HANCOCK

It’s Independence Day so what would be more appropriate than reviewing the new Will Smith movie?

Unfairly I think, Hancock is getting absolutely ravaged by critics. Please do yourself a favor and don’t read any reviews (including my links below) because many of them reveal the film’s third-act twist. Admittedly this is the cause of most of the critical dissatisfaction with the film. According to Tom Charity at CNN:

Writers Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan have concocted an outrageous, mind-boggling twist that comes so far out of left field you would need a crystal ball to see it coming.

Then call me Professor Marvel because the twist had occurred to me fairly early on and I became certain of it at least five minutes before it happened. You could say the twist occurs unexpectedly but the groundwork is laid throughout the first two acts and I found it in keeping with the themes of the film.

I actually appreciated the change of direction because I like sudden tonal shifts in movies, like From Dusk to Dawn or even Sunshine, that surprise but at the same time fulfill genre expectations.

Most refreshing, Hancock is just different from most other superhero movies so far. It doesn’t spend the first half of the movie on the hero’s origin story but flings us into the world of Los Angeles and its recalcitrant protector in media res. It’s also different from most other Will Smith movies insofar as Hancock never smiles and the one time he tries results in a horrible grimace revealing even worse teeth.

Its emphasis (perhaps repetitive) on damaged infrastructure during superpowered confrontations mercifully acknowledges the pink elephant in the room of every other comic book action movie, in which urban centers are laid waste on a frequent basis but the population still loves the heroes. It is helpful to remind ourselves that if superheroes really existed and operated as they always do in movies, we would probably be neither pleased nor amused.

And unlike most superhero films with huge supporting casts, this is more like a three-person play about Will Smith, Jason Bateman, and Charlize Theron’s characters. Bateman benefits the most from this arrangement with much more screen time than the trailer would lead you to believe; he is more like the co-star of the film. And for possibly the first time in his career his character is completely likable, optimistic, and compassionate without any lurking creepiness (Juno most recently) or pathological denial (Arrested Development).

It is not perfect but thanks to some judicious cuts the movie is in better form than its May preview and is a thousand times better than the uninspired script it was originally based on which went absolutely nowhere (spoilers throughout this script review). That may be a backhanded compliment, but I found Hancock a fun departure from the usual fare in the most superhero-laden year since 2004.

BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)

Talk about a film that will never need to be remade!

The screening I saw last night was a new digital transfer, which felt somewhat inimical to the very nature of the picture, but it was a gorgeous experience nonetheless. Little touches like Gene Wilder’s brief role make the film, as does third-man Michael Pollard as CW Moss. (As a kid I’m sure I saw him rubbing his nose and squinting in a movie and the only one in his filmography that I can imagine it being from is The Russians Are Coming.)

Having never seen it before, I was not expecting Clyde’s particular personal problem, especially after the muzzle-stroking build-up/fake-out!  It was a big surprise given the archetype and made the story a thousand times more interesting than other films in the genre.

Not only is this ultimate vulnerability so antithetical to everything movies are usually about, but it makes us sympathize with both of them equally because Bonnie’s frustration is so palpable (which in turn makes her all the more lovable for staying with him). It’s a great example of inverting the typically assigned gender roles without making the man feminine or the woman masculine.

Finally, this must be one of the greatest car movies of all time: it truly captures that particular sense of freedom that must have felt possible when cars finally became fast enough to outrun people and horses.

If the gun is the “magic wand” of Badlands that makes every obstacle it’s pointed at disappear (as Martin Sheen says Malick told him to think of his gun), then the car is the broomstick of Bonnie and Clyde that allows its riders (often hanging onto the outside) to whimsically escape every predicament they get themselves into.  Once in a car, they are invincible. Their fall is possible only when they’ve been lured out of their magical car.

Come to think of it, the recurring motif is “just going” in contrast to going somewhere. They invited death because they stopped just going.

JUNO

The release of Juno on Region 2 DVD yesterday has sent more than one friend scrambling to relive the precious experience or else be taken in for the first time. One of them foolishly asked my opinion of the movie. I haven’t seen it since December but its cuteness is still pretty well seared in my memory, so here are a few thoughts to rouse discussion/incite wrath.

