There Will Be...............Questions for Old Men

There Will Be...............Questions for Old Men
As Denzel Washington read the names of the nominees for Best Picture at the 2008 Oscars Awards it was clear in the minds of those watching that although five movies would be mentioned, the competition lay firmly between Coen Brother’s No Country for Old Men and Paul Anderson’s There Will Be Blood. These exhibited masterful craftsmanship by their directors and actors that earned the respect and praise of the Academy. Although they tell different stories they have more in common however than nominations and level of praise, enough at least to argue that their rivalry was less of a coincidence and more out of attraction for the style employed by the movie’s plots.
An important factor that made these two movies distinguishable is that they blur the lines between protagonist and antagonist, either wedging both into the same character or harmonizing the appeal between hero and villain so closely that as the film concludes the audience is no longer sure if the good guys won or not; because who the hell were the good guys anyways and why are they supposed to win? Did anyone win?
Perhaps it is the unconventional portrayal of good and evil that is daunting.
Protagonist, Daniel Plainsview is no hero; instead he is an alcoholic, limping, grief stricken by the pain he has caused his son and embalming himself with his hatred for the entire world as if it is a quality he needs to survive. Whatever good that comes from him is either garnered by someone else’s good intentions or tainted by the real motivations that lie behind it. Although it is to him that our sympathies first go to and his story that we follow, there seems to be nothing protagonistic about him by the end of the film.
Antagonist Anton Chigurh embodies a calm, collected almost peaceful attitude; imperfect and yet invincible, stoic and yet reaping satisfaction from his work. His notion of justice is decided by the chaos of chance and it is by chance that Chirgurh has to pay at all. He suffers only a gun shot wound, a broken bone and some scrapes; a small price to pay for enormity his crimes. Although his position as antagonist doesn’t change during the film, whatever protagonists there are end up killed by Mexicans or retire, never making a final stand. Without anyone to challenge him it would seem he has won but bloodied and on the run, his escape hardly feels victorious and the reality is that we never really do find out what Chigurh’s ultimate motivations were or even why he is so violent.
What we do know however is that this character shares the same appeal as say Hannibal Lector, Mr. Brooks and other flawless-like murderers who have been depicted in relatively protagonistic roles. He isn’t the “good guy” in the movie, but as he spares the life of the old man at the gas station in such a child-like and playful manner, a more comical and merciful side of him appears. While the escape of a murderer is by its nature a bad thing, the appeal that his character has softens the negative connotations of the ending of the movie and makes his escape acceptable to the audience.
What all this means is that these two films leave the audience confused because the endings not only transcend the normal “good guys win and bad guys lose” doctrine but also the “bad guys win, good guys lose” doctrine. By the end of each story, even though time has passed and many events have taken place, it feels like the characters have moved backwards instead of forwards; that nothing has been accomplished that helped anyone at all.
In the shadows of the monuments of praise heralded to both these films were the complaints of non-climactic endings that left the audience without that final wholesome message relieving the viewers from the cruelties exposed to them and then dwarfing those cruelties with a righteous victory that rises from the ashes of torment, compensates all injustices and ultimately defines the movie with a positive spin.
The job of final judgment is ceded to our imaginations. Whereas Hollywood has generally shelled out happy ending standards that give positive flavor to cinema, the satisfaction that is usually granted is withheld and the audience is forced retreat and search the rest of the movie for the meaning and truth.
If you combined the ideologues from both these films to make an imaginary world view it would say: “Justice is an illusion and should be left to chance, rules are there to make us creative about the way we take around them, family is either a means to an end or a liability and life is not a fairy tale.” It is not a happy message, nor is it really right or wrong. But since when was it supposed to be?