In the Beginning…
The film opens with a montage of Texas landscapes a visual accompaniment to the monologue narrated by Sheriff Bell. The literal visual imagery is stripped of all almost all movement; looking almost like still images. Most significantly, the only signs of human life are some wind-driven turbines, crooked telephone lines nearly on the point of falling over, and some fencing. Meanwhile, the Sheriff recalls a time when some Texas lawmen didn’t even carry guns and when a young man’s thrill killing of a single 14-year-old girl was so deranged an act of deviant human behavior that the it leaves Bell so shaken to the core than he can’t even wrap his head around it. The symbolic imagery is the cemented by a little directorial trick in which the final shot of a fencing seemingly protecting a completely flat and empty plain stretching off into infinity slowly pans leftward to reveal the very first signs of blood-based life: a deputy slowly leading a handcuffed man toward a waiting cruiser. The combinations of the monologue, the travelogue the first sign of life could not be more stripped down to fundamental storytelling basics: the serpent has arrived in this garden.
Movie Violations
The very next scene acts as imagery for the purpose of foreshadowing what to expect. Composed as a single continuous and unedited shot, the first scene containing actual interaction between characters moves rapidly to inform alert audiences that certain conventions of cinematic storytelling are going to be up for grabs. By the end of the film, it has managed to smash to smithereens certain mainstream crime drama expectations that still hold true even in today’s Hollywood: the “hero” character does not die before the end, but if he must then he certainly does not die off-screen; the bad guy does not get away with multiple murders of innocent people unless he has just a reason; if a cop and a killer are two of the main characters, they absolutely must face off against each other at some point. The fully-loaded insurrection against these and other conventions demonstrated in No Country for Old Men commences in this second sequence when deputy is the focus of the camera in the foreground, while his prisoner is a fuzzy, out-of-focus figure almost hidden in the shadows in the background. The deputy is providing some pretty important and mysterious information while on the phone whereas just exactly what the prisoner is doing when he slowly stands up and then sinks down almost out of camera range is not exactly made clear. The imagery of events leading to the murder, the actual murder itself and the immediately aftermath all serve the purpose of planting the notion of random chaos that maybe could be explained, but won't necessarily be so.
The Soundtrack of Real Life
In real life, no orchestral cues exist to warn you that taking the left when you should have gone right is likely sending you into danger. No dramatic flourish celebrates a decision you just have made that is going to change your life for the better in ways you can’t imagine. Life is not accompanied by a soundtrack. Tragedy, comedy, romance and just plain mundane boredom all take place without the convenience of a musical score letting you know whether the coin is going to land on heads or tails. There is no musical score in the traditional sense in the film, just the few rare instances of non-diegetic sounds recorded as such a low volume most people probably don’t even hear them. It is musical imagery through the absence of music and it is one of the film’s most underappreciated and overlooked strengths as it facilitates the purpose of driving the film’s philosophical theme that the universe is utterly random and entirely unpredictable. It is also another deliberate snubbing of cinematic convention.
Maybe There Is a God, After All
One particular fascinating bit of imagery is even more likely to be missed than the few minor notes making up what passes for a soundtrack. In fact, the imagery passes so quickly that references to it in criticism of the movie is almost non-existent. When you know to look for it and see it, however, it is one of those things which can be unseen again. At one in his attempt to escape the relentless predatory pursuit of Anton Chigurh, Moss hitches a lift in a car driven by a black man. The camera is situated where Moss would be, but the reverse angle clearly shows it is not intended to be a POV shot because Moss is shown looking in the opposite direction. As the camera shoots the driver in profile while they drive in silence, he turns his head to the right and look toward Moss. The lighting and photography are calculated as such that when he turns, the man’s eyes take on weird blue pinpointed light effect. The camera then cuts to Moss in what would be a POV shot before cutting back to original angle. With this cut, the man’s eyes are no longer small pinpoints of blue light, but large and quite eerie reddish-white glowing orbs. He turns back to profile and shakes his head dismissively before saying “You shouldn’t be doing that.” When Moss asks what he shouldn’t he be doing, the man answers, “hitchhiking.” But there’s something about those two completely different-looking shots of glowing eyes in the dark which suggest that he means something else entirely. No Country for Old Men is uncompromising in its presentation of a philosophical worldview that denies the existence the god in the world, and yet…there’s this imagery which works very hard not to bring attention to itself.
