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Ethan Coen on No Country for Old Men
By Fred Topel | Image property of Miramax.
No Country for Old Men
Ethan Coen Visits No Country for Old Men
"The economic incentive," Coen revealed. "As you know, the story takes place in West Texas and we shot for two weeks based in Marfa, West Texas for the stuff you really see landscape because New Mexico offers spectacular scenery, but not of that kind and it is a very different landscape. So we shot, as everybody is, in New Mexico now, for economic reasons. It does offer things, while it's not West Texas, there are things we could shoot there we couldn't have shot in Flemington, New Jersey."
Then Coen started talking about the artistic process, such as the Coens' frequent collaboration with cinematographer Roger Deakins. "It varies actually. Roger didn't do the one we just finished shooting, but he did this movie and the seven or eight previous to that. Except when his schedule doesn't allow it, we actually do a draft of the storyboards for the movie ourselves and then a draft, in effect, with him. We kind of redraft with him and the storyboard artist. We did that on this movie. We have kind of a general discussion about how the movie is going to look and then we all kind of think and forget about it when we are actually shooting the movie. We forget about everything we've decided and just take it day by day, scene by scene. That's probably the norm for how most people work on movies."
The film's antagonist, the murderer Anton Chigurh, leaves an impression on audiences for many things: for his unique weapon of choice, for his cold glee at killing and for his hair.
"The look, actually the feeling of the wardrobe and the haircut came from the art department. The art department does a lot of research, mainly photo research, because it's a period thing, although a recent period. It's 1980 Texas border area. So they don't just kind of make it up from scratch. They look at archive pictures of the time and place. And the wardrobe department had found this picture of a guy at a bar in West Texas in 1979 and it was that alarming haircut and actually that kind of wardrobe as well. And we looked at it and thought, well, he looks like a sociopath. And Javier really enjoyed it as well."
That said, The Coens would not call Chigurh evil. "Quite clearly in the book, he’s a personification of the world, which is an unforgiving and capricious [one]. The embodiment of that is the whole coin-tossing thing that gives the character place, and it doesn’t have to do with good and evil. The book is also about trackers, it’s about predation, which is a horrible thing in a way, but it doesn’t have to do with good and evil."
No Country for Old Men is now playing in limited release.
For trailers, review and more movie info, go to the No Country for Old Men Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Miramax.
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