The book was better than the movie.
Of course it was. But why leave it at that and miss out on all the rich conversational meat? Sure the book was better, it usually is. But why leave it at that and miss out on the fun of figuring out why?
When examined from a purely narrative standpoint, divorced from rumblings about masterful performances and deft verbiage, one has to admit that Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men is a very simple story. A man finds $2 million and flees, first triumphantly, then desperately, from an emotionless killer, while the two are pursued in turn by an aging sheriff.
As most people know, McCarthy's novel was recently made into a movie by Joel and Ethan Coen, the brothers who share directing and writing credits for the film. Response to the movie has been uniformly positive, except for the minority that maintains the film's ending was tripe.
McCarthy's stripped-down story allows more time to concentrate on the interior of his characters, and it's pleasing to see that the film didn't punch up the action to draw a crowd. Although most probably don't think about a taut exploration of abstract humanity when they hear about a movie involving a near-perfect assassin chasing an ex-marine sniper across Texas.
Performances in the movie were pretty much perfect, as well. For the purpose of comparison, there isn't much to be said here. Tommy Lee Jones' Ed Tom Bell was a little harder than McCarthy's, and Josh Brolin, playing Llewellyn Moss, felt a little older than thirty-six.
In fact, most of the film was taken almost verbatim from the novel. Rather than trying to change their source material, the Coen brothers created an incredibly faithful rendition of No Country. This turns out to be a double-edged sword of sorts, however.
Here's why the book was better: First of all, McCarthy is a magnificent writer, and his control of language is astounding. The Coen brothers are masters of their craft as well, as are several of the players in their movie, but there's something deeply satisfying about the way that McCarthy writes.
"McCarthy...starts out beautifully and brilliantly redoing Faulkner, then moves west and is now beautifully and brilliantly redoing Hemingway. All this is meant as my deepest compliment," said Neil Schmitz, UB professor of English.
Besides, it's arguably impossible for a director to get as far into his actors' heads as a skilled author can get into his characters'.
What really sets the book apart from the movie, though, is the picture we're left with of Sheriff Bell at the end of the story. McCarthy's novel deepens the character by making his attempt to save Moss more desperate than the one the Coens present. The Coens' Bell was a hard, honorable man living a certain way that could no longer function in this new, crueler world.
But McCarthy's book has a scene in it that takes away the affable infallibility of Sheriff Bell. In the novel, Bell's defeat of Chigurh will atone for a past sin, although the reader is only informed of this after Bell has already lost Chigurh, Moss and his wife already dead. So at the end, when Bell says in essence that he's ready to die, it makes sense to the reader. But the viewer can't understand this feeling of defeat, because the movie didn't defeat Bell in the same existential way. In the movie Bell failed as a sheriff, while, in the novel, Bell failed as a man.
So the question is which failure was made the better story. The novel was more richly layered and the characters were slightly better realized in imagination than on film. Still, both nailed the strange hypocrisy of a story that speaks out against the desensitized nature of the new world within a framework of exciting violence. Sure, the novel was better, but the movie was still stellar.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
