Coen s No Country for Old Men. the book was better than the movie, that the film was nothing like the book, or worse that the

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1 Davila 1 Ana Davila Professor Gomez English March 2017 Coen s No Country for Old Men Many books are being translated into the seventh art lately. The truth is that many are left disappointed with the adaptations that the books get. The usual complaints of the people are that the book was better than the movie, that the film was nothing like the book, or worse that the movie was better than the book even if they are not similar at all. Taking a piece of literature and converting it into a film is not an easy job at all. Surprisingly in 2007 the Coen brother brought to the big screen a film adaptation very similar to McCarthy s No Country for Old Men a western action story of persecution published in The set was a perfect reflection of the book s set and the good, the bad and the ugly played their respective roles to perfection. The setting of McCarthy's novel is the 1980's border between Texas and Mexico. The exact locations of the book are Sanderson, Del Rio, Odessa, Eagle Pass, Piedras Negras, Ciudad Acuña, and El Paso. In the first chapter of the book, McCarthy wrote "Far to the south the raw mountains of Mexico. The breaks of the river. To the west the baked terracotta terrain of the running borderlands" (8) giving we can have a clear picture of the place Moss is. Also, the words dead, quiet, and desert are often used to describe the setting of the story. "The road deserted, the truck radio in this outland country dead even of static from one end of the band to the other" (McCarthy 25), "He stood there looking out across the desert. So quiet" (McCarthy 45), and "he lay there in the half dark and the quiet" (McCarthy 171). The setting is often on the outside

2 Davila 2 surrounded by nature, not necessarily a beautiful and colorful one, but a dark, dead, and quiet one. McCarthy depicted the point of view of this world throughout the setting, a world where everyone stands in silence and indifferent to the violence going on. Although everything looks dark in the story, there are some parts where nature seems kind and comforting. He watched the little brindled desert doves come stooping in under the dull rose light (McCarthy), and He took out his camera and snapped a picture of the sky, the river, the world (McCarthy). Texas may be a desert, but it does not lack beauty and comfort to the soul. McCarthy depicted the wild south dark and sometimes heartwarming he is able to transport us to it by reading his words. In the Coen s adaptation, the brothers gave a similar setting to the audience. The film was shot in New Mexico, and primarily in Las Vegas, which doubled as the border towns of Eagle Pass and Del Rio Other scenes were filmed around Marfa and Sanderson in West Texas, and the scene in the town square was filmed in Piedras Negras, Coahuila in Mexico (Hephaestus Books 13). We do not get many characteristics of the cities where they shot the scenes, but we get the essence of the locations mentioned in the book, just a Texan southern city, and country. The Coen and their staff knew how to play it with the lights and the sound during the filming of the scenes. Cinematographer Roger Deakins spoke of his approach to film s look It s early days, but I m imagining doing it very edgy and dark, and quite sparse. Not so stylized. (Hephaestus Books 13). Most of the scenes do not have many lights or just a dim light provided by a lamp or the streetlights. Despite the little light the Coen brothers did capture every detail of the landscape of where the scenes take place that I barely noticed the movie s lack of background music. The background sounds of the film are the nature, the society around, and a lot of guns. One sound that stand out in the movie for me was the one of the footsteps.

3 Davila 3 Throughout the whole movie, the audience gets good shots of the actors feet. These create suspense, the music stops, and the only thing you can hear are footsteps. Even when the footsteps are almost inaudible, it raises suspense. For example, in the scene in the Del Rio s motel, when Chigurh is barefoot slowly walking to the other room, you can barely hear his footsteps, but it raises the suspense because no one knows what is going to happen next. The Coen brothers did a great job with the lights and the sound to construct the great setting of the film adaptation of McCarthy s No Country for Old Men, it was an authentic reflection of the book. Cormac McCarthy developed some interesting characters in No Country for Old Men. This novel has three main characters who are Sheriff Bell, Llewelyn Moss, and Anton Chigurh. I had a hard time trying to discern who was the good one and the bad one in this novel, but an old western movie helped me to pick out. I remembered a movie called The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, a very popular film starring Clint Eastwood. First, never in my life I have seen this movie, but I guess this movie has three main characters a good one, a bad one and an ugly one. I decided that Sheriff Bell was the good one, Chigurh for sure was the bad one, and for default Moss was the ugly one. First, the good guy and our protagonist, Ed Tom Bell. He is the first character of the novel introduced to the reader through the stream of consciousness. Sheriff Bell is the hero of the book not any hero, but a spiritual hero. Bell has indeed fulfilled Campbell s notion of the hero: The man or woman who has been able to battle past his personal and local historical limitations to generally valid, normally human forms The hero has died as a modern man; but as eternal man perfected, unspecific, universal man he has been reborn (Cremean 28). Sheriff Bell was a conservative man, a man from the old times, guided by his ethics and morals. Ultimately for me, Bell as a sheriff was weak because he never did anything at all he seems to me as if he