The most most concise but exhaustive description of Juno was made by Dennis Cozzalio who said:

The script reads like it’s meant to be reprinted whole hog under the IMDB “memorable quotes” tab (and a quick look there reveals that it practically has been.)

Bullseye! The only thing more devastating I could add is that Diablo Cody has a lot in common with Tarantino because all their characters sound like the same person, and the script dominates the actors. It sort of bullies them. I’m not against highly mannered dialogue, like in nearly every Coen Bros. movie; but in, say, the Big Lebowski the dialogue still sounds natural in each character’s mouth.

Ellen Page is the only one who manages to pull it off, and even though I kind of despise the movie I don’t begrudge her the Best Actress nom because any other actress would have been more annoying trying to pull it off. I also thought Jen Garner was good because it was the first time I’ve ever seen her actually play a character.

My friend states that Ellen Page is a true comic, which I agree with because her worst acting is when she tries to be serious for a moment and says “I don’t really know what kind of girl I am.” It was so awkward I actually couldn’t wait to return to the “honest to blog” dialogue!

Actually, now that I think about it, Jason Bateman’s interpretation of the punny jokes was quite subversive and revelatory of the screenplay’s true nature. When he says “Technically, that would be kicking it Old Testament” he interprets the line as a really terrible pun which forces everyone in the room to rightly groan. Whereas if it had been one of Juno’s lines on the phone to her girlfriend it would have been just another one in her stream of effortlessly “clever” quips.

But ironically, kicking it Old Testament was one of the lines I laughed out loud at, along with Juno’s line about the Chinese shooting babies out of t-shirt canons. But this just proves the only way the movie can be enjoyed: rehearsing “which jokes I liked.” The movie is like a rapid-fire comedian who figures if he can squeeze in three times as many jokes than his average competitor he’ll have a better chance of being as funny if not funnier than than them. But it’s the comedy version of the Michael Bay Principle: if an explosion is good then more must be better. Not that I’d mind a movie that had more jokes than most comedies as long as it wasn’t so smug and precious.

Dennis makes another point which I think is valid:

And speaking of music, it’s only severely disingenuous that a movie whose main character name-checks seminal punk rockers like Iggy and the Stooges and holds them up as a barometer of everyone else’s taste in music would eschew that very punk rock at every turn, instead making room on its soundtrack for Mott the Hoople, the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Sticking with You” and, to use my friend Kim Morgan’s word, twee singer-songwriters like Belle and Sebastian and the ubiquitous Kimya Dawson. (Maybe Juno’s director, Jason Reitman, surmised that Iggy might put off a goodly portion of the real-life Junos and their 18-to-25-year-old brothers and sisters who have spare change to spend on the soundtrack album.)

What to make of this disconnect? Would it have been redundant to hear the music incessantly name dropped? At least when Tarantino is subjecting you to a remedial book report about some slice of “obscure popular” culture, he has the decency to let you listen to the topic of discussion in the background. But now look what I’ve been led to do — defend Tarantino’s most annoying vice! (If I’m never heard from again it’s no doubt because I’ve ceased to exist, resulting from this commission of intellectual suicide.)

I hate not liking a popular movie since I style myself a champion of populist cinema but Juno feels disingenuous from start to finish. (Not unlike the ubiquitous description of “Diablo Cody” as the exotic-dancer-turned-author, even though the reason she became a stripper for a year was in order to write a book about it!) For a 2007 movie more honest about pregnancy, try all the other ones: Knocked Up; 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days; and Waitress.

IN BRUGES

Could the trailers have been more misleading? Who would have thought that In Bruges would be reflective if not meditative, unrushed but never slow, humorous and heartfelt? I have Jeri alone to thank for apprising me of this film’s unsuspected virtues.

