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Graeme Tuckett is a regular contributor for Stuff to Watch.
Cormac McCarthy, who died earlier this week, wrote 12 novels, but was nearly 60 years old before he gained commercial recognition.
His breakthrough was All The Pretty Horses in 1992. Though Blood Meridian, from 1985, is regarded today as his masterpiece.
No Country For Old Men was published in 2005. McCarthy wrote the story as a screenplay, before deciding to adapt it into a novel. The book famously has little scene-setting or description of place. The dialogue and action tell the story.
READ MORE:
* Celebrated author Cormac McCarthy dies, aged 89
* The Road: Before The Last of Us, Cormac McCarthy gave us one of the most disturbing dystopian visions
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After the comic triumphs of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski, Ethan and Joel Coen were looking for a project to reestablish their drama credentials and No Country For Old Men seemed perfect. The brothers compressed the story and pruned a couple of characters, but didn’t add or radically alter any events.
“One of us typed … while the other one held the book flat,” was Ethan’s famous take on the process.
The story takes place mostly in West Texas and the towns that stud the vast spaces of the southern borderlands of the USA. A man has found a suitcase of cash. It belonged to a drug gang from south of the Rio Grande.
Knowing he has a life-changing windfall, the man makes one fatal mistake and allows the gang’s killers to find his truck. Immediately he is on the run, with a mysterious and enigmatic murderer named Anton Chigurh on his trail.
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Javier Bardem delivered a truly memorable performance as No Country For Old Men’s violent psychopath Anton Chigurh.
Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald and Tommy Lee Jones are all beyond praise. The Coens are famously uncommunicative on set, but they get perfect performances from their actors. Maybe they just hire the right people and trust them to get on with it.
Josh Brolin was not originally considered for the lead and the role was offered to Heath Ledger. Brolin asked Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to help him film an audition and secured an interview.
Most of the Coens’ own work is done in the months leading up to shooting. The entire film was storyboarded down to the shortest cutaway. The Coens are renowned as disciplined and meticulous filmmakers and No Country is proof of that.
On release, No Country For Old Men was hailed an instant classic. The source material might not be McCarthy’s best, but the film – and The Road, which followed in 2009 – are the absolute peak of McCarthy adaptations on the screen.
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Josh Brolin was not the Coen brothers’ first choice to play Llewelyn Moss in No Country For Old Men, but he eventually won them over.
There were accolades by the yard, of course. In an exceptional year, No Country won Best Picture and Best Director at the 80th Academy Awards. The film also won critic prizes all over the world, despite being up against There Will Be Blood, Michael Clayton and Eastern Promises. (Will there ever be another year with so many brilliant, heavy-hitting dramas in contention? It seems unlikely.)
The film is lean, pitiless and beautifully planned and put together. There are not many films you will see in your life that you could maybe call “perfect”, but I think No Country For Old Men is one of mine.
And rest in peace Cormac McCarthy. You were a hell of a writer.
No Country For Old Men is now available to rent from YouTube, GooglePlay, iTunes, Academy OnDemand, Lumiere AtHome and AroVision.
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