Big Fish is another great example of a well adapted screenplay. Daniel Wallace wrote a fantastic book about a son coming to terms with his perception of his dad as a mythic character and the reality of the man in front of him dying of cancer. John August's screenplay amplified the most poignant aspects of the story and partnering with Tim Burton turned out a cinematic epic.
Storytelling on the printed page and the silver screen are vastly different prospects. And the Coen brothers are masters of that phenomenally difficult art. Their adaptation of Charles Portis's book True Grit was almost verse-by-verse faithful in its adherence. They adapted Homer (for goodness' sake) for the big screen in Oh Brother Where Art Thou? one of the most quotable films in recent memory.
But I have a problem with the adaptation of No Country for Old Man. In the film Anton Chigur, ruthless assassin of a Houston based drug cartel, is posited at the center of the story. His personal criminal ethic "that transcends drugs or money or anything like that," and the mystique of his cruel and almost impervious efficiency are the focal point of the film.
But in McCarthy's novel, Texas Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (portrayed perfectly in the film by Tommy Lee Jones) is the real focal point of the story. Bell is privately tortured by what he perceives as the biggest failure of his life. In World War 2, his company is ambushed by German mortar fire. Subsequently, he ends up holed up in a mostly leveled farmhouse in a cold rain. He fights off ground troops with machine gun fire, but before daylight, and without absolutely knowing about the condition of survivors among his company, Bell escapes under cover of night.
Later Bell is decorated for bravery, but in his heart he lives with the perceived cowardice of his behavior. He becomes a small town sheriff who has incredible, impeccable concern for the citizens of his community. Yet faced with the overwhelming prospect of facing Chigur and of dismantling a virtually impervious drug cartel, Sheriff Bell retires.
No Country for Old Men is really about how people process their great and often internalized failures. Granted that is much more difficult to translate to the movie theater, but it is still a very worthwhile piece of subject matter. I am encouraged that in the book Bell comes off as humble, likeable, decent and centered (in his own way). Because the truth of the matter is all of us will have to figure out how to live with that most persistent and difficult to vanquish foe: our inner person in view of our failures.
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