Trailers are notorious for being misrepresenting their products, but could the reviews, even positive ones, have been more misleading? Ed Caesar calls McDonagh “the Tarantino of theatre”, and Ray Greene insists that In Bruges is “very 1992″:

That, of course, was the year Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs played Sundance and established both the enduring and quixotic career of its writer/director and the genre In Bruges does its best to walk in the footsteps of, though with a European gait.

Only James Rocchi observes that it “turns into something different from the standard-issue post-Tarantino film”, calling it the “post-post-Tarantino” film — but in the same sentence he still compares it positively to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Even on the other side of opinion, Nate Bell offers a negative comparison not only to Tarantino but to the rightfully discredited Guy Ritchie and Troy Duffy. (Ouch!) But as one who basically has contempt for Tarantino’s screenplays, I find all such comparisons to In Bruges qualitatively false.

Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s playwriting background definitely comes through in his obsessive foreshadowing, but considering how many movies have promising beginnings only to fall apart in the third act, it’s wonderful to see a movie that feels like it is all of a piece. The only possible criticism is that In Bruges is too tightly scripted, too artfully crafted. Some of the dialogue can be anticipated a moment before it is said, but this is due to the characters being so well defined rather than the author’s voice dominating: on this as on all other counts, comparisons to Tarantino are completely unfounded.

Even an explicit reference to a classic 70s picture, which in Tarantino is always belabored by the characters but has minimal relevance to the film they are in, here is mentioned only in passing but is integral to McDonagh’s picture. The reference to Roeg’s Don’t Look Now is a throwaway line in a scene whose primary purpose is to establish the personality of a new character, rather than recite a transcript of fourth-grade film criticism.

In an age of movies often not much more than isolated vignettes strung together, it’s a delight to see minor characters actually used rather than discarded as soon as they’re introduced (the Canadians in the restaurant, the jealous ex-boyfriend). But lest the director be accused of tying everything together too neatly, he gives us the elephantine family who provide comic relief and need not reappear again. Yet even their presence is not completely gratuitous, for they draw attention to the difficulty of climbing the spiral staircase which features later — just like everything else in the first act, from Brendan Gleeson pointing his finger at Colin Farrell from the tower, to Farrell’s own flashback.

The casting of Farrell against type is the revelation of the year, like Sean Connery as a bumbling professor horrified by his son using a machine gun in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Who knew that Farrell could be not only so good, but so sympathetic as well? I felt like I had never seen this actor before, and I guess I haven’t. Even Ralph Fiennes playing the cousin, if not brother, of Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast, is unexpectedly a sympathetic character rather than the obvious bad guy. Brendan Gleeson of course is the heart of film, and it is impossible not to love him.

In Bruges constantly toes the line between humor and pathy, a devastating emotional cocktail. The film is a macrocosm of its restaurant scene in which Farrell tells an off-color joke about Belgium, the scene quickly turns tragic, but after a short suspense turns comic again, then ends in violence. But despite Fiennes’ repeated verbal promises of a “shoot out”, there is no ultimate face off. The violence in McDonagh’s Bruges may be graphic but it is never gratuitous.

IRON MAN

If it is axiomatic that heroes in tights look great on the page but terrible on the screen, then Iron Man was the one exception who was always destined to look better in live action than in ink. Shiny metallic surfaces are difficult to portray in two dimensions without becoming messy, and Iron Man has no supernatural visual elements, like the Hulk, that might strain credulity in live action. Neither does Batman, of course, but his best medium is animation where he can be depicted as a moving shadow, while animation is Iron Man’s worst medium, because the suit not only looks unconvincing but also bends from frame to frame.

Forty-five years after his first appearance, moviemaking technology has finally caught up with the promise inherent in the Iron Man concept. Visually, this is the best comics-to-film translation of a superhero costume yet attempted, and without qualification the best Marvel origin movie ever made — only X2 and Spider-Man 2 can equal it on the Marvel roster.

