What’s Going On?

Anton Chigurh goes into a petrol station to pay for his petrol and get a snack. It has already been demonstrated that Chigurh is an incredibly dangerous and unsettling man, quite happy to kill. As the Gas Station Proprietor (as IMDb refers to him and shall henceforth be called GSP) engages in small talk with Chigurh he enquires about what the weather is like where he’s from. This seemingly innocuous comment changes their interaction immediately. While keeping an even tone Chigurh begins a barrage of questions regarding the man, the petrol station, and what time he goes to bed, and even without our knowledge GSP is scared. The next question, “How much have you ever lost on a coin toss?” Chigurh flips a coin and insists GSP calls it, who is clearly terrified and wants to know what the stakes are before he agrees to take part. In short order GSP crumbles and calls heads, which it is. Chigurh’s tone change and seems to back off, telling the man to look after his lucky quarter and not to keep it with the other coins, even though that’s all it is.

Acting

As already stated there are only two characters: Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem and GSP played by Gene Jones. Bardem is an Oscar-winning titan of acting and plays one of the three central characters and the most obvious bad guy in the film. Jones is a character actor with a varied CV and this is his only scene in the film. This scene could be the best piece of acting Bardem has ever done but nothing should be taken away from Jones, GSP is a pleasant, slightly bumbling figure, so wildly out of his depth when confronted with a man like Chigurh (another character feels it necessary to bring up the bubonic plague when discussing just how dangerous Chigurh is). Jones is the ordinary person harmlessly leading his life until the personification of the bubonic plague shows up and his quiet life can be utterly shattered. My favourite moment is when GSP calls the coin correctly and Bardem adopts a subtle change of tone, particularly the raised eyebrows when saying “just a coin”. It’s worth pointing out the scene is almost entirely shot with the camera position so we see the back of one character and the face of the other, so we cut back between the two, so really there’s only one person acting in the shot and both do a fantastic job with all the attention focused on them.

Tension

The scene is 4 minutes 22 seconds long and from second 17 it is an unbearably tense nightmare. Like so many great tense scenes there’s not actually much you could objectively point to as the cause of tension – there are no overt threats, there is no violence, no weapons are displayed. The dialogue could convey just an annoyingly inquisitive person who doesn’t have great social skills but from what we know of Chigurh, the manner of Bardem’s acting and the reaction of GSP this is a terrifying experience. An idea I’ve always found fascinating and first encountered in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is the idea that if a person does something that you have no frame of reference for then you don’t know how to react. If Chigurh had come in with a gun to rob GSP or if he was drunk and being aggressive GSP would understand the situation – but he has no idea what is going on. He knows he should be scared though. Perhaps as time goes by GSP would convince himself that it was nothing really, just an unusual encounter.

Who Is Anton Chigurh?

Apart from just being a great scene, I think it is in the film to give us more understanding of Chigurh. He isn’t just a mindless psychopath bringing death to everyone he meets – he has rules, something which is very important later in the film. Once GSP has antagonised him with his question there is the distinct likelihood Chigurh will kill him but he leaves it to chance, not only that, he insists GSP call it, rather than himself. He has bound himself to the outcome of the coin toss and even though he’s leaving a man who may very well pick up the phone and call the police about the terrifying man who just came into his petrol station, he lets him live. I think Chigurh also believes in consequences, that all actions have consequences. He is hunting Llewyn Moss who stumbled into a drug deal and walked out with a fortune, does Moss deserve to die? No, but he made a decision and he did something and consequences will come. GSP’s idle small talk is fine until perhaps you meet a person who doesn’t want you thinking about where they’re from and you have to live with the consequences of asking that question. No reasonable person would think asking about the weather is worthy of death but that isn’t important to Chigurh. At this point Chirgurh has business to be getting on with – he is dealing with drug cartels, crime organisations, the police and every ounce of common sense would say – don’t make any unnecessary trouble, don’t draw attention to yourself. Not Chigurh. He’s seemingly willing to kill a passerby which could bring down a manhunt on him because of his twisted principles.

An Iconic Scene In An Iconic Film

I remember being riveted by this scene when I saw it and being terrified for poor GSP. To show the amazing talent of the Coen Brothers there is another scene later in this film that is almost as tense, this one being the exact opposite, with no dialogue and Josh Brolin watching the shadows move outside his door.

