No Country for Old Men
Posted on Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Filed under
"G321 Thriller Research"
No Country for Old Men
In AS Media we have recently gone on to unit G321 - Thriller Research. A thriller is an action film that also brings a feeling of suspense. For our research we have been asked to study the beginnings of thriller films to find out what brings us to conclude that the film is a thriller. The first film that we watched was the award winning “No Country for Old Men”. We watched the first 10 minutes of the film to see if it conformed to the conventions of a thriller film.
From the beginning of the film to about thirty seconds in to the movie it is completely silent, even the titles of the production companies are silent, which adds to the mystery.
The first thing to break the silence is the narrater who is also a main character, the sheriff Ed Tom Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones. By him narrating the beginning makes it feel like a story, thus giving us the impression that he survives to the end of the movie. While he talks, the background shows a desolate plains, giving the feeling of being alone or abandoned in the middle of nowhere, thus adding a conventional feel to the typical thriller scene. However, a few seconds later the sun starts to rise giving the symbolic theme after darkness there is always light, or in this situation good always wins. This hints that the ending will be a be a “Happily ever after” theme, which is much like thrillers but there is more violence in the middle of the film than the cartoon Disney films. 
In the next scene the focus is on a suspicious man who is arrested by a traditional Texan officer, the character even has the classical or mirrored glasses. We do not see the face of the man for a few scenes, adding the suspense of what he looks like and who he may be. In the scene after the arrest, the officer places what looks like an oxygen tube with an attached hose in to the car, this raises the question what is the tube and what is it for?Overall these scenes add an extra amount of thrill.At the beginning of the next scene the police office gives a description of the tube over the telephone and he also explains that the suspect had the hose running down his arm. This adds another question about the oxygen tube. This is a typical thriller start to a beginning of a film, which is that there are an amount of unanswered questions at the start, some still at the end.
While the officer is on the phone the suspect somehow manages to slip the hand cuffs from behind him around to his front, he does this with very little effort raising another question, how many times has he done that? The suspect’s face is now visible for the first time, as he moves across to the officer and starts to strangle him, as he does this the suspect jumps back pulling the officer to the ground, as the suspect is strangling him some blood now starts to squirt out from his neck, the suspect flinches at this giving the thought that he may not be so psychotic after all. However, after the police officer is dead, he lets out a deep breath giving the thought of him being relaxed that the officer is dead. This is another conventional part of a thriller film, the deep breathing.
After the death of the police officer the suspect or killer goes and collects the oxygen tube with the attached hose. In the next scene the killer is driving in a police car; he waits until he see a car and then hits the sirens, thus causing the driver to obey authority by pulling over. Here we have the killer’s deception, he pretends to be something he is not to lure his pray, this is also a typical thriller deception. In the next scene he asks the driver to step out of the car, which he eventually does with a little persuasion from the killer. When the driver is out of the car the killer asked him to “hold still”, holding the hose connected to the oxygen tube to his head and presses a button causing compressed air to come out of the hose, the driver drops dead. This is also a conformity to thriller weapons, how something that seems harmless can be turned in to a weapon. This happens in films like “Shot em up”, where he kills everyone with a carrot. Another one is also “The Bourne Identity”, where Jason Bourne kills a man with a biro pen.
The scene of “No Country for Old Men” suddenly changes to the cross sight of a gun which is aimed at a deer. The new character looks up and sees a dark cloud moving towards the deer. This could be seen as a pathetic fallacy, hinting at things getting worse for the hunter. The hunter then goes back to his gun and says “hold still” and fires. With the two characters saying the same thing indicates that the two of them are hunters, suggesting that killing a person is equal to the killing of a deer.
In the next scenes the hunter starts to walk after the deer he shot, the scene shows him walking though what looks like a waste land that is completely flat. This gives the impression of the hunter to a lone ranger, which goes with his cowboy look.
He stumbles across some dried blood leading one way and and fresh blood leading another, he looks in his binoculars to see where the fresh blood leads, he spots a dog limping, he then follows the direction that the dog came from. As the hunter gets closer to where the dog came from he realises that there are bodies on the ground. The bodies on the ground do not shock, giving the impression that he has been around bodies before and grown use to them, brining up another question of what he use to do or what has he seen? This is another thing that is used in thriller films quiet a bit, the one guy who is Mr America, meaning that he has seen things that other people haven’t, thus making him to be less vulnerable to emotions raised by bodies. This is also shown in the scene where he finds a person who has been shot asking for water, all he says is “I don’t have any water”. The hunter then leaves him and walks in the direction of where the vehicles came from. This also another typical thriller character, the person that looks after number one.
Comments
Me
An absolutely excellent piece of analysis Richard. Great reference to the conventions especially. Try to refer to things like camera angles and the effects they have. M