No Country for Old Men

Peter Jeon

I only thought that it was just another boring movie that talks about a moral,
when I was first encountered with the title of this Academys Award winning-movie,
No Country for Old Men. However, when I watched the movie, I realized that my first
impression was completely wrong. I was kept in a great suspense for the
entire time I was watching the movie. As I watched the movie for multiple
times, I realized the brilliance of the directors: Joen and Ethan Coen. The
directors create great tension in the movie through the techniques of its form and its
content.
The movie begins with a murder. Anton Chigurh is a psychopath and a serial
killer. He kills people without any emotions and does not think about the reason of
killing them. A young sheriff arrests Chigurh, but he easily kills the sheriff by
strangling him with handcuffs tied on his wrists. He takes his air gun back
to the lonely Texas highway, and kills a random driver to take the car.
Then, the main character is introduced. Llewellyn Moss, a war
veteran from the Vietnam War, accidently finds people dead on the desert
while he was hunting. He carefully creeps to the scene. Truck-full of drug
was found, which told Moss that the drug deal of Mexican Cartel must had
gone wrong. From few miles away from the crime scene, Moss find a man
dead under tree, and beside him was a black case. When he opened it up,
he found 2 million dollars in bundles of hundred-dollar bill. However,
Moss did not notice a transponder hidden inside the case. And, it was
Anton Chigurh who had a signal receiver for these 2 million dollars. Then,
the psychopath killer starts the hunt after Llewellyn Moss.
When an individual think about an action movie, he or she would
imagine a scene with big explosions, gun shootings, and a hero killing
enemies with stylish fighting moves. The background music would be fast,
loud, with hard beatings of drums. No Country for Old Men also has a plot
that would appear in an action movie: a killer going after a man and both
of them trying to kill each other. However, this movie does not have
components of usual action movies. Coen brothers still use techniques that
arouse thrills to people watching people, causing even more tension than
any other action movies.
First technique to raise the tension was the characterization of
Anton Chigurh. Javier Bardiem plays the role of a psychopath very
successfully. This successful characterization makes Chigurh a very
dangerous man, so that it gives a feeling that Moss could just die in
anytime by him like any other characters he killed. Anton Chigurh is called
as a Psychopath for a clear reason. He kills countless number of
characters in the movie. At one scene, Chigurh goes into a small mart
attached to the gas station. The old man, the owner of the gas station,
casually asks him where he is from. Chigurh, however, takes the question
seriously and decides to play a game deciding the fate of the old man. He
flips the coin and tells the old man to call it. Old man is now afraid and
refuses to call for the coin, but the Chigurh never gives up and continues
to say Call it, each time more threatening. Luckily, the old man wins the
game and Chigurh leaves the mart after saying well done. And whenever
Chigurh kills them, he has no emotion on his face as if murdering is just
normal. This portrait of death and murder makes Mosss life seem so
vulnerable that he might get killed in any moment in the movie.
The plot also participates in the tension build-up of the movie. As the movie
progresses, both Moss and Chigurh get injured. From the fight between each other,
Moss loses pieces of flesh on his side by Chigurh with his air gun. Moss
also shot a shotgun onto Chigurhs right leg. Both of the characters seem
to go near the death. Their bodies are getting destroyed, but they never
give up for their objectives. As the audiences see the blood and scars on
the characters, audiences realize that the plot is rising up to the climax
and also to the possibility of death of the character. This plot effectively
assists in tense atmosphere of the movie.
Coen brothers way of using the sound is so amazing in how it
improves the effectiveness of tension. There is no background music in
this movie. It is hard to imagine how a thriller does not have an exciting
music. However, this choice allows the audience to concentrate in other
factors of the movie: both visible factors and audible factors. One scene
clearly shows the effectiveness of no music. After Moss ran away from
Chigurh for the first time, he found another hotel to hide himself. He still
was not aware of the transponder inside the money case, and Chigurh finds the
whereabouts of him again. The scene concentrates on the gap between the floor and
the door of the room Moss is hiding in. then, sound of footsteps on a wooden floor
faintly starts to be heard. Moss turns off the light in order to visualize the shadow in
front of the door, takes out his shotgun, and stares at the door. The footstep slowly
comes towards the door. Then, a shadow appears at the gap, and stops there for few
seconds. Moss slowly loads the gun. This scene is probably the tensest moment in
the movie. The figure, however, just moves past the door. Then, with a clicking
sound, the light on the hallway turns off. Now, Moss has no vision of where Chigurh
is. Moss shoots the gun at the door, and escapes through the window. The absence of
the music in this scene has helped the audience to concentrate into the movie.
Likewise, a horror movie uses silence as a tool to tense up the atmosphere in the
movie. Sudden occurrence of a ghostly figures in a horror movie from a complete
science surprises the audience and creates fear. The audience expects that
something surprising will happen soon. If the movie contained background music, it
would not been able to produce same effectiveness as now. This phenomenon
continues for the entire movie, except for the Mexican song at the middle just for a
comic relief. Absence of music is brilliant tool to raise the tension of the movie.
The ending makes it seem that all the struggles of the two characters are
futile. A drug cartel, not Chigurh, kills moss, and the movie does not even show the
scene of him getting killed. Also, Chigurh just gets into a car accident. There are
criticisms on the movie that audiences cannot understand the ending of the movie.
However, the battle between two men: Llewellyn Moss and Anton Chigurh, is mind-
blowing and almost suffocates the audience by the suspense of the movie. Cone
brothers are very successful in achieving the purpose of the movie and create one of
the best thrillers.