No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy 10 out of 10

 No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

10 out of 10

 

 

No Country for Old Men is better known as the movie that has won Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Supporting Actor  at the Academy Awards and other prestigious trophies all around the globe– what a magnificent, haunting piece of performance art Javier Bardem gave the audiences – and indeed, it is a rare case of reverse inspiration, where the novel is actually coming from the screen into the pages of the opus and there is very little to discern, if anything, as different from what we have seen in cinemas or television and we read about, except perhaps that where Javier Bardem starts walking off into the sunset, weird haircut and all, we still have about forty minutes, maybe an hour to read in the book…

 

If mesmerizing Javier Bardem has won an Oscar – and so much more – for a ‘supporting role’, yours truly begs to differ and state that he thinks Anton Chigurh is the most memorable figure in the narrative, and though incredible in his madness, cruelty, psychopath behavior he may seem, he still has so many ‘real’ replicas in the Madding Crowd that we see all around…take the very stable genius that has led the free world for the past four years and the gang of fools and deplorable creatures – including a Q shaman, with bison hat and horns adorning him – that have stormed and occupied the American Congress a few days ago, in a performance so unbelievable as to make the behavior of Chigurh seem bland and boring.

It is astonishing to think that we tend to criticize at times the profile of some personages we meet in novels and say that ‘they are so unlike what we find in the real universe that we do not identify with them, we reject them as too farfetched’, adding  rejections along those lines, and yet we see in reality some weirdoes, pathological cases that can speak from the pulpit of the highest offices in the world – not just US of Erika – from Brazil to Russia – incidentally, what was that assassination plot against Navalny, putting poison on his underpants and then the killer Putin stating that it was the dissident trying to do himself in, to attract attention, for their assassins would not miss – making the likes of Hannibal Lecter seem like lambs.

 

Llewelyn Moss is supposed to be the central figure of the narrative here – and surely he is on most counts, except perhaps the fact that we will keep in mind the Monster and likely forget the welder – and he probably represents you and me, as in the ‘Ordinary People’ – incidentally, another Academy Award Winner for Best Motion Picture, a work of glorious art – he finds while hunting a massive stash of money, over two million dollars, left at the scene of a gun battle that had taken place between drug dealers, tries to take it home and end his career as a hardworking man, aware though of the dangers and in possession of a ‘special set of skills’ – made famous by Liam Neeson – that make him a difficult target for the special bounty hunters sent on his tracks.

Llewelyn had been fighting in Vietnam, where he had learned to fight and survive, probably acquiring some death wish as well and probably a dose of craziness that allows him to continue the quest for this alluring if ghostly, evasive, impossible fortune that he hopes to hold to, albeit we must admit that from one point of no return on, there is little he can do to save himself – and perhaps even others that live near him or just happen to be around when carnage is about to be unleashed and the crossfire will eliminate bystanders.

 

The mobsters that claim the drugs and the money that had been lost in the wild send first Anton Chigurh, a specialist in this kind of operations and an infamous killer – Wells aka divine Woody Harrelson in the motion picture describes Chigurh, and the latter does a pretty good job of telling his own story, mainly though his abject acts, killing without a morsel of remorse, declaring he has no enemies, for he does not allow that to happen, playing with the coin toss in an isolated shop, where he makes the owner bet on his life, and then later he uses the same ‘trick of fate’ to decide another life or death situation…

This figure is so demented as to remind one – again – of the American Ceausescu and his cohorts, people who do not use the ‘captive bolt pistol’, but nevertheless assassinate democracy, are crazy – literally – about guns, conspiracy theories and are just about ready to copy ‘Sugar’, as Llewellyn calls him when he first hears the name, if given the chance to Stop the Steal, MAGA and other crazy shit that their cult leader has then ingurgitate night and day…these are more perilous Demons and Devils than any Chigurh that Cormac McCarthy and other brilliant authors could imagine…by the way, some call McCarthy the greatest living American writer

 

The 2.4 million dollars that are placed in a suitcase come with a transponder, but Moss is unaware that wherever he travels, the posy would be able to locate him…still, given his Vietnam training and combat experience, he is worried enough to take some clever precautions, such as taking two rooms at a motel where Chigurh would kill Mexicans and miss the man with the money, although this is such a skilled assassin and tracker that it appears there is no man or woman that can hide from him long enough and there would be an armed confrontation at another hotel, from where the wounded Llewellyn would try and cross the border into Mexico.

Adding to the complex battlefield, we have a former colonel in the US Army – they can be real nut cases, as we have seen again on the Capitol Hill, where in the mob, they had quite a few veterans and one former Air Force officer has been killed trying to eliminate democracy in America, for the most vile leader that we can imagine and we will ever see – that follows in the footpath of Chigurh, sent because the latter has caused some mayhem, and Wells is trying to be sensible and he is also amusing, especially in the interpretation of the glorious Woody Harrelson, explain to Moss that there is no escaping Chigurh, who has no sense of humor.

 

Wells puts the option of giving up the 2.4 million, perhaps with some recompense included and more importantly, survival in the bargain, whereas all the lunatic killer can offer is to allow Carla Jean, Llewellyn’s wife to escape, in contrast with her husband, whose fate is clear…he is doomed and the frantic Chigurh will not lie about it, he is a murder with honor, once he has made a promise he will keep his word and that includes killing someone after all is settled and there is no sensible reason for that, except that he had given his word…