There was no way Marvel Studios was going to compete with The Dark Knight this summer, but they have managed to do just that by giving us the Anti-Batman: bright and colorful. The origin of Iron Man even follows the same path as Batman Begins, but with the elements slightly shuffled. At the beginning of their journeys, both Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne find themselves themselves imprisoned on the other side of the world but emerged from their ordeals with a newfound purpose that they put into action upon their return home. Both spend lots of time in caves building, with the help of wise older assistants, the first versions of their suits — scenes always absent from superpowered hero movies but apparently crucial for those without powers. Both face the corporate intrigue of attempted takeovers of their companies by rival board members, as well as trusted mentors who may not have been totally honest with them. And of course, both have personal assistants without whom they couldn’t get through the day.

So what’s the crucial difference? Their personalities couldn’t be more different: Stark lives the billionaire playboy lifestyle that everyone believes Wayne does, but Stark enjoys it and, though he also lives in the shadow of his father, does not suffer from an ounce of Wayne’s psychological torment. The star of the show is Downey’s deadpan charisma, without which we might get antsy during the wait for the Red and Gold armor to be finally unveiled. But the movie’s humor is not just doing the job of a warm-up comedian, nor is it the product of on-set afterthoughts.

In this day and age I thought it would be impossible to make a weapons manufacturer a likable character, not to mention a hero. A second-act change of heart would be essential but by then it would be too late for the audience’s sympathy. I never read Iron Man comics because Stark always struck me as too slick and too cool for school (and I never liked his dirty mustache), but by investing the character with a sense of self-irony, Favreau and Downey have made even Stark’s braggadocio endearing and you can’t help but like him from scene one. Even after his personal epiphany, Stark’s refusal to take himself too seriously still does work by neutralizing any direction towards preachiness the script might have taken in other hands — just imagine Arriaga’s Iron Man. Sure, Stark still learns that with great wealth and firepower comes great responsibility, but mercifully nobody articulates it that piously.

Somewhat unexpectedly, Iron Man is also the best casted superhero movie since Batman Begins. It’s not Jeff Bridges’ fault that his voice is forever inextricable from The Dude, but his bald/bearded combo does a lot to defamiliarize the actor. I’m not a Gwyneth Paltrow fan but her Pepper Potts surpasses 45 years of accumulated workplace sexual tension generated by Miss Moneypenny. The conflicted emotions in Paltrow’s face during the dance scene, moreso than the subsequent balcony scene, actually made me feel her heartache. Given the audience investment in her character, it is all the more to the filmmakers’ credit that Miss Potts’ relationship with Mr. Stark ends on the perfect note.

Not to say the movie doesn’t push the boundaries of comic book fare. A one-night stand early on is only implied but later on the film’s true “sex scene” provocatively inverts the male/female roles. Stark calls his female assistant to his garage where she finds him shirtless and reclining. At his insistence that he can’t do it without her, she tentatively inserts her hand into Stark’s narrow chest cavity, feeling for a highly sensitive wire that she can’t find without his guidance. The slightest movement of her hand affects his whole body and when she pulls it out her hand is covered in fluid. But rather than out of place, this 25th anniversary nod to the insertion of a VHS tape into James Woods’ abdominal vagina feels entirely appropriate to Iron Man’s Cronenbergian integration of man and machine.

The scene is one of the freshest elements not inspired by Warren Ellis’ updated origin for the character in 2004. It’s literally the only Iron Man story I’ve read in my whole life but I recommend it, thanks largely to the art of Adi Granov whose designs were the basis for the film’s suits. The only shortcoming of the film was the climactic battle which should have lasted a few more minutes.

The best trailer before the movie was Will Smith’s Hancock, which should prove yet again that most original superhero movies are better than adaptations of comic books. Iron Man, however, is one of the few exceptions to that rule. I can’t help wondering if Favreau could have made the Spider-Man franchise even better than Raimi, who marginalized Spidey’s most distinctive comic book trait: his indomitable commitment to wise-cracking. With the only lighthearted superhero adaptations until now being the Fantastic Four, it’s great to see a good movie finally fill that niche.

LEATHERHEADS

Boring!

Clooney promised a fun look at the early days of a sport — Semi-Pro without the dumber jokes — but served up a slightly more humorous version of Flags of Our Fathers.

