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No Country for Old Men (film)From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, searchNo Country for Old MenTheatrical release posterDirected byJoel CoenEthan CoenProduced byJoel CoenEthan CoenScott RudinScreenplay byJoel CoenEthan CoenBased onNo Country for Old Men byCormac McCarthyStarringTommy Lee JonesJavier BardemJosh BrolinMusic byCarter BurwellCinematographyRoger DeakinsEditing byRoderick JaynesDistributed byMiramax FilmsParamount VantageRelease date(s) November 9, 2007 (2007-11-09)Running time122 minutesCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishBudget$25 millionBox office$171,627,166No Country for Old Men is a 2007 American thriller written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name.12 The film stars Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, and tells the story of an ordinary man to whom chance delivers a fortune that is not his, and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama, as three men crisscross each others paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas.3 Themes of fate, conscience and circumstance re-emerge that the Coen brothers have previously explored in Blood Simple and Fargo.Among its four Oscars at the 2007 Academy Awards were awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, allowing the Coen brothers to join the five previous directors honored three times for the same film.45 In addition, the film won three British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA) including Best Director,6 and two Golden Globes.7 The American Film Institute listed it as an AFI Movie of the Year,8 and the National Board of Review selected the film as the best of 2007.9The film premiered in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival on May 19,10 and commercially opened in limited release in 28 theaters in the United States on November 9, 2007, grossing $1,226,333 over the opening weekend, and opened in the United Kingdom (limited release) and Ireland on January 18, 2008.11 It became the biggest box-office hit for the Coen brothers to date,12 grossing more than 170 million dollars worldwide,13 until it was surpassed by True Grit in 2010.14No Country for Old Men appeared on more critics top ten lists (354) than any other film of 2007, and was the most selected as the best film of the year.15 It is regarded by many critics as the Coen brothers finest film.16171819 Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it as good a film as the Coen brothers.have ever made,16 The Guardian journalist John Patterson said that the Coens technical abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based Western classicism reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, are matched by few living directors,20 and Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said that it is a new career peak for the Coen brothers and is as entertaining as hell.21Contentshide 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Productiono 3.1 Writing 3.1.1 Title 3.1.2 Differences from the novelo 3.2 Castingo 3.3 Filmingo 3.4 Directingo 3.5 Musical score and sound 4 Styleo 4.1 Depicted violenceo 4.2 Similarities to earlier Coen brothers films 5 Genre 6 Themes and analysis 7 Releaseo 7.1 Theatrical release and box officeo 7.2 Home media 8 Receptiono 8.1 Reviewso 8.2 Top ten listso 8.3 Accoladeso 8.4 Criticism 9 Disputes 10 In popular culture 11 References 12 Bibliography 13 Further reading 14 External linksedit PlotWest Texas in June 1980 is desolate, wide open country, and Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) laments the increasing violence in a region where he, like his father and grandfather before him, has risen to the office of sheriff.Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), hunting pronghorn, comes across the aftermath of a drug deal gone awry: several dead men and dogs, a wounded Mexican begging for water, and two million dollars in a satchel that he takes to his trailer home. Late that night, he returns with water for the dying man, but is chased away by two men in a truck and loses his vehicle. When he gets back home he grabs the cash, sends his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) to her mothers, and makes his way to a motel in the next county22 where he hides the satchel in the air vent of his room.Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is a hitman who has been hired to recover the money. He has already strangled a sheriffs deputy to escape custody and stolen a car by using a captive bolt pistol to kill the driver. Now he carries a receiver that traces the money via a tracking device concealed inside the satchel. Bursting into Moss hideout at night, Chigurh surprises a group of Mexicans set to ambush Moss, and murders them all. Moss, who has rented the connecting room on the other side, is one step ahead. By the time Chigurh removes the vent cover with a dime, Moss is already back on the road with the cash.In a border town hotel, Moss finally finds the electronic bug, but not before Chigurh is upon him. A firefight between them spills onto the streets, leaving both men wounded. Moss flees across the border, collapsing from his injuries before he is taken to a Mexican hospital. There, Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), another hired operative, offers protection in return for the money.After Chigurh cleans and stitches his own wounds with stolen supplies, he gets the drop on Wells back at his hotel and kills him just as Moss calls the room. Picking up the call and casually raising his feet to avoid the spreading blood, Chigurh promises Moss that Carla Jean will go untouched if he gives up the money. Moss remains defiant.Moss arranges to rendezvous with his wife at a motel in El Paso to give her the money and send her out of harms way. She reluctantly accepts Bells offer to