How does No Country For Old Men follow and subvert the conventions of westerns?

How does No Country For Old Men follow and subvert the conventions of westerns?

This essay will discuss how No Country For Old Men follows and subverts conventions of the western genre by the use of scenery, shots, visual codes and audio codes.
No country for old men follows conventions of the genre western by using many shots at the beginning to show the landscape, the scene cuts to a number of shots; in all shots we see lots of desert like land. This follows the conventions of western because landscapes in this genre play a big part in the narrative due to period it was set in and the tropes involved around it, for example, cowboys and sheriffs. These tropes are used in No Country for Old Men as well, within the film we have a sheriff bell that is represented as the overall good guy, he is known for bringing order to the town and being wise, this is a stereotypically used in westerns. Additionally, the film uses Llewellyn Moss to represent cowboys, the film uses mise en scène to show this as he is costumes is the biggest give away, he tends to always wear boots this is the same for many other characters too, and also he wears a checked shirt which fits into the genre. There are many scene in the film using that are evolved around boots i.e. we see a close up of Chigurh taking off his boots and a long shot of Llewellyn buying new ones. Furthermore the film consists of a bad guy who is played by the character of Chigurh, however, he is not your usual western bad guy he uses an oxygen tank as his weapon which could be considered as a modern weapon, but his   character does follow the typical dress sense of a western bad guy, as It tends to be dark clothing to convey a sense of danger.

Although, No Country for Old Men does not always follow the conventions, in the film justice is not served, Chigurh presented as anon emotionless killer, and he manages to escape from jail at first then goes on to killing many others. In typical western films we normally see justice being served by the villain dying or being captured by the sheriff, however, No County for Old Men does not do this at all. The film barley lets us see any physical confrontation instead it uses long shots of the scene and close ups of facial expression to show the aftermath of violence. Even when a confrontation does occur it’s not between sheriff bell or Chigurh and even sometimes Chigurh isn’t directly involved, for example when the cartel shot Llewellyn. Usually in western films we see a final shot out between the generally good guy and bad guy, but No Country for Old Men doesn’t do this .The film ends with sheriff Bell telling his wife about a strange dream, this completely subverts the film away from the western genre.


To conclude No Country For Old Men tends to follow some code mise en scène  that is linked to westerns i.e. boots and horses, but the story line and use of camera completely subverts is due to the confrontation happening off screen.

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