This is particularly disappointing since it wasn’t just the trailers which promised a break from politics but Clooney himself in his recent New Yorker profile:

“Leatherheads” is “not designed to change the world—it’s just designed to be good fun,” Clooney said, seeming to anticipate critical disappointment. “I was afraid of becoming ‘that issues guy’”—because of “Syriana” and “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

“I wanted to do something completely different. I want to be a director, and if you’re an issues-guy director then the issues change and you’re out, that’s it, you’re done.”

According to the same article, Clooney “significantly rewrote a fifteen-year-old script—although the Writers Guild of America did not award him a formal share of the credit, to his immense private annoyance”. Seeing what the script looked like before he refashioned it would tell us whether his fear of becoming “that issues guy” was a pre- or post-production epiphany.

As for the final product, Krasinski is charming in the Office but somehow manages to be blander than Ann and lack any charisma on the big screen.

Zellweger should have knocked this part out of the park but she sounds like she can’t figure out if she should commit to the hightened mannerism of Down with Love or reign it in, so she just comes across as half-hearted.

I don’t blame her though because the script’s language is difficult to grasp. Not the mild swearing for comic relief (how many times can you repeat a “can’t say that on the radio” joke? It does not get funnier every time) but the expressions in dialogue that sound too 21st century to fit the attempted throwback style.

I like Clooney but he was better in The Peacemaker (he’s probably still trying to atone for saving New York from nuclear terrorism, Team America style). This is Clooney’s least focused acting since his pre-O Brother days, which can probably be chalked up to him being preoccupied with directing duties. Unfortunately this trade off didn’t pay off: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Good Night and Good Luck are still his best efforts.

Back to Back: CYBORG vs. THE REAL GIRL

I caught a one-showing-only screening of Park Chan-wook’s latest, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK! last night, and I’m sorry to say I caught myself falling asleep a few times. After his vengeance trilogy he’s obviously trying to prove he can do the opposite, so it is very cute, earnestly whimsical, and candy colored: Amelie’s Science of Sleep, if you will.  Several scenes will put a smile on your face — “Not psy-cho: cy-borg!” — sometimes from the supporting cast of mental patients, and it is sterilely beautiful to look at from start to finish, but except for a few moments of genius I just couldn’t care too much about it.

I’m a Cyborg boasts some truly memorable Billy Liar-inspired fantasy sequences but the movie suffered from comparison with Lars and the Real Girl which I happened to see for the first time the night before. It’s bascially the same movie except much more humorous, insightful, and emotionally engaging at every point.

In fact, I think Lars had four of the best performances of the year — all in one movie.  Has that ever happened before?

Forget Ryan Gosling for a moment; Emily Mortimer (why do I love her so much?), Paul Schneider, and Patricia Clarkson have the difficult job of spending most of the movie double-acting: as their characters and simultaneously as their characters act in front of Lars. None of these actors wimped out by just acting as if Lars’ doll was a real person. I was very moved by the way their outward, upbeat behavior toward Lars never eclipsed the undercurrent of deep saddness and empathy necessarily behind it.

The final result, when everyone in the theater is chocking back tears despite their cognitive dissent, is a practical demonstration of what it is that movies do. It should not work. But it does. And it does so without resorting to manipulation, because the credibilty of the characters is completely earned.

Though late, Lars instantly entered my Top Ten; I can’t think of a more humane movie in 2007.

SERAPHIM FALLS (2007)

Seraphim Falls is the feature film debut of David Von Ancken, a journeyman television director who in the past five years has directed episodes for a dozen different shows. In this case he wrote the screenplay and it is marked by both efficiency and innovation, especially in the form of Pierce Brosnan’s inventiveness with his available resources as he is being tracked by a Liam Neeson bent on revenge. Neeson and Brosnan are evenly matched opponents: both demonstrate ruthlessness in some situations yet both are entirely sympathetic. The only element too conventional for me was the inevitable partial flashblacks that surely allude to an inciting incident that will not be revealed in full until the ultimate confrontation.

