Joel & Ethan Coen
Non è un paese per vecchi

The essence of making great cinema is all here: I'm watching this film for the tenth time and I'm curious, on the edge of my seat, eager with impatience, almost hungry to see how the scene will unfold. I can never get enough of it, the viewing. Each time I discover a different detail, each time I weigh its infinite nuances, the framing choices, the editing decisions, even the sighs of the actors. I dig deeper, and it's as if I'm seeing many things for the first time: each viewing is matched with a film if not entirely, at least a bit different. I rediscover the plot with different eyes, and those gruesome deaths for me are new deaths, new traumas. The power of art brings those people back to life and kills them again, infinitely, in a time sequence that is cyclical, a vertical dizziness.

There is an evil spirit hovering over the events of this film. A sense of chaos, an inexorable entropy, an icy deity that disposes of men's lives at will. Men whipped by violence, scrambling in the mud of society, dying of thirst, alone and abandoned, gritting their teeth to survive the bullets they collect on their bodies. Men who make do with patching up their wounds, medicating themselves with makeshift means or stealing drugs to ease the pain, overcome lacerations, and continue to wage war, killing each other without the slightest reconsideration.

There are no good guys or heroes. There are the law enforcement officers who assume the role of sad, late witnesses, bent by old age or senile from youth. Incompetent commentators who arrive at crime scenes always too late and can do nothing but spin their useless laments for a world that has clearly slipped out of their hands. Moralists whose adherence to the rules leads to nothing, to a miserable end, as emphasized by Anton Chigurh. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell's stories offer no comfort, if anything, they certify the amorality of the world.

Then there's the everyman citizen, Llewelyn. Cunning and cool almost like his enemy, he doesn't act against the law but simply ignores its moral dimension, with the simple intention of slyly making money without getting into too much trouble. A frontier adventurer who doesn't even empathize with his wife and proves adept with weapons and deceit. He does not believe in societal values, he pretends to do so not to shatter the illusion of his poor and naïve wife (the honest citizens). He is prey but also predator, not shying away when there's killing to be done. He is the American dream, the pioneer, the veteran implicitly supported by institutions, a cowboy racing toward his own self-destruction that no one can stop, in the name of a supposed freedom that is ultimately just mutual damage.

Finally, the perverse charm of evil. The genius, the complete indifference to the value of others' life. Without any ethical strings, Chigurh moves swiftly and undisturbed, picking up clues, identifying weaknesses in the established order and exploiting them for his own personal gain. Psychopath, alien, icy dispenser of death, we follow his movements from an alarmingly close point of view. The coin that chooses for him reveals his value system, which in the end is not as unfathomable as it might seem. Anton's moves are not crazy or absurd, they simply represent the extreme consequence of a utilitarian mindset that identifies from time to time the most economical and straightforward choice for himself, the most logical path to amplify his chances of success. If the life of others has no value, why shouldn’t Anton dispose of it? When someone’s death is not necessary for his purposes, he doesn't decide, he lets the coin do so. Those lives don't exist, they are beyond his existential horizon.

In this deadly struggle, however, it is not only men who decide the future with their actions, there are no heroes, the world is profaned, raped by greed, and devoid of any principle of meaning or order. The collective monstrosity born of this disorder becomes the true enemy, a colossal, protean, almost invincible octopus. Every moment is a good one to die, to lose everything, or to make it. Details are always crucial, but not enough to ensure salvation.

The great metaphorical tangle never disintegrates into abstract ramblings, but takes the form of a dispute between refined minds attempting the most cunning move, always through observation and manipulation of every minute detail: the value of intelligence is the only one that endures, yet bent to purely personal ends.

Then, after the tumult of synapses, the stabs of pain, the vomit and blood, the blameless corpses in gloomy streets or anonymous hotels, after all this obscenity, the rules of this diabolical country demand an additional tribute. It is the malevolent deity from before, the entropy that breaks in and demands a pledge in human lives. Everything was useless, and there is no peace even for the innocents, the poor wife who must bear to the end the consequences of the husband’s arrogance and obstinacy, whose greed and recklessness bring pain and horror even beyond the ultimate limit of his own life.

This is a film that never exhausts itself, never wears out, never ages, never tires, because it perfectly combines form, the austerity of geometries, the precision of directorial gazes, and an expressive force that leaves one astonished, a chilling violence expressed through faces and bodies, objects and scenarios. It almost seems like walking with ours on the wooden planks of those shabby hotels, fearing any creaks, worried about not making noise. We wash our wounds in the tub water and feel relief, every drop of blood shed costs us a bit of pain, and we can't take our eyes off Javier Bardem’s demonic face. His canister haunts us, his eyes flicker in the rooms with terrifying calm. The calmness of the devil. And it’s almost absurd, yet ultimately brilliant, that somehow he is the true protagonist, because Llewelyn has no narrative privilege over Chigurh.

The Coen’s eye itself is found to be devoid of prejudice, observing disenchantedly the daily butchery that is of the world and increasingly struggling to find a meaning, a grip, except for the sad, ancient yet current one, which sees the strongest winning. And it's always a zero-sum game.