No Country for Old Men

It easy to expect I would enjoy the book behind such an incredible film, but the experience of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men as a whole was different then anything I expected. As a warning now, do not continue reading this post unless you have seen the film or read the book. There are spoilers aplenty, and I implore you not to do anything to ruin this movie for yourself. Yes, it is that good.

Right off the bat, it is clear that the author is well familiarized with the West. Like the movie spawned from it, the book captures the sound, the feel, the essence of the open desert. This is not as easy as it sounds, for it goes far beyond the colloquialisms and dialects of the people, but has more to do with the pace. No, not the salsa. McCarthy’s words fall in a steady tempo. The speech patters are simple but rarely simplistic. In the same manner, No Country comes up short on big words but not at all on big meanings, and it is all far too masterfully executed to be on accident.

McCarthy is also very detail oriented, for good and for ill. Someone doesn’t just get “shot in the face” as the author captures every facet of every scene, leaving nothing to the imagination. You’ll know the entry and exit points of the bullet. You’ll read how the blood drips down the wall, or how the brain matter covered the pillow. The Cohen Brothers also left little to the mind’s eye.

The titular theme of the novel is further carried in the book. More conversations describe the changes in our nation, and more of those changes are associated with drugs. More introspection by Sheriff Bell both delves into his reaction to those changes and cements his status as the main focus of the story. Bell, representing Justice, finds himself more and more outdated. His pursuit of Llewelyn Moss, symbolizing Greed, tells the old tale: a criminal commits a crime, and the law eventually catches up.

Or does it? Can the law ever keep up? When the law isn’t justice any more, it is only the law, a collection of words and practices, ill-matched for the escalation to come.

Sheriff Bell has a bigger problem than the changing nature of the American legal system and that is the change of the American society; namely, it’s gravitation to Violence, epitomized by Anton Chigur. Chigur is a killer, but not a normal one. It is not the drive to due damage or cause pain that fuels him, but rather an inability to conceive of the world in a manner different than the one he sees. Violence is something to be accepted. It isn’t his choice; it just is.

So much is captured between the lines in this novel; it could never be shared in some hastily written post, jotted down by a fan. Screw it; here goes.

Our parents’ grandparents could never imagine the world as it is today, or even as it was for our parents. Beyond the changes in technology, it is the graphic nature of our very lives. Movie war heroes in the 50’s would shoot, and a Nazi would fall to the ground, clutching his chest. They didn’t blow people’s legs off or split their skulls open. Our heroes do.

Because our villains do. Escalation. When two losers shoot up a school, we blame violence in the media. Art reflects societies’ values, not the other way around. Steven Spielberg didn't make war more violent, he just took off the filter. We shouldn’t condemn Michael Bay for selling us explosions; we should condemn ourselves for buying them.

But buying is what we do best. We guzzle fuel, and food, and get all we can, experience all we can. Bigger TV’s, faster cars, trips to theme parks, tripping on drugs.

Drugs, defended by half the country, condemned by the rest. I remember when that commercial came out relating marijuana use to helping terrorism, and all these hippies decried it. I wish the hippies had been right, but a trip to Youtube will show you otherwise. Over the past couple of years, Mexican drug lords have used the site as a forum and scorecard. Torture a rival? Post it on Youtube. Decapitate a cop? Put it online. Then leave the head outside a barracks for the Mexican army. Tough not to call it terrorism.

Drugs epitomize the attitude of consumption. So what if it's illegal, immoral, and wrecks your body? It's a way to spend money on a one time rush. Sign us all up.

I don't know if we can keep up, with the economy or the violence. In the long run, of course we can't. Everything ends eventually, and our society may be too rich, too violent, too much. When you put that much energy in a box, something has to give. Senior citizens always see these changes coming first, with the strength of experience and the weakness of the lens of human mortality, which always warps further towards the end.

Or does it finally get it right? Our society views youth as a virtue, but there's something to be said for those cultures on the other side, such as China, where age is resource of value, the more the better. In all of human history, this is the best time to be alive, and arguably the best place to be living. That said, this is no country for old men.