No Country for Old Men
What I found most interesting about this film is how the director created suspense. I'll admit that while watching Psycho and The Shining, I thought that the only way to create suspense was in the way that Hitchcock and Kubrick did it - through music, sounds, and making every scary scene have a normal setting. However, after watching No Country for Old Men, I realized that I also felt anxious due to suspense created in the film, but for a very different reason.
Unlike Kubrick or Hitchock, the director of this film did not use music to create suspense. Instead, what I noticed is that he used clues to give the audience some sort of knowledge about something so that when this object is later reintroduced in the film, the audience would begin to know what is happening and, in turn, become terrified. For example, one of the very first scenes in the film shows the antagonist, Anton Chigurh, killing an innocent man on the side of a road with an air gun (above). By showing this without even introducing Chigurh prior, the director gives the audience some information about a character. Later, we become scared every time we see his weapon or his use of it, such as his shooting of a door knob before entering a room and killing everyone in it. Every time there is even a slight clue of Chigurh's presence, the audience becomes terrified because there is a large chance that he will kill whoever else is in the scene. This is best exemplified in the scene where he has a conversation with the store clerk. Throughout the entire scene, the audience is terrified that Chigurh will possibly kill the man after they finish talking only because of the prior knowledge of Chigurh that the audience has, not because of music, sound effects, or any special camera techniques.
What other techniques do you think the director used to create suspense?
I agree, really good points! I think the director also used lack of dialogue between the characters to build suspense. In most of the scenes in this film were either Llewelyn quietly searching the perimeter or running away from Chigurh. Chigurh actually did most of the talking in any scene that there was talking. This makes the audience feel as though they are trying to understand what is going through his head. However, in reality his actions were almost unpredictable which leaves the audience nervous and on edge. Therefore, created suspense with lack of dialogue and few dialogue from the antagonist.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really good point about the Coen Brothers, and it wasn't even something I noticed when watching No Country. I think another way they tried to create suspense (although it does stem from your idea) is lack of dialogue. There's never a clue as to when the conversation will end between Chigurh and his victim, which is usually when a death will occur. Instead, it can happen at any point in the scene because Chigurh doesn't typically need anything from who he kills, he just does it to be rid of "the inconvenience."
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