Fortunately, however, the action begins immediately without unecessary introductions: the gunshot commencing the chase rings out within seconds of the opening shot of the film. It begins firmly in Jeremiah Johnson territory, with both men wearing huge animal skins and surrounded by snow and rivers, and their descent down the mountain continues until the final scene on the cracked desert floor without a drop of water in sight and most of their clothes now shed.

Like the pursuit, the film is never lethargic but briskly paced without being rushed. There is a constant sense of urgency that keeps it always in the chase register without decelerating into a mere tracking procedural. Unlike most movies in which characters pass through a variety of situations over a long distance, something actually changes at every encounter. One almost gets the sense that too much is always happening, but it is a refreshing alternative from movies whose characters emerge from each new situation just as they entered it.

The film is not gratuitously violent but it stands out among westerns simply because it does not flinch from the methods of these two Civil War veterans trained to survive. But its manner is so lacking in sensationalism that even its more surprising moments feel natural rather than exploitative. It is surely the best western since Open Range and would be the best of 2007 unless you count The Assassination of Jesse James and No Country for Old Men as variations of the genre. At any rate it is superior to Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma, which is now commendable only for its score and Ben Foster’s jacket. Seraphim Falls is one of my new favorites of 2007 and has my unqualified recommendation.

CLOVERFIELD

As an anti-Lost activist I was never that interested in Cloverfield and almost didn’t go because I was afraid the found-object recording was going to be an insufferable gimmick, but that image of the Statue of Liberty’s head crashing into the street got me in the door and I have to admit I loved every second of it!  It totally worked and I thought it was one of the most suspenseful films I’ve seen in a while.

Perhaps it was my non-existent expectations that gave me the opposite experience of nearly everyone else who seemed to be driven mad with anticipation by Cloverfield’s teasing marketing campaign. Maybe because I hadn’t spent a spare second of the past six months wondering what the nature of the monster might be, I never felt frustrated by the first act’s introduction of the five main characters and their relationship to each other.

Even so, none of the characters are really important except for one. The only crucial bit of casting, fufilled perfectly by T.J. Miller, is the role of the amateur cameraman. We only catch a glimpse of him twice but it is his naive narration throughout the film that really carries it. His enthusiasm excuses his intrusiveness as a cameraman, but since he obviously isn’t the real cinematographer Miller’s job is hardly more than an on-set voice-over. An actor might consider it a thankless job since he follows the other actors everywhere to interact with them, but must always be kept out of frame. But his is the best acting in the film since he must convey his entire personality through his voice without reliance on gesture or facial expression.

The problem with World Trade Center was that it was too glossy, too polished, and any piece of amateur footage from 9/11 on YouTube is infinitely more interesting.  JJ Abrams & Co. apparently recognized that fact in establishing the concept, and Matt Reeves has made a film that is in many ways more “pure” than Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.

Perhaps the negative reports of Redacted had soured my expectations for Cloverfield but aside from the formal conceit they couldn’t be farther apart. From what I can gather (because it hasn’t yet been released here) the gravitas of Meaning seeping through every frame of Redacted undermines its artiface of spontaneity and practically sinks the film, while Cloverfield pretends to eschew Deeper Meaning at every turn. None of the characters even mention 9/11, but its pretense of obliviousness is the agent that activates its inherent subtexts.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

I saw No Country for a second time last night and I appreciated it much more than five weeks ago. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it the first time but now it’s in my Top 2 of the year — I just can’t decide if it should dethrone my personal fave, Tell No One.

I think No Country is better than There Will Be Blood though, which should be no embarrassment to PT Anderson. It’s only his fifth film compared to the Coens’ twelfth (or tenth, for purists who don’t count their work-for-hire Intollerable Cruetly or remake The Ladykillers).

Great as it is, There Will Be Blood has too many weak links, primarily by the name of Paul Dano but also in the bowling alley scene, while No Country takes literally no missteps. Not to mention that it’s visually beautiful: Virtually every color in the film is gold or green, or a sickly mixture of both, and even Chigurh’s face becomes a jaundiced yellow.

