No Oscar For Old Tom

Of No Country, Jonathan Last writes:

Tommy Lee Jones deserves an Oscar for his performance. Or maybe a Grammy for "spoken word," because what he does in No Country he does almost entirely with his voice. That may not sound like much, but he's given terse, old-timey Texas words and he delivers them like poetry, only believably. It's kind of amazing. (In particular, Jones is saddled with the movie's opening voice-over narration. It's so hard to keep this device from looking like a device, and the script he's working off of here would sound really precious coming out of anyone else's mouth. He delivers it perfectly.

Give him a Grammy, but don't give him the Oscar. He'll get it, I'm sure: He's earning all kinds of Oscar buzz, and he'll probably get votes from people who want to reward him for In the Valley of Elah, too. But it'll be unfair - as such things always are - if he takes home a statue, given that his performance is only the third-best (or fourth of fifth-best, if you count some of the fantastic supporting roles) in his own movie, let alone in the year as a whole. Not that Jones' work isn't impressive; it is. But he took the character who was there on the printed page and brought him to life almost exactly the way I anticipated he would, whereas Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem both showed me something I didn't expect to see. And yes, monologues and voice-overs can be hard, but I think what Brolin, in particular, had to do - conjuring a character out of a few words and a lot of physical movement - was harder still, and therefore more impressive.

Comments

Brolin's great in it.

Jones is better in "Elah."

Posted by Steve Sailer | December 1, 2007 9:39 PM

I really liked Bardem in The Dancer Upstairs, John Malcovich's 2002 directorial debut that no one saw.

Posted by Mike | December 1, 2007 10:17 PM

Brolin was a revelation, because the main thing I'd seen him in was the godawful TV series "Mr. Sterling," which left me wondering if he had any talent at all.

I wasn't prepared for him to be so good in "No Country for Old Men." And as good as Javier Bardem was, I give Brolin more credit because his character had more layers and more humanity. Bardem was able to adopt an icy pose and maintain it for the duration of the picture. Chigurh is incapable of love or fear or introspection, which makes him somewhat easier to play.

Posted by astorian | December 2, 2007 2:34 AM

Yes, Bardem's role was very similar to Schwarzenegger's in "The Terminator" - the relentless killing machine. He's good at it, but I don't think the impact can compare to Arnold's performance 23 years ago. And nobody gave Arnold an Oscar for it.

Josh Brolin, who, by the way, is Barbra Streisand's stepson, is wonderful in Hollywood's favorite role, the dangerous man with a heart of gold.

As for Tommie Lee Jones, I couldn't really follow his long King James Bible-influenced Cormac McCarthy soliloquies because of his thick Texas accent. (There's a reason people hire Sir Anthony Hopkins, lazy as he is, to play roles with lots of complex verbiages -- he's really good at enunciating clearly.) Jones is much more to my taste in "Elah" where he is terse or silent most of the time he's on camera.

Posted by Steve Sailer | December 3, 2007 2:51 AM

What struck me about Jones's performance is the sadness in his eyes. No matter what else he's doing or saying, it never leaves.

Posted by Mike | December 3, 2007 5:53 PM