Also Read: Anatomy Of A Scene: The Godfather – Restaurant Scene

Read More: Making A Coen Brothers Film

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The Typical Coen Brothers Film…

To be blunt there is no typical Coen Brothers film, they move from knockabout comedy to incredibly tense thrillers – genre seems to mean nothing to them and is certainly no predictor of quality – they’re as comfortable making stoner comedies as gangster films. It is genuinely astounding that it is the same people who made O’ Brother Where Art Thou? as No Country For Old Men. Other directors also play with genre – Quentin Tarantino for example – but whether it’s a revenge thriller or western they are still distinctly a Tarantino film. The Coen Brothers go beyond that and I would argue that without any prior knowledge no one would suspect Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing were made by the same people. Looking at their work I split their films into three categories.

The Violent

These films are tense. No Country For Old Men is a lesson in tension, what should have been an idle bit of chit chat in a petrol station became perhaps the standout scene of this Oscar-winning film. And what was causing the tension? The outcome of a coin toss. No violence, no guns, and only the barest suggestion of threat and you can’t take your eyes off the screen. That said, they are a dab hand with actual violence as well with deftly choreographed scenes of fighting in No Country For Old Men, True Grit and Miller’s Crossing.

The Funny

Not only are the Coen Brothers very funny they can do different types of humour. One of the funniest scenes of recent years is the now legendary back and forth in Hail Caesar! of a director trying to coach an actor into saying a line the right way – so much is put into just the two characters repeating that line at each other. They also create fictional porn films where the Dude goes bowling with a Valkyrie in what might be best the dream sequence ever filmed. It is safe to say they have comedic range.

The Tragic

When they want to the Coen Brothers can make you sad. A Serious Man is one of the most tragic films I have ever seen as you watch everything good in a man’s life being drained away and how he struggles to still do the right thing. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to bring myself to watch Inside Llewyn Davis again as you see an extremely talented person just knocked around by life, his fortunes so low he has no winter coat for the freezing cold New York.

The Perfect Coen Brothers Film

They have at least one film that brings these three things together perfectly and that is Fargo. The film that won Frances McDormand her first Oscar, cemented a stereotype of North Dakota and inexorably linked Steve Buscemi to the idea of being ground up in a wood chipper. The film is funny, tragic and violent and does it all in less than 100 minutes. The story of Jerry Lundegaard hiring perhaps not the best criminals to fake kidnap his wife so he get the ransom from her extremely wealthy father is riveting from the first scene.

The tension that the viewer has for Marge Gunderson, the heavily pregnant cop who is drawn into the crime is immense and grows over time, what will happen in the inevitable showdown between cop and criminal? The criminals are perhaps more violent and conspicuous than Jerry hoped for, leaving a trail of bodies behind them, ending of course with one of them killing his partner in a famously gruesome way. As for tragedy – Jerry Lundegaard may be the most pathetic figure in cinema history with failure and idiocy dogging his every move and his inaction and incompetence only growing as his plan spirals out of control. Then there is the bizarre meeting between Marge and an old school acquaintance, of no relevance whatsoever to the plot, but with brilliant performances from both actors.

As for comedy…well it’s certainly very dark comedy, a lot coming from the very pleasant and smalltown people who find themselves as everyday characters surrounded by murder and violence. That said, Marge, who is as pleasant and smalltown as any of them is also shown to be extremely determined and capable so maybe don’t underestimate them.

The Coen Brothers – what’s next?

Of course, their real genius is that usually their films contain all three of things in varying amounts. According to IMDb their next film is Macbeth and really I don’t know what to expect – a bloodsoaked rampage, a comedy of errors or the saddest portrayal of the Scottish Play ever made.

Also Read: The Anatomy of a Christopher Nolan Film

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What’s Going On?

The film is a set of six stories, all of them macabre, some tragic, some funny and some a bit of both. Typical of the Coens it’s full of dark humour, brief outbursts of violence and unfortunate twists of fate. If these six stories were to sum up the Old West it would be a cruel and brutal place with moments of joy and honour.

