No Country for Old Men

If the Coen brothers film this right, it could be their darkest movie since Fargo. Cormac McCarthy tells a tale of bloodshed so harrowing that perhaps it should carry a warning label, if the title itself isn't enough.

No Country for Old Men

It's the story of a man who discovers a drug deal gone wrong; millions of dollars lie for the taking, and he takes them. But others want the money as well, including a homicidal bounty hunter (or something of the sort) named Chiggur (pronounced like "sugar"). The cat-and-mouse game leaves a trail of blood and corpses behind it--in the end, we have nine bodies and an aging sherriff who wonders what's happening to the world.

The picture McCarthy paints is a bleak one. Consider this quote, from page 159 of the Knoph paperback:

I wake up sometimes way in the night and I know as certain as death that
there ain't nothin short of the second comin of Christ can slow this train. I
don't know what is the use of me layin awake over it. But I do.

Later, the same character says, "The world I've seen has not made me a spiritual person," (303). It's difficult to maintain faith in a transcendant good, McCarthy seems to suggest, in the face of an all-too-real and seemingly triumphant evil. Life is uncertain; almost every character at some point voices the same opinion: that we may plan and plan and yet in an instant have our plans set at naught by blind, uncaring fate. There is no end in sight; the good suffer, the evil triumph. One might hear the whisper of an ancient preacher murmuring "Vanity of vanities."

Madison Smartt Bell, according to the back cover of my copy, compared the God of Cormac McCarthy to the God of Job--and there is a certain justice to this. As in Job, the good people suffer unbelievably, though unlike Job they do not get a second shot of happiness. As in Job, no answers are given for the suffering of humanity. We are left, as the sheriff is left, and as the law enforcement officer at the end of Fargo is left, with only a sigh and a plaintive murmer of "I just don't understand."

Is there hope in McCarthy's world? I'm not certain yet; a vision, in the end, of a horseman going on before us, carrying a torch to thaw the winter, might hint at some Transcendant Good, but it does so obliquely. McCarthy does not want us to focus on the hope; he wants to shake off our smug confidence in the innate goodness of man, and the ultimate triumph of good. He wants to remind us of the uncertainty of life--and I think he succeeds admirably.

I can't wait to see what the Coen brothers do with this.