NO Country for Old Men vs. Inside Llewyn Dav-YES

    These are two very different movies from two very related directors (that’s a nod to the Coen brothers’ siblingship). So why did I hate one and love the other? Why did No Country for Old Men (2007) make me want to flip a coin with heads being I stop watching the movie and tails being I stop watching the movie, but Inside Llewyn Davis (2014) made me want to adopt a cat and pursue a career in folk music? I believe the answer is simple– hope.

    No Country for Old Men follows Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) after he finds a loose suitcase full of money from a drug deal gone wrong. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) wants that money and he’s a psychopath, so things start to look pretty bad for Moss. Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is also there. In summary, No Country for Old Men is like Tom and Jerry but if there was more death and Tommy Lee Jones was also there.

    Actually, the main reason I disliked No Country for Old Men so vehemently is because it’s so similar to Tom and Jerry. It’s the same shtick over and over, for two hours and two minutes. Moss grabs his cash suitcase, finds a motel, hides the money, Chigurh finds him somehow, and a violent chase scene ensues. Sure, Chigurh gets closer each time which ultimately leads to him killing Moss, but it is essentially the same process again and again. No one in the film can escape this vicious cycle, and neither can the audience. I understand that this is a reason many people enjoy the film; it personifies the unpredictability and violence of life, which is ultimately an unchangeably and unfairly repetitive journey. Life is a series of coin tosses, depicted through Chigurh’s two terrifying coin tosses during the film that rely on chance to decide on saving one person (the gas station owner) and killing another (Carla Jean Moss).

       It’s great as a metaphor. It’s boring as the concept for an entire movie. I’m definitely biased because I’m already not a huge fan of man-filled movies about Western-influenced violence and brooding. But also, as an audience member, I crave escapement. I crave being presented with a problem and having some sort of solution. I want there to be a prize for me sitting through TWO hours and TWO minutes of the same boring chase scene. I want there to be some indication that the cycle of pain and violence isn’t always painful and violent. Instead, we get three main events at the end of the movie that tell us we’re stuck in this cycle forever: Chigurh kills Moss, Chigurh kills Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald), and Tommy Lee Jones gives us a monologue about a dream that seems loosely connected to his own mortality. Even when the film ends, the monotonous cycle of crime and sadness continues. 

    This is, honestly, a pretty cool concept… if it remained a concept. In reality, the Coen brothers stretch out this cool concept for TWO boring hours and TWO boring minutes (at this point, it should be clear that I dislike when movies are over two hours). Chase scene after chase scene, boring manly man after boring manly man, bloody death after bloody death, and we get no way out. Even within this cycle, we don’t get any breaths of relief. Every character is essentially the same: either a hardened man who has a soft side for violence, or a one-dimensional woman who is angry about the men’s violence but not enough to make a change. Every scene is essentially the same: either two men are talking to each other about violence, or two men are being violent with each other. There’s never anything that takes us out of the cycle, or the devastatingly boring world the Coen brothers have created. Even the most stressful scene– when Moss waits inside his dark motel room with his gun cocked towards the door as Chigurh slowly paces by– falls into this repetitive theme. No matter how anxious it made me feel, it couldn’t make me shake the thought that I’d already seen stuff like this and I would continue seeing it throughout the movie. There’s no way out, and it’s boring.

    Inside Llewyn Davis follows the title character as he struggles to make ends meet as a folk musician and bounces between various friends’ couches. Despite the difference in setting, characters, and plot, Davis (Oscar Isaac) confronts challenges and themes similar to those in No Country for Old Men. He leads a depressingly unlucky life, going on a “chase” of sorts to find opportunities for his music career, but nothing ever seems to turn up for him. No matter what he tries, he fails– he loses the Gorfeins’ cat, he (possibly) gets his friend’s wife (Carey Mulligan) pregnant, he opts out of getting royalties for a song that ends up raking in a lot of royalties, and he unsuccessfully auditions for Bud Grossman. Davis is stuck in a miserable loop, which is stressed further when the film ends the same way it begins: Davis playing at the Gaslight, being beaten up in an alley, and leaving the Gorfeins’ apartment.

    So, why do I think Inside Llewyn Davis is worlds better than No Country for Old Men? First of all, it embraces the depressing cycle of life theme by making itself into a time loop movie. That last scene, the almost perfect repetition of the first scene, made Inside Llewyn Davis into a film favorite for me because it commits to the bit. No Country for Old Men just feels like we’re stuck in a sad cycle, while Inside Llewyn Davis explicitly tells us we’re stuck. It affirms what the audience has already been feeling, and it does so in a creative, fun way. Second of all, the “trials” that Davis experiences along his journey are weird. No Country for Old Men is, to painfully repeat myself, painfully repetitive. When he hitchhikes to Chicago, Davis meets Roland Turner (John Goodman), a talkative jazz musician with a fun cane and a bad drug addiction, and Johnny Five (Garrett Hedlund), an aspiring entertainer-turned-valet. These characters are already more interesting, unique, and not boring than the characters in No Country for Old Men. Jean (Carey Mulligan) is angry, hurt, and complex. That’s a lot more than I’d say about the women in No Country for Old Men.

    Third of all, and I think most importantly, Inside Llewyn Davis breaks us out of the depressing time loop with a hopeful– albeit subtle– change. In the beginning shot of Davis leaving the Gorfeins’ apartment, their cat sprints out through the door before Davis can stop him. Thus begins a harrowing and anxiety-inducing chase that carries on throughout the film. In the final scene, it’s as if nothing has changed– Davis is still playing at the Gaslight, he’s still getting beaten up for being a drunk heckler, and he’s still staying at the Gorfeins. It’s almost like despite everything we’ve just seen Davis go through, his life remains the same and nothing he did mattered. But that’s not the case. This time, when Davis leaves the Gorfeins’ house, he stops the cat from running out with his leg. He successfully closes the door, and presumably does not have to embark on the cat chase we saw earlier in the film.

    It’s a small difference, but it’s noticeable. It tells us that even though he’s stuck in this loop, even though his life is repeating itself, not everything is the same. There are ways he can break out of his fate– what he’s learned from the other iterations of his life (i.e., not to let the cat out) can carry over. Davis is therefore not as trapped as we fear he is. Despite how small this difference is, it gets the audience thinking. It gives us hope– hope that things can change even when his life seems so dark, and hope that maybe in the next iteration of his life, even more will differ. 

    No Country for Old Men traps the characters and consequently the audience; it gives us no escape from the violence and death riddled throughout the story. Inside Llewyn Davis creatively hints to us that there are ways to break out of monotony. We don’t have to be trapped doing the same thing over and over with no change. The Coen brothers give the audience hope, a release from the loop they’ve put us in. We don’t end the movie feeling bored and depressed because they have provided us with a break, a pause, an optimistic note. They reward us for sitting through a failing journey by telling us that even with failure, you still gain something… even if it’s as small as keeping a cat inside.