No Country For Old Men Analysis

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The chosen sequence I will analyze is the Production/Editing of the film No Country for Old Men. This film which came out in 2007 was based on the novel written by Cormac MaCarthy of the same name. The movie was written/adapted, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen (a.k.a. the Coen brothers). The film is often referred to as a neo-western thriller due to its degree of genre mixing as it tells the story of an ordinary man whom by chance stumbles on a fortune that is not his, and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama as the paths of three men are brought together into the desert landscape of 1980s Texas. With a total budget of $25 million, production was slated for the New Mexico cities of Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas with other scenes shot around Marfa and Sanderson in West Texas. The U.S.-Mexico …show more content…

The protagonists and antagonist are torn between inevitability, that the world goes on its way and that it does not have much to do with human desires and concerns, and the notion that our futures are undeniably connected to our past actions. Enda McCaffrey plays a character who refuses to acknowledge his own agency, noting that Chigurh(Javier Bardem) ignores repeated reminders that he doesn't have to behave as he does and suggesting that by relegating the lives of Carson and Carla to a coin toss, he hands responsibility over to fate in an act of bad faith that prevents him from taking responsibility for his own choices.
Over the duration of No Country for Old Men, Chigurh kills about 12 people, and curiously enough, the violence devolves as the film progresses. During the first half of the film, the Coens never shy from unleashing Chigurh. The devolution of violence starts with Chigurh's shootout with Moss(Josh Brolin) in the motel. Aside from the truck owner who is shot in the head after Moss flags him down, both the motel clerk and Wells's(Woody Harrelson) death occur

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