(Many SPOILERS following)

After the second screening it is finally obvious to me Anton Chigurh represents Death qua Death, moreso even than a generic Evil personified (though death is an evil). One of the key exchanges is when the accountant asks, “Are you going to kill me?” and Chigurh answers, “That depends. Do you see me?” He even calls himself a “tool” in the same scene.

Unfortunately I was not watching it through this lens last night so now I need to see it a third time! I had given up making sense of it after the first time, so I just “experienced it” last night and I’m glad I did because it’s probably the last time I’ll be able to enjoy it on an exclusively literal level. But that just goes to show how perfectly the movie works as both a suspenseful cat and mouse procedural and a touching meditation on death. Chigurh is not either human or supernatural, he is always both.

The Coens have their cake and eat it throughout the film, and the cynic who claims Chigurh can’t represent Death because we see him taking bullets out of his leg might as well say Bergman’s Death is a real human because we see him playing chess with Max von Sydow. Even Carson Wells says, “Do you have any idea how goddamn crazy you are?” To which Chigurh replies, “You mean the nature of this conversation?” The nature of the conversation is crazy because he is speaking to Death himself. But Carson says, “I mean the nature of you.” No Country for Old Men reminds us that all death is a product of evil, even death of natural causes, and Ed Tom Bell in particular reminds us to be outraged that death should exist at all.

But lest we think we are encountering Death on a new scale, more perverse than previous incarnations, Uncle Ellis reminds us that “What you got ain’t nothin’ new.” Like Sheriff Bell and the local sheriff in El Paso, every generation romanticizes the past and thinks its own problems are qualitatively different than those encountered by their predecessors. But actually “This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s comin’. It ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity.”

Trying to stop What’s Comin’ is the vanity of Llewelyn, because you can never see it till it’s too late. He thinks he can hold off death by anticipating it, as if with his binoculars: in his last words on screen he says he’s “lookin’ for what’s comin’.” He means the money but the woman by the pool says wisely about What’s Comin’, “Yeah, but no one ever sees that.”

Even though the El Paso sheriff laments the cultural decline exemplified by “green hair and bones in their noses,” he admits that “none of that explains your man though”:

Roscoe: He is just a goddamn homicidal lunatic, Ed Tom.
Bell: I’m not sure he’s a lunatic.
Roscoe: Well, what would you call him?
Bell: I don’t know. Sometimes I think he’s pretty much a ghost.
Roscoe: He’s real, alright.
Bell: Oh yes.

Roscoe said he’s real as a contradiction to Ed Tom’s ghost comment, but they are both correct: He is a spirit and he is real.

The Coens have made an American Seventh Seal on the fiftieth anniversary of Bergman’s. When asked just how dangerous Chigurh is, Carson remarks, “Compared to what, the bubonic plague?” Black Death is exactly what Chigurh is, as the Coens are comparing their Ultimo Hombre to the pandemic killer in Bergman’s film. Chigurh even sports a Prince Valiant haircut to reinforce the medieval association, his challenger a sheriff instead of a knight. In biblical times he’s described as the Angel of Death and in later times as the Grim Reaper, so “in the parlance of our times” we might call him the Serial Killer.

Everyone who sees him dies. When Llewelyn claims to have seen Chigurh, Carson is surprised: “You’ve seen him, and you’re not dead?” But Llewelyn never saw him with his own eyes, he only saw a reflection of him in a store window at night. Everyone in the drug store is spared only because Chigurh creates a diversion so none of them see him. The two boys on bicycles do see him but at their age Death has no relevance to them. (Instead Chigurh leaves them squabbling over a blood-soaked hundred-dollar bill, setting into motion a fatal cycle like the one that has just concluded before us.)

The only two middle-aged people whom we know Chigurh does not kill are the man who wins the coin toss and the fat Desert Aire manager who “ain’t at liberty to give out no information about our residents.” She is the anomaly of the movie and resists Death through sheer force of will: “Did you not hear me? We can’t give out no information.” It seems odd that Chigurh would be intimidated by her because she is clearly afraid of him, but unlike every other bloke who treats him like an ordinary man, she sees right through him. She and Carson are the only two characters who appreciate his true nature, even if she just intuits it somehow and Carson is the only one who comprehends it fully:

“You don’t understand. You can’t make a deal with him. Even if you gave him the money he’d still kill you. He’s a peculiar man. You could even say that he has principles. Principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that. He’s not like you. He’s not even like me.”