save her husband, but he arrives only in time to see a pickup carrying several men speeding away from the motel and Moss lying dead in his room. That night, Bell returns to the crime scene and finds the lock blown out in his suspects familiar style. Chigurh hides behind the door of a motel room, observing the shifting light through an empty lock hole. His gun drawn, Bell enters Moss room and notices that the vent cover has been removed with a dime and the vent is empty.Bell visits his Uncle Ellis (Barry Corbin), an ex-lawman. Bell plans to retire because he feels overmatched, but Ellis points out that the region has always been violent. For Ellis, thinking it is all waiting on you, thats vanity.Carla Jean returns from her mothers funeral to find Chigurh waiting in the bedroom. When she tells him she does not have the money, he recalls the pledge he made to her husband that could have spared her. The best he will offer is a coin toss for her life, but she says that the choice is his. Chigurh leaves the house alone and carefully checks the soles of his boots. As he drives away, he is injured in a car accident and abandons the damaged vehicle.Now retired, Bell shares two dreams with his wife (Tess Harper), both involving his deceased father. In the first dream he lost some money that his father had given him; in the second, he and his father were riding horses through a snowy mountain pass. His father, who was carrying fire in a horn, quietly passed by with his head down, going on ahead, and fixin to make a fire in the surrounding dark and cold. Bell knew that when he got there his father would be waiting.edit Cast Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a laconic, soon-to-retire county sheriff on the trail of Chigurh and Moss. Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh, a hitman hired to recover the missing money. The directors sought an actor who could have come from Mars, and introduce the character, typical of the their Unstoppable Evil archetype, in a manner reminiscent of The Man Who Fell to Earth.23 For this morally serious story, they wanted to avoid comparisons to the Terminator24 and now he seems a modern equivalent of Death from Ingmar Bergmans 1957 film The Seventh Seal.25 Bardem had been a Coens fan since he saw their debut, Blood Simple,26 but he had to endure a distinctive haircut, derived from a 1979 book supplied by Jones that featured photos of brothel patrons on the Texas-Mexico border.27 The strange hair left the actors psyche. affected, Bardem says, in a very delicate way,28 and, convinced he wouldnt get laid for two months, too depressed to leave his house.29 Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, a welder and Vietnam veteran who flees with two million dollars in drug money that he finds in an open field in Texas. Kelly Macdonald as Carla Jean Moss, Llewelyn Moss wife. Despite having severe misgivings about her husbands plans to keep the money, she still supports him. Macdonald said that what attracted her to the character of Moss was that she wasnt obvious. She wasnt your typical trailer trash kind of character. At first you think shes one thing and by the end of the film, you realize that shes not quite as nave as she might come across.30 Woody Harrelson as Carson Wells, a cocky bounty hunter and acquaintance of Chigurh hired to recover the drug money. Garret Dillahunt as Deputy Wendell, Bells inexperienced deputy sheriff assisting in the investigation and providing comic relief. Tess Harper as Loretta Bell, the sheriffs wife, who provides reassurance in his darker moods. Barry Corbin as Ellis, a retired deputy shot in the line of duty and now wheelchair-bound. He acts as a straight-talking sounding board to his nephew, Bell. Beth Grant as Agnes, Carla Jeans mother and the mother-in-law of Moss. She provides comic relief despite the fact that she is dying from the cancer. Stephen Root as the man who hires Chigurh, Wells (only mentioned in passing as a possible party to the original drug deal), and the Mexicans. Gene Jones as Thomas Thayer, an elderly rural gas station clerk with good fortune, as his call on Antons coin flip saves his life. Brandon Smith as a stern INS official wearing sunglasses as he guards the U.S.-Mexican border. He lets Moss cross once he learns he was in the Vietnam War.edit ProductionProducer Scott Rudin bought the book rights to McCarthys novel and suggested a film adaptation to the Coen brothers, who at the time were attempting to adapt the novel To the White Sea by James Dickey.23 By August 2005, the Coen brothers agreed to write and direct a film adaptation of No Country for Old Men, having identified with how the novel provided a sense of place and also how it played with genre conventions. Joel Coen said of the unconventional approach, That was familiar, congenial to us; were naturally attracted to subverting genre. We liked the fact that the bad guys never really meet the good guys, that McCarthy did not follow through on formula expectations.2331 The Coens also identified the appeal of the novel to be its pitiless quality. Ethan Coen explained, Thats a hallmark of the book, which has an unforgiving landscape and characters but is also about finding some kind of beauty without being sentimental. The adaptation was to be the second of McCarthys work, following the 2000 film All the Pretty Horses.32edit WritingOne of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat.Co-director Ethan Coen on writing the script from the Cormac McCarthy novel.20The Coens script was unusually faithful to their source material. In fact, Ethan said, One of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat.20 Still, they pruned where necessary.23 A teenage runaway who appeared late in the book and some backstory related to Bell were both removed.24 Also changed from the original was Carla Jean Mosss reaction when finally faced with