Behind The Scenes

The film is written and directed by the filmmaking geniuses of Joel and Ethan Coen and it’s hard to sum their careers easily, multiple oscar winners for films as diverse as The Hudsucker Proxy and No Country For Old Men. While they have had some failures their successes are almost endless. As you may have worked out I am a fan. Westerns are not new to the Coen Brothers, they remade the western classic True Grit and won Oscars for No Country For Old Men which feels like a modern western. Then films like Fargo, Miller’s Crossing and The Man Who Wasn’t There all features tropes of westerns, like morally upright sheriffs, terrifying villains and isolated situations where help will not come from outside. A diverse anthology suits the Coens well and they easily move from the unlucky comic adventures of James Franco to the far more sinister goings on of Liam Neeson’s character in the next story. The Coens have always easily moved between genres, making radical turns to different types of story and so this film feels like it’s summing up their whole career.

In Front Of The Camera

Naturally, as it’s an anthology it’s a big cast, the titular Buster Scruggs is played by Tim Blake Nelson who has a long list of credits on IMDb including one of the central prisoner characters in O Brother Where Art Thou?, but the film also contains Liam Neeson, Brendan Gleeson, James Franco, Tom Waits and more.  Every actor is on good form, and some giving great performances. Tim Blake Nelson sets the bar high from the start and is perfectly cast as someone who looks absolutely harmless but is a thoroughly proficient killing machine, going so far as leading tender sing-alongs in saloons in between brutal murders.

Does It Work?

Obviously, the film has six stories and so some work better than others but all are enjoyable and each deserves time spent on it individually:

The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs

The opening story regarding Buster Scruggs is very entertaining, a man looking like the stereotype of a white hat cowboy turns out to be an incredibly skilled and morally dubious gunman who has an enjoyably eloquent and on the surface exceedingly friendly way of speaking. This story distils just about every western cliche of the expert gunslinger into one short story.

Near Algodones & Meal Ticket

The weakest stories are Near Algodones and Meal Ticket. The first concerns James Franco, a less than successful bank robber (featuring a scene-stealing appearance by wonderful character actor Stephen Root, you may not know his name but I guarantee you’ve seen him) and is the most overly comedic of the stories. Meal Ticket is a horrendously dark story about the cynical calculations of a person’s value to another and what happens when they look elsewhere for opportunity. But even these stories have their charm and I was always engaged and interested, eager to know what would happen to the multitude of characters.

All Gold Canyon

A surprisingly enthralling performance by the musician Tom Waits, playing an aged prospector digging for gold, where he talks largely to himself and “Mr. Pocket” showing determination and a great amount of grit. The idea of Tom Waits’ digging holes and talking to himself sounds boring but it was one of the better stories with you becoming very invested in whether he succeeds or fails.

The Gal Who Got Rattled

The oddest and most difficult to pigeonhole is Zoe Kazan as Alice in The Gal Who Got Rattled, a story that starts as unrelentingly bleak with the occasional hopeful moment. Alice and her less than useful or reliable brother had joined a wagon train heading for Oregon and they are beset with the problems such a journey brings, admittedly most of them falling on Alice. This story features a great character turn around with a barely even acknowledged character jumping into the thick of things.

The Mortal Remains

Finally, the last story The Mortal Remains – five people riding together on a stagecoach, for half of the story nearly all the talking is done by three people on one side, strangers, they are arguing about the nature of love and relationships until the pair opposite explain their rather sinister profession. The pair played by Brendan Gleeson and Jongo O’Neil are bounty hunters, but not your typical bounty hunters. O’Neil is brilliant simultaneously terrifying and enticing the other passengers by telling them how he goes about his job and the importance of storytelling. Any film, play or book that talks about storytelling are intentionally inviting a lot of analysis, what exactly is going on? Is everything as it seems? Why is he telling this story to these people?

In Summary…

The film is funny, moving, tragic and more, and what’s more, it looks amazing, whether it’s Buster Scrugg’s in his brilliant white outfit or the breathtaking scenery in. I think by its very nature an anthology is not going to be as satisfying as one great feature-length film but these are six great stories. Perhaps the best compliment I can give this film is that it has stuck in my mind. Since watching it I’ve been replaying the stories in my mind, thinking about the characters, analysing what happened and what they meant. If it turned out the Coens had recorded another six stories but cut them from the film I would happily watch them straight away.

Verdict: (4 / 5)

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