Death transcends human affairs like Llewelyn transcends the animals he hunts. Chigurh kills men like cattle, and immediately after we see him use his compressed-air bolt-gun for the first time, saying “Would you hold still, please?” the film cuts straight to an image of a deer through the crosshairs of Llewelyns rifle, as he whispers “Hold still.” Llewelyn’s shot injures the animal but doesn’t kill it, and he sees its spilt blood on the dirt, just as Chigurh later tracks the blood of an injured Llewelyn on the street. That’s when Llewelyn fires on Chigurh but it’s a glance shot, like Sheriff Bell’s story about Charlie Walser: “it’s a glance-shot and ricochets around and comes back, hits Charlie in the shoulder.” Like Verbal Kint says, “How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?”

When Llewelyn finally chats with Chigurh and it is, crucially, over the phone. Sight, yet again, is the key:

Chigurh: You need to come see me.
Llewelyn: Who is this?
Chigurh: You know who it is. You need to talk to me.
Llewelyn: I don’t need to talk to you.
Chigurh: I think you do.

There is no escaping the inevitable. Geography is irrelevant:

Chigurh: Do you know where I’m going?
Llewelyn: Yeah, I know where you’re going.
Chigurh: Alright.
Llewelyn: You know she won’t be there.
Chigurh: It doesn’t make any difference where she is.

Death’s march is inexorable, as Carson tries telling him:

Llewelyn: He won’t find me again.
Carson: Not that way.
Llewelyn: Not any way.

Llewelyn can’t hear what Carson is saying. He persists in treating Death as if he’s just any ol’ person.

ED TOM and ANTON

Ed Tom Bell’s introductory narration is a sleight of hand. His story about the boy who killed the fourteen-year-old girl is not primarily about the incomprehensibility of the crime, it’s about the boy’s attitude in the face of death: “Said he knew he was going to hell. Be there in about fifteen minutes. I don’t know what to make of that. I surely don’t.”

When Ed Tom says, “I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand,” it might sound like it’s the degree of evil out there he doesn’t understand, but he had just said it’s not that which he’s afraid of: “The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it.”

What he is afraid of, what he doesn’t want to meet, what he doesn’t understand, is death. The subject is provided in the preceding sentence: “I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand.”

Carson may be cocksure of himself but he understands Death, which is why he’s more scared than anyone else of Chigurh when he meets him. Llewelyn doesn’t understand Death which is why he’s so foolhardy in threatening Chigurh: “Yeah, I’m goin’ to bring you somethin’ all right. I’ve decided to make you a special project of mine. You ain’t goin’ to have to look for me at all.”

Ed Tom begins the film not understanding Chigurh, afraid of what he doesn’t understand, and therefore perhaps too cautious. He is a passive character through the entire film, just following the footsteps of Llewellyn and Chigurh, and moments too late to protect Llewelyn. It’s not till after this that he finally pushes his chips forward to go out and meet what he doesn’t understand. When he approaches the motel room door with the possibility that Death awaits him on the other side, he has finally decided “to put his soul at hazard” and say, “okay, I’ll be part of this world.”

He crosses the police tape that warns DO NOT CROSS and is faced with a choice between two doors. He chooses one and Death is not waiting behind it. Chigurh was hiding behind the door in the room next door. (The vent wasn’t big enough for him to have escaped through it. The grille had been unscrewed by Llewelyn who was intending to hide the money in the vent.) The duality of the choice is reinforced by Ed Tom’s double-shadow cast by the headlights onto the wall.

So Sheriff Bell wins the bet and earns his chips back. After searching the room for Chigurh he sees the coin on the floor. It’s his lucky coin: he has won the coin toss and gets back everything he’s been putting up his whole life without knowing it.