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The lack of a soundtrack that fills the scenes with silence, the very few words spoken and none of them useless, the enormity of the theme addressed, give this film an aura of solemnity that makes me respect it like few others. If this film were a man, it would be a silent and wise old man.
Obviously, "No Country for Old Men" is just a film. And what I will write is just what it conveyed to me, the result of my readings, and especially my convictions.
First of all, what strikes you at the beginning is that it appears to be an insignificant film. All it would take is buying a few cars, renting a motel, and little else, and we could shoot it ourselves without too much effort. If there weren't some essential lines, the film would be a banal thief chase, and the simultaneous hunt for the killer, a villain as unsettling as few others. Even the lines are not at all contrived.
It is a film made of many small pebbles. After a couple of hours, however, you realize that with the pebbles, the Coens have built a castle. A masterpiece based on nothing.
From this point forward, I will use the actors' real names: Tommy, Javier, and Josh.
Let's clarify immediately: the real protagonist of the film is Josh not Javier, who is an important but secondary figure. Josh is the center of the film, the one who represents the ordinary man, what is elegantly called an anti-hero, less elegantly called "half a figure", the half-man, neither good nor bad, of which the world is full.
The pivotal scene is the one where Josh refuses to go look for water for the poor dying man in the Jeep. All his troubles start from this act of selfishness, even more so than from the suitcase.
That evening, back home, not being bad, he is obviously overcome with guilt. His good side comes to light. If he had been thoroughly bad and had rejected the remorse, he wouldn't have returned to the scene of the massacre and would still have a chance to save himself (the transmitter in the suitcase is still in play). In the same way, if in the morning he had been thoroughly good, and had looked for water, there would have been no guilt in the evening. Josh, instead, returns to the scene of the crime. The VIN number of his car ultimately checkmates him. The rest will be just a slow wait for death.
Josh is not bad; he is just a mundane egotist and because of this, Javier knows that he will win "because he thought of saving only himself". A phrase of the highest morality - evangelical.
The final monologue of Tommy Lee Jones is the masterpiece within the masterpiece. For its conciseness, Jones resembles the great Spencer Tracy. The Coens said: "Only a very few actors could have done it that way." Only a great man can give you a lesson without slipping into a sermon.
Thus concludes a masterpiece, one of the few films appreciated simultaneously by the public, critics, and the Academy.
"No Country for Old Men" is not a moralistic film, as it transcends the simplistic duality of good-bad, even if good and evil are distinct - as in few other films. The immoral Javier survives just as the moral Tommy, and the amoral Josh ends up badly. Therefore, it is not a film that morally invites us to be good.
Instead, it is a moral film, because it invites us to take a stance - and here lies its greatness. It tells us to stop staying in the middle of the road and choose a side to stand on, right or wrong as it may be. The essence of the film is in the memorable phrase of Javier in the chilling counter scene: "CHOOSE!".
A film as anti-moralistic as it is moral.
In the novel that inspired the film, at a certain point, the Book of Revelation appears. The passage from Revelation that this film brought to my mind is: "You are neither cold nor hot. You are lukewarm. And I will spit you out". (Rev 3:16).
Watching this film was a whip to my mediocrity.
For what it gave to me, among the greatest of all time - even if I know it is naive to say so about a film that is only 5 years old.
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