The late and great Cormac McCarthy’s most famous novel is probably The Road, a hauntingly well-written and shattering story of a father and son trekking across a lawless America, wiped out by an unspecified cataclysmic event. Much has been made of the author’s sparse style, which combines poetic and surreal descriptions with lithe plotting and bleakly surreal settings: an appealing combination for a motion picture adaptation.
The Australian director John Hillcoat brought it to the screen in 2009 with a film that impressively translates the book’s heaving sense of sadness, using an anemic palette to evoke the look of a dying, inconsolable world, memorably navigated by Viggo Mortensen (billed as “the Man”) and Kodi Smit-McPhee (“the Boy”). But The Road is just one of several adaptations of McCarthy’s books, which often possessed a quality that worked for film: 2000’s All the Pretty Horses (directed by Billy Bob Thornton), 2011’s The Sunset Limited (directed by Tommy Lee Jones), 2013’s Child of God (directed by James Franco), and, of course, the Coen brothers’ 2007 neo-western No Country for Old Men.
If The Road is McCarthy’s most famous novel, No Country (which snagged four Oscars, including best picture) is the best-known and most revered adaptation of his work, rightly considered an exemplary example of the “crime don’t pay” genre. Directed with suspenseful Hitchcockian flair, the film has a striking sense of place gleaned from its west Texas desert settings. The drama revolves around a trio of hardy performances from Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones, Bardem’s being rather more intense than the others. He brings angel of death vibes to Anton Chigurh, the villain who pursues Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss after he runs off with a heap of cash that ain’t his. Jones plays sheriff Ed Tom Bell, who narrates the book, and in the film is given its most memorable dialogue: a great, cryptic monologue at the end in which he reflects on two dreams, both involving his father. In some respects this visually straightforward scene, much of it captured in a single shot, is the pinnacle of Jones’s career: so simple, yet so well written and performed.
Jones is obviously a fan of McCarthy, directing and starring in an adaptation of the author’s work a few years later: The Sunset Limited, a chamber piece scripted by McCarthy himself, and based on his play of the same name. It’s essentially one great big, exhausting debate about the nature of faith, between Jones’s dejected professor and a ranting bible-bashing ex-convict played by Samuel L Jackson. The film is tight and claustrophobic, perhaps intentionally devoid of cinematic flair, emphasising dialogue and performances.
A far bolder, and frankly batshit crazy production also written by McCarthy is Ridley Scott’s crime drama The Counselor, which got bashed by critics (exhibit A; exhibit B) and made little impact on the zeitgeist. However, I appreciated its offbeat plotting, whacked-out gonzo energy and, at times, horrendously strange chutzpah, such as a scene in which Cameron Diaz has sex with a Ferrari, intercut with a spiky-haired Bardem recounting the story to a bemused Michael Fassbender. This proto-Titane sequence is an odd moment in McCarthy’s motion picture oeuvre, to say the least. But when cinephiles contemplate his contribution to cinema, they’ll primarily recall Hillcoat’s intensely somber adaptation and the Coen brothers’ rolled gold masterpiece.
