As is the case with much of what he writes, David Denby's long piece on the Coen brothers' oeuvre is frequently insightful and occasionally maddening. (Like Ross Douthat, I adhere more to the Matt Zoller Seitz view of the Coens as closet moralists than to the far more common complaint, echoed by Denby, that they are technically proficient nihilists.) But there are times in the piece where you get the sense Denby just hasn't been paying very close attention.
For example, in his discussion of Miller's Crossing (a marvelous film which he casually maligns), Denby writes that
a hat flying beautifully through the woods in “Miller’s Crossing,” ... [was] stuck somewhere between gag and symbol—a symbol without a
referent. (Gabriel Byrne’s fedora, in “Miller’s Crossing,” epitomized
the décor of thirties gangster movies, but not their meaning.)
Now, it's a little unclear from the writing whether Denby recognizes that the flying hat and Byrne's fedora are one and the same, though I'll assume he does. But while I'm not sure what "meaning" Denby believes fedoras to have had in thirties gangster movies, the hat's meaning in Miller's Crossing is plain enough: It is Byrne's armor, without which he is vulnerable both physically and emotionally, as is made abundantly clear on at least half a dozen occasions in the film. Now, you can think this symbolism is shallow or pretentious (I don't), but if you missed it altogether you probably shouldn't be writing about about the subject quite so patronizingly.
There are also Denby's multiple mystified references to Anton Chigurh's cattle-gun in No Country for Old Men: "[W]e are unlikely to ask why Chigurh kills with a captive-bolt gun (the kind used in killing cattle) rather than a revolver"; "the strangely armed Chigurh."
Now it is true that Chigurh commits his second murder (of the motorist whose car he subsequently steals) using the captive-bolt gun. (Why? Presumably because it's quieter and less threatening-looking than a pistol, though the fact that it is genuinely cinematically terrifying undoubtedly plays a role, too.) But it's made awfully clear that the primary purpose of the cattle-gun is to blow out the locks of doors, a task to which Chigurh puts it again and again throughout the film. Indeed, after the murder of the motorist, Chigurh does consistently carry a firearm: He uses the cattle gun to open doors for him and the regular gun to kill people with. (Indeed, if I recall correctly, he has to do this, as the cattle gun has an effective range of only a couple of inches.)
Neither of these confusions on Denby's part much speaks to his broader complaints about both films. But they do suggest that he hasn't watched either movie terribly carefully.
My own take on No Country is here.
--Christopher Orr