fragment of a poem by Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium , which reads:
"That is no country for old men. Young people arm in arm, birds in the trees-Those dying generations-singing, waterfalls, salmon, tuna crowded seas, fish, animals or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is, is born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect monuments of intellect that does not age. "
