Tommy Lee Jones vs The World

No Country For Old Men (2007), Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Carry McDonald, Joel and Ethan Coen (Dir.)
In The Valley Of Elah (2007), Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, Susan Sarandon, Paul Haggis (Dir.)

There are some things that are so far removed from our understanding of how the world should be that we don't know how we should react. Sometimes we try and find words to describe them, but often it seems that the words have all been used up describing less consequential things. Tommy Lee Jones has chosen to make movies instead. He seems to be leaving his weightier roles for the latter years of his career (he probably didn't think he had the wrinkles for it before), putting in two outstanding performances, as a retiring Texan sheriff in the Coen brothers' No Country For Old Men and an ex-military father trying to uncover the truth behind his son's disappearance in Paul Haggis' In The Valley Of Elah.

The most astonishing thing about these two films is how much they share in common, not just in terms of personnel (Josh Brolin also appears in both films, as do - according to The Guardian - two other actors, and the films also share the same cinematographer, Roger Deakins), but also in terms of sentiment. Both depict characters overtaken by world events, for whom their environment has become so unfamiliar as to be completely unfathomable.

In No Country, Tommy Lee Jones represents the old men of the title, a sheriff on the verge of retirement confronted by a series of grotesque killings resulting from a drug deal gone bad. When he finds out that a local welder (Josh Brolin) is on the run with $2m of drug money, he realizes he must find him before the killers contracted to recover the money do so. The sheriff is, however, resigned to his limitations, a man who observes with incredulity at how the world has changed around him, whose values could not possibly have prepared him to confront a man like Anton Chigurh, the mysterious killer who will stop at nothing to recover the $2m. In one of the more light-hearted yet telling of the many memorable scenes from the movie, sheriff Bell sits at a diner with his deputy, reading the paper:

"My lord, Wendell, it's just all-out
war. I don't know any other word for
it. Who are these folks? I don't know...

...Here last week they found this
couple out in California, they would
rent out rooms to old people and then
kill 'em and bury 'em in the yard and
cash their social security checks.
They'd torture them first, I don't
know why. Maybe their television
set was broke. And this went on until,
and here I quote...

...'Neighbors were alerted when a man
ran from the premises wearing only a
dog collar.'
You can't make up such a
thing as that. I dare you to even try.

...But that's what it took, you'll notice.
Get someone's attention. Diggin'
graves in the back yard didn't bring any."

It's these incomprehensible events that make this no country for old men and that put old men at a loss as to what to do about someone like Chigurh, a man who we're told has "Principles that transcend money or drugs or anything like that", and whose conviction is so strong that morality no longer becomes relevant. Chigurh is played with chilling effect by the excellent Javier Bardém. The dodgy haircut alone is enough to terrify you. No Country For Old Men is another great contribution to that film genre, the modern western (I think of Lone Star, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada...), that sets modern day events against the timeless, expansive , desolate backdrop of the south. The script is full of classic lines, sharp dialogue and cutting sarcasm and the film itself full of visual details that will keep Coen buffs talking for years.

In The Valley Of Elah takes its title from the biblical battlefield in which David fought Goliath. The title itself is laden with irony, as Paul Haggis' film is noticeably ambiguous about who is David and who is Goliath. Indeed, that's the point of the film, which is a critical inquiry into the fate of soldiers returning from Iraq. After being informed that his youngest son has absconded from his base following his return from duty in Iraq, Hank Deerfield sets out to find him, teaming up with a local police detective to try and uncover a military cover-up. Giving any more away would spoil the film, so that's all I'll say about the plot. The film works on many levels, as a father's personal journey to find his son, both literally and emotionally, as a social critique on military action, and as a study of the effects of war on individuals or inter-generational friendship. Theron gives a fine performance as the single mother detective ridiculed by her male colleagues, but Tommy Lee Jones is outstanding in his portrayal of a man whose entire life has been shaped by the military - to the extent that he still finds it inappropriate to present himself in front of a woman without a shirt - but whose circumstances lead him to question many of those values to which he himself has appeared. The film intercuts Deerfield's investigations with eerie video footage from Iraq recovered from his son's mobile phone that hints at the horrifying events that might have led to his disappearance.

The two films remind us of the non-Hollywood reality in which the good guys don't always win. Haggis' film is by far the bleaker of the two, however, for it tells us that, in sending troops to the grotesque theatre of Elah, we don't know whether we're sending them as Davids or Goliaths, for these events are so far removed from any comprehensible notion of morality that we have no framework by which to judge what's right and what's wrong. The film is, in the end, a cry for help, expressed with great poignancy in its final scene.