4 Davila 4 was trying to avoid his duties with the law enforcement. Despite all of these I cannot blame him, at the end he was this old timer trying to figure out this crazy world, trying to give a reason to all the messed up things that are happening. He's [Chigurh] a ghost. But he's out there I keep waitin to hear somethin else. Maybe I will yet. Or maybe not. It's easy to fool yourself. Tell yourself what you want to hear You tell yourself that maybe this business is over. But you know it aint (McCarthy 248). What is trying to say is that you cannot avoid the imminent truth, there will always be evil in this world, and no one would be able to stop it. At the end of the book Bell acknowledges that he is a different man, he is a man of this time (McCarthy 279). As I mentioned before, I cannot blame Sheriff Bell for trying to figure out his path in this violent world, at the end he figured out. He quits his job because he knows he cannot do the job and this action does not make him a coward. In the film adaptation by the Coen brothers, the actor that portrays Sheriff Bell is actor Tommy Lee Jones. He was one of the first to being chose, the Coen said it was because he is a Texan, the region is a part of his core (Hephaestus Book 12). The best parts of Bell s stream of consciousness were mostly delivered by dialogues with other characters. The Sheriff Bell s background was cut out of the movie, because probably it would give him a worse look than the one he already has. He [Sheriff Bell] arrives moments too late and remains spotless and impressed through the film (Tyrer and Nickell 88). In the film Bell does not portrays the typical hero and it is hard to people who only see the movie to perceive him as hero, the audiences probably would need to read the book, to comprehend his background story. At the end of the day Bell accepts his flaws and that is the reason that makes him the ultimately hero of this story, besides being the only one who survived to Chigurh.

5 Davila 5 Then we have our bad guy Anton Chigurh. The bad guy eluding justice precipitates even larger failures of justice in the novel (Cooper 2). He is truly the ultimate bad-ass (McCarthy 153) in this novel. Also, Chigurh, [is] repeatedly associated with devils and ghosts, has a strong lingering scent of magical realism, much like the ageless and undying Judge Holden (Cooper 8). He is compared to Judge Holden, the representation of the devil in McCarthy s novel, Blood Meridian. He is incredible he is able to survive from bullets to car accidents, almost immortal. There is a part in the book where Sheriff Bell interviews one of the kids who saw Chigurh and he describe him. He looked like anybody (McCarthy 292). What a great description we got here, it was not very helpful to the reader, but McCarthy did it for a reason. Being like anybody is meaning that he could be anyone, this devil could be anyone in the streets. Evil is everywhere and in anyone that you least expect it. Evil is banal. Before seeing the movie, I envisioned Chigurh as Flannery O Connor s Misfit. The Misfit's eyes were redrimmed and pale and defenseless-looking (O Connor 32). Their eyes were the only thing similar between these two characters. Javier Bardem portrays Anton Chigurh in this acclaimed film adaptation. Joel Coen explains, We wanted somebody who could have come from Mars (Covell 97). Javier Bardem s Chigurh is far from being the vivid image of a western villain. His soup-bowl haircut signals a lack of concern with being attractive. He is passionless and methodical in killing (Rothermel 184). Bardem has this peculiar haircut that when I saw it made me shiver, not because I felt afraid, but because it was a horrible. As an actor Bardem has worn several horrible haircuts. Wearing cowboy boots can be an attempt to assimilate with his [Chugurh s] surroundings (Topolinsky 116). In the movie Chigurh is wearing all dark jean clothes, that does not fit any of the western clothing, but he wears this pair of black ostrich boots. He won an Oscar