the imposing figure of Chigurh. As Kelly MacDonald explained to CanMag: The ending of the book is different. She reacts more in the way I react. She kind of falls apart. In the film shes been through so much and she cant lose any more. Its just shes got this quiet acceptance of it.30Richard Corliss of Time magazine stated that the Coen brothers have adapted literary works before. Millers Crossing was a sly, unacknowledged blend of two Dashiell Hammetts tales, Red Harvest and The Glass Key; and O Brother Where Art Thou? transferred The Odyssey of Homer to the American south in the 1930s. But No Country for Old Men is their first film taken, pretty straightforwardly, from a contemporary prime American novel.33 (Their 2004 film The Ladykillers is based on a 1955 British black comedy film of the same name).34The writing is also notable for its minimal use of dialogue. Josh Brolin discussed his initial nervousness with having so little dialogue to work with:I mean it was a fear, for sure, because dialogue thats what you kind of rest upon as an actor, you know? . Drama and all the stuff is all dialogue motivated. You have to figure out different ways to convey ideas. You dont want to overcompensate because the fear is that youre going to be boring if nothings going on. You start doing this and this and taking off your hat and putting it on again or some bullshit that doesnt need to be there. So yeah, I was a little afraid of that in the beginning.35Peter Travers of the Rolling Stone praised the novel adaptation. Not since Robert Altman merged with the short stories of Raymond Carver in Short Cuts have filmmakers and author fused with such devastating impact as the Coens and McCarthy. Good and evil are tackled with a rigorous fix on the complexity involved.21Director Joel Coen justified his interest in the McCarthy novel. Theres something about it there were echoes of it in No Country for Old Men that were quite interesting for us, he said, because it was the idea of the physical work that somebody does that helps reveal who they are and is part of the fiber of the story. Because you only saw this person in this movie making things and doing things in order to survive and to make this journey, and the fact that you were thrown back on that, as opposed to any dialogue, was interesting to us.36Co-director Joel Coen stated that this is the brothers first adaptation. He further explained why they chose the Cormac McCarthys novel: Why not start with Cormac? Why not start with the best? Coen further described this McCarthy novel in particular as unlike his other novels . it is much pulpier. Coen stated that they havent changed much in the adaptation. It really is just compression, he said. We didnt create new situations. He further assured that he and his brother Ethan had never met McCarthy when they were writing the script, but first met him during the shooting of the film. He believed that McCarthy liked the film, while his brother Ethan said, he didnt yell at us. We were actually sitting in a movie theater/screening room with him when he saw it . and I heard him chuckle a couple of times, so I took that as a seal of approval, I dont know, maybe presumptuously. 37edit TitleThe title is taken from the opening line of 20th-century Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats poem Sailing to Byzantium38:THAT is no country for old men. The youngIn one anothers arms, birds in the trees Those dying generations at their song,The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer longWhatever is begotten, born, and dies.Caught in that sensual music all neglectMonuments of unageing intellectRichard Gilmore relates the Yeats poem to the Coens film. The lament that can be heard in these lines, he says, is for no longer belonging to the country of the young. It is also a lament for the way the young neglect the wisdom of the past and, presumably, of the old . Yeats chooses Byzantium because it was a great early Christian city in which Platos Academy, for a time, was still allowed to function. The historical period of Byzantium was a time of culmination that was also a time of transition. In his book of mystical writings, A Vision, Yeats says, I think that in early Byzantium, maybe never before or since in recorded history, religious, aesthetic, and practical life were one, that architect and artificers.spoke to the multitude and the few alike. The idea of a balance and a coherence in a societys religious, aesthetic, and practical life is Yeatss ideal .It is an ideal rarely realized in this world and maybe not even in ancient Byzantium. Certainly within the context of the movie No Country for Old Men, one has the sense, especially from Bell as the chronicler of the times, that things are out of alignment, that balance and harmony are gone from the land and from the people.39edit Differences from the novelCraig Kennedy adds that one key difference is that of focus. The novel belongs to Sheriff Bell. Each chapter begins with Bells narration, which dovetails and counterpoints the action of the main story. Though the film opens with Bell speaking, much of what he says in the book is condensed and it turns up in other forms. Also, Bell has an entire backstory in the book that doesnt make it into the film. The result is a movie that is more simplified thematically, but one that gives more of the characters an opportunity to shine.40Jay Ellis elaborates on Chigurhs encounter with the man behind the counter at the gas station. Where McCarthy gives us Chigurhs question as, Whats the most you ever saw lost on a coin toss? (55), he says, the film elides the word saw, but the Coens of course tend to the visual. Where the book describes the setting as almost dark (52), the film clearly depicts high noon: no shadows are notable in the establishing shot of the gas station, and the sunlight is bright even if behind cloud cover. The