When I run into great art, I tend to overlook the technical mastery that [generally] lies beneath. It’s only later, after I’ve gone back again and again to search for some higher truth embedded within it, that I start to notice the little things which separate This from Everything Else. I’ve started to notice those things in No Country for Old Men.
The film, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, mostly tells the story of Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a West Texan who stumbles across a drug deal gone bad in the middle of the desert. Moss finds shell casings and heroin and bodies — and $2.4 million, which he promptly steals. Of course, the bad guys want their money back and so they start hunting Moss. The movie follows him, his terrifying pursuer known as Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), and Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), an elderly lawman struggling to come to terms with the violence of a world he no longer understands.
It’s often been called a perfect film, which is a lofty claim.
But then you realize that many of the people saying this have spent their entire lives making and criticizing film. And even if you disagree with that claim, and even if you don’t put much faith in the Academy Awards, it’s hard to ignore that the movie won Best Picture, Best Director(s), Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay back in 2008 — and that it did so with a production budget of just $25 million (meaning they could’ve made…
