No Country for Old Men

Film Title: No Country for Old Men.

   “No country for old men” a movie directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, is a Neo- Western thriller which was released in 2007. It is an adaptation of a novel with the same name written by Cormac McCarthy, in 2005. Now as the movie begins the first thing we hear rather than see is the voice of a man with a heavy Texan accent and the howling winds. The narration is followed by the opening shot of the desolate fields of West Texas. As the narration progresses we see with it the scenery changes and we see different landscape images, changing after every 5 to 6 seconds, the movie immediately takes on a Western feel. Now in the opening scene the images, narration and the sound design sinks in perfectly with the beat of the scene which is basically setting up/ building up the following scene to come. All the shots are in complete sync and there is absolute smoothness in the editing that is the cuts. The editing is done in such a way that there is a level of continuity. We see a lot of warm contrasting colors, different shades of brown and this is not only seen in just one scene but in most of the scenes Joel and Ethan have used warm colors. The lightening is not too bright although most of the scenes were shot in broad day light but it still manages to not hurt the eyes. In the next shot we see the camera panning towards the road and coming to a halt when the car comes into focus. The panning of the camera helps the audience to shift their attention to the next shot that is the two characters entering the frame and driving away and that is precisely were the narration ends and the next scene begins.

     This film also breaks a few conventions, for example in the second scene when Anton Chigurh is handcuffed by the sheriff and is sitting in the police station we see that although in the background he is slightly blurred and the focus is more on the Sheriff than on him but we as the audience are made to focus on the background rather than the foreground. This basically is breaking the normal conventions and in this way its making us focus on the entire frame rather than keeping our eyes fixed on just one specific thing. Other things to notice in this film are that there are mostly straight cuts throughout the movie but that does not make it look abrupt or confusing at any point because it appears to have a link with the previous shot in one way or another and also because the cut from one shot to another or from one scene to another does reflect seamless editing in this film. For example, In one scene when the character of Josh Brolin, Moss is out hunting deer’s, he spots an injured dog. We see a cut and then a far away shot of four or five pickup trucks is shown then again cut we see the dead dog on the ground and the open doors of the trucks. Cut Moss starts slowly moving along the tire tracks which faintly visible amongst the tall grass, cut to him spotting a tree where he sees a dead man leaning on the tree, cut to him at the tree standing over the dead man. From there he instantly gets in his car, reaches home, and instantly inside talking to his wife. Everything throughout this scene makes perfect sense and the editing, the background sounds all manage to come together without looking or sounding out of place. This film didn’t require any sound track as the sound FX was enough to support whatever was going on in the scene or in the different shots.

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