No Country for Old Men, the Coens' Masterpiece of Narrative Storytelling

The Coen brothers have been defining and redefining storytelling throughout their entire careers. As writers, they utilize narrative storytelling techniques to the fullest. Although they create fiction, they still seem to follow the guideline set popularized and accepted by Walter Fisher’s Narrative Paradigm. Although the Coen brothers usually write their own original screenplays, the one that will be discussed here is the new film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men. This is only the second time the Coens have used outside material in their films. The Coens use many of the assumptions of this theory in researching, writing, and/or adapting their screenplays. They heavily research the era, settings, locations, and overall times of their material. For instance, the Coens used an old picture of a 1970s man at a bar with a unique haircut that was relatively popular at the time for Anton Chigurh’s, Javier Bardem’s character, haircut and clothing style. They also shot on location for the most part depending on budgets. As for the characterization, these characters are very believable. Josh Brolin plays Llewellyn Moss, a hunter who stumbles across a drug deal gone bad while out for the day in one of the Texas desert fields. From the minute he touches this money, Brolin’s character shows the signs of what almost anyone would do in the situation. He begins to think about what to do with all of it, but is overcome by human instinct to aid one of the barely alive drug dealers who was left for dead by bringing him some water. He is discovered by the drug dealer clean-up squad and immediately was on the run. Two parties are now searching for the lost money. The aging Sherriff Tom Bell played by Tommy Lee Jones and the psychopathic hitman Anton Chigurh played by Bardem. Sherriff Bell is struggling with a rationality paradigm as well as a good reason paradigm. His upbringing and experiences are being challenged by the new world in which he lives as an aging Sherriff, making it increasingly difficult for him to cope with the transition of his laid back ways of old and the take-action times in which he lives now. Chigurh has left a bloodbath across Bell’s county and outlying areas, which Bell does not fully understand. Bell just knows that he must find Moss before it is too late. Anton Chigurh is a bit more complicated of a character. His paradigm as a character is based on a twisted reality view and a morbid set of rules that he is bound to. He kills at will, sometimes for no reason, others part of a sadistic game of chance by offering his potential victims a coin flip to decide their fates. His brutality, unleashed with a silenced shotgun and an air gun used to kill cattle, is part of a paradigm that many people do understand and accept as something that can happen. Media in these times spares no detail to the audience, depicted grisly acts in their entirety. All of these characters are connected through their actions and reactions in the story.
As for the storytelling, the Coens tell the tale through use of unconventional narrative in the way that there is no defined middle or end. Everything begins, but it is up to the watcher and listener to piece together the events, as it is in real life. It has a great sense of coherence, as everything that goes on relates to each other, acting like glue between the characters, even if they do not meet on screen. No Country has all of the coherence aspects covered. Structural is covered with the smooth running editing, material with the storylines of the three main characters constantly linking back to each other, and characterlogical in the ways explained before about the believability of the characters in the movie. For good reasons, the Coens continue to wow audiences with their stories, adapted or original, creating unforgettable settings, characters, and a style not seen by many filmmakers anymore. They truly are some of the best storytellers of this era.