Analysis of a Thriller: No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.

Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin.

Anton Chigurh is arrested and taken to a police station, after a struggle he kills the sheriff and escapes. he acquires a get away car by killing a random driver with a high powered air gun. Meanwhile Llewelyn Moss is hunting dear on the Rio Grand and comes across a group of corpses, cars and a lone Mexican survivor. This was a drug exchange that had gone wrong.

Analysis

Scene 1
To set the story and scene the directors have chosen to use extreme long shots of the American desert. The use of non-diegetic has been used, a narrator tells the summary of the film while these landscape shots are shown. The last shot is of a police car the camera is positioned on the floor looking up at the car. Two characters walk into the shot from the left and get into the car and drive off.

Scene 2
A cut to the police station occurs to show time has moved on. The camera if looking straight at the sheriff as he speaks to someone on the phone. the golden mean has been used in this shot so that we can see the criminal creep up behind him and get him by the throat.

During the fight scene the camera movements are very smooth and doesn't have many cuts this contrast against the actions taking place and the normal use of camera angles and movements during fight scenes in other films which are more fast paced and jerky for example in Psycho. The directors have probably used this so the audience can see everything and especially the emotion in their faces.

Scene 3
In scene 3 we are introduced to a new character, before we are, the view we see is down a scope of a sniper rifle, this is a different use of a point of view shot. We then see the new character this scene is quiet up until a gunshot, a cut is made to show the effect of the gunshot. The the scene becomes quiet again as the use of his body language tells us what he is thinking. This carries on through to the next scene when he finds a group of corpses, the way he reacts might surprise the viewer because he is not shock by it. The camera follows him along the floor with shots of the bodies and panning around his feet. The scene stays quiet until he goes up to a car door, this creates tension as the audience expects something will jump out and surprise them. He finds a dieing Mexican but hardly speaks to him which he then leaves, background noise like the wind is amplified to mark the end of the scene as the suspense has now died down.