6 Davila 6 in 2008 for best actor in supporting role. In an interview of NPR with Bardem, the interviewer asks him what are the rules of Chigurh and he declares: Well, those rules were pretty good described in the book of Cormac McCarthy, and I guess it has to do with fate. And the think also, I read also, maybe it was my own reading of it, that what Chigurh represents is the logical violent reaction to violent actions taken by some of the characters, which is to say violence doesn't fix any situation, doesn't get things better. All it creates, more misery and pain, and it's something that will always come back to you, no matter what. So I think that basically he brings that philosophy with him, which is I'm here because you called me (2:43 3:21) Bardem understand the code that Chigurh followed. This understanding was the key to his successfulness in playing this role. Bardem also understand the determinism in this movie, the cause and effect that other characters played one over the other. He acknowledges that Chigurh maybe is not the bad guy, but almost an antihero. He can be seen as the punisher of those who do evil things against the others. In my point of view, he is still the bad guy, Bardem said that he is the violent reaction, but you cannot solve violence with more violence. If that was the way everything can be solved well this world would be McCarthy s novel, everyone would up have ended dead. Bardem s performance as Chigurh was impeccable. Lastly, the ugly one Llewelyn Moss. Moss is easily confused by being the protagonist, but in reality he was just a casualty of this mess. He points out everything to be the hero a veteran, a snipper, and a hunter. Despite having this abilities, does not help him at all, cause through the movie he remains wounded and in bed. Moss is the representation of a typical person that for no reason ended up in this western story. The boots and the hat does not make a cowboy at all. The majority of the story he is concentrated in himself and does not care about anyone

7 Davila 7 except himself. He even takes Carla Jean with him to death, when he decided not to give Chigurh the money. He was not even killed by the villain of the story, he is not killed by the end of the book, and they got the terrible look on him by killing him in a motel with a young hitchhiker. In the movie the actor Josh Brolin played as Llewelyn Moss. In the movie he really inspires this image of protagonist and hero with his gun hunting and deducting where the last men is. The only good thing that Moss did was to give water to the man in the truck. That was also an error, going back to the place you take the money does not sound like a good idea. A funny scene in the movie, that was not in the book, is when the Moss is escaping of the dog. He gets the right time to take his gun and kill the dog. Another is the confrontation between Moss and Chigurh, is a little scene, but they encounter face to face and he survived. At the end, Moss was only a casualty of the moment, he could be anyone, it would not make any difference it would ended up being killed. This film is almost identical to the book. Ethan described the screenwriting process by saying, One of us types into the computer while the other holds the spine of the book open flat (Hephaestus Books 12). The dialogue of the movie is almost identical to the book. They cut somethings like Sheriff Bell s stream of consciousness, but was delivered through dialogue, and Carla Jean s conversation with Chigurh, she does not call for the coin. Some other little details are cut out, but overall the film was very truthful to the movie. The Coen were able to put everything in McCarthy s novel into a film.

8 Davila 8 Works Cited "Bardem on Working with the Coen Brothers." Day To Day, 17 Jan Literature Resource Center, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=gls&sw=w&u=txshracd2503&v=2.1&it=r&id=gale%7 CA &asid=fe067085bda27cb662565a4e0eefdf4f. Accessed 28 Mar Books, Hephaestus. "Cormac McCarthy, Including: No Country for Old Men (film), All The Pretty Horses (Film) The Road (Film)." (2011). Cooper, Lydia R. "" He's a Psychopathic Killer, but So What?": Folklore and Morality in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men." Papers on Language and Literature 45.1 (2009): 37. Cooper, Lydia R. "The Unpunishing of Anton Chigurh: Fraternity as the Final Frontier in No Country for Old Men." Masculinities in Literature of the American West. Palgrave Macmillan US, Cremean, David. "Cormac McCarthy s Sheriff Bell as Spiritual Hero." No Country for Old Men: From Novel to Film (2009): 21. Covell, Scott. "Devil with a Bad Haircut: Postmodern Villainy Rides the Range in No Country for Old Men." No Country for Old Men: From Novel to Film (2009): McCarthy, Cormac. "No Country for Old Men " New York: Vintage (2006). O'Connor, Flannery. A good man is hard to find. New Canadian Library, Tyrer, Pat, and Pat Nickell. "Of what is past, or passing, or to come : Characters as Relics in No Country for Old Men.." No Country for Old Men: From Novel to Film (2009): 86.

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