Death and Texas

>> Josh Brolin and Kelly MacDonald talk about working with the Coen brothers on the
impressive, bloody No Country for Old Men

by MARK SLUTSKY

The Coen brothers, it seems, still have the power to impress. No Country for Old Men, their latest, is based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name, and it’s a remarkably faithful adaptation (if you’ve read the book, you’ll be amazed at how they manage to recreate his bleak, beautiful imagery), while at the same time being an unmistakably Coen brothers film through and through.

In fact, it may be one of their best. It’s definitely the strongest movie from the Coens in years, and it should go a long way to restoring faith in fans let down by The Ladykillers, Intolerable Cruelty and The Man Who Wasn’t There.

Set in the early ’80s in West Texas, No Country stars Josh Brolin as Llewelyn Moss, a Vietnam vet who lives in a trailer with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald). Out hunting one day, he comes across the results of a drug deal gone bad—bodies, blood, bullets and a bag of money. He takes the money, and despite his precautions, he’s soon being pursued by some very bad people who want it back, and in particular the sinister Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, sporting a pageboy haircut and a cattle stun-gun he uses to casually dispatch anyone who bothers him or gets in his way. All the while, sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is trying to piece together what exactly is happening and get to either of them before things get even worse.

The movie is at times as sparse and quiet as the Texas landscape (there’s practically no music on the soundtrack); at other times, it explodes into shards of brief, bloody violence. Working with their cinematographer (and collaborator since 1991’s Barton Fink) Roger Deakins, the Coens capture the cold beauty of the country beautifully, whether it’s the Western-evoking images of plains and scrub or a dusty reflection in an old TV set.

Inspiring loyalty

They’re clearly the kind of directors who inspire loyalty in the actors they work with. Sitting down at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, both Brolin (who also cops to being a huge fan of late Montreal filmmaker Jean-Claude Lauzon’s Léolo) and MacDonald are open in their admiration.

“They are just really smart,” says MacDonald. “That makes them different from a lot of people! There are a lot of great filmmakers out there, but they are just really smart men. They’ve got an ear and an eye for dialogue.”

“To embrace the cliché, I’m a huge fan of their films,” says Brolin. “Huge fan. It was really nice because we were all kind of finding it as we were going along. It was the most collaborative I’ve ever felt on a set. It was like being in a grassroots theatre doing black box. It was the opposite of what I would have assumed, which is the Coens are the Coens and they’re tightly wound. They know the shots that they want, but character-wise there was a lot of talk and a lot of exploration. They’re great filmmakers. They are collaborative film geeks—people who love the medium of storytelling, cinematically, which is what I love.”

“People keep saying, ‘Oh it’s so Coen-esque,’” MacDonald says. “And it is. But it’s very Cormac McCarthy. They loved his story and they made his story. Along the way, they can’t help but make it a Coen brothers film, because that’s who they are.”

Solitary scenes

No Country for Old Men is, on the surface of it, an ensemble film, but one thing that stands out is how solitary each character is—the three male leads barely interact with each other, and many scenes are played out alone, with barely any words spoken. It’s a fantastic role for Brolin, who’s been acting since the ’80s, but who’s never really had the chance to show off his chops like he does here.

“He makes fun of himself all the time,” McDonald says of her hyper-affable co-star. “He says, ‘Hey, I’m Josh Brolin from The Goonies.’ He’s just really great. I was really proud of him and pleased for him—he’s really good as a person and as an actor. Tom Hanks is who I think of. Not a lot of people can do such a good job of portraying a character with so little dialogue—he doesn’t have a lot in the film. But he’s just—you know who he is. You understand. Just from noises.”

“There is no distraction with dialogue,” Brolin concurs. “It was a great experiment, almost, as an actor. To be able to convey the role in a way that was through body language, or a grunt, or clearing of the throat. You know, not having it be vacant, I think that was the fear.”

“I got the dream role,” MacDonald says. “There are three leads, who are all chasing each other, but they don’t actually have scenes together. I have scenes with each of them—I just can’t believe I was given that job! It is just amazing. I keep having people ask me about how it’s such a male film. They ask me if it felt weird being a female. But all of the supporting cast were these really amazing characters, and I was one on one with all of these people. So I was kind of the tour guide.”

Triple threat

Llewelyn Moss is a complicated character: a smart, industrious man who makes some very bad mistakes, even as he’s cognizant of the consequences. “You can call taking the money a mistake because you can see the whole global view,” Brolin says. “But the thing is, I think that because he is resourceful, because he is intuitive, because he’s been through Vietnam and two tours and all of that, because he is not a dimbulb, I think he makes that decision of saying, ‘Look, I think this is going to help make a better life for my wife and future kids and all of that. I’m taking money from an awful situation and I’m making good on it.’ It makes perfect sense to me.”

Of his, Jones’s, and Bardem’s characters, Brolin says, “I always saw it as one character split three ways. You know what I mean? Just three extremes of one character. One person, Ed Tom, is going through and looking back on his life with some guilt and shame and regret and all of that kind of stuff, which is a part of life. Then you have somebody who has the principles that Chigurh has, from a very negative place, which is just that he’s a messenger of fate and a fairly pessimistic view of life. Then you have Llewelyn, who has these same parallel principles, but the opposite. He’s very optimistic and very romantic. When I read the book, I thought, wow, man, this has all parts of Cormac, I’m sure. In the extreme. To the point where they become almost mythological.”

No Country for Old Men
opens this Friday, Nov. 9

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