The Coun­selor was Cor­mac McCarthy’s unflinch­ing por­trait of the con­se­quences of desire

“See the child,” Cor­mac McCarthy instructs us in the first line of his nov­el ​‘Blood Merid­i­an’. Sim­i­lar­ly, in the open­ing scene of 2013’s The Coun­selor, McCarthy – through direc­tor Rid­ley Scott’s lens – com­mands the audi­ence to wit­ness the play­ful inti­ma­cy of the tit­u­lar coun­selor (Michael Fass­ben­der) and his love, Lau­ra (Pené­lope Cruz). He puts desire in front of us from the begin­ning, and over the next two hours offers a pow­er­ful the­sis on desire and the inevitabil­i­ty of its com­pan­ion: consequence.

As McCarthy’s only pro­duced script for a fea­ture film, The Coun­selor remains a fas­ci­nat­ing and rich exper­i­ment from one of America’s most laud­ed nov­el­ists. In it, he pens a grim para­ble about greed and its reper­cus­sions. While the film overt­ly com­ments on its themes, there is some­thing deep­er at work, some­thing that directs us, as McCarthy does in the open­ing scene, to peer more close­ly at the hid­den moti­va­tions and log­ic dri­ving the narrative.

The unnamed Coun­selor has big dreams for a grandiose life along­side a radi­ant wife. Those dreams, we dis­cov­er ear­ly on, can­not be sat­is­fied by his pre­sum­ably healthy pay­check. Debt and finan­cial irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty are hint­ed at. The Coun­selor, with assis­tance from his extrav­a­gant friend Rein­er (Javier Bar­dem) and his savvy con­tact Westray (Brad Pitt), seeks a solu­tion in the drug trade.

Their plan is to pur­chase an immense amount of cocaine from a car­tel – the access to which is made pos­si­ble by ongo­ing drug wars – and redis­trib­ute it after it comes across the bor­der sealed in a sep­tic truck. Scenes of the truck being pre­pared are an unsub­tle ref­er­ence to the busi­ness the three men have entered, but as some­thing repul­sive to law enforce­ment, the cam­ou­flage is a con­ve­nient way to keep the plot moving.

Through­out the film the desire and greed and lust (par­tic­u­lar­ly of the Coun­selor and Rein­er) are all framed as choic­es. Out­ward­ly, this is true, even when they are dis­guised as des­per­a­tion. ​“My back’s against the fuck­ing wall,” the Coun­selor com­plains as he cuts down the high­way in a Bent­ley – an iron­ic flour­ish. But beneath the sur­face, there is no choice. The Coun­selor and Rein­er can­not help but act the way they do. Long before the film’s events, they’ve accept­ed greed, and it has dri­ven their deci­sions as if they were on autopi­lot. Their quest for more is not an indul­gence; it has become ingrained, primal.

The fact that every­thing that occurs in the film is the prod­uct of some long-along embrace of greed is allud­ed to lat­er by Rein­er him­self. His part­ner Malk­i­na (played by Cameron Diaz) asks him, ​“Greed real­ly takes you to the edge, doesn’t it?” Rein­er responds, ​“That’s not what greed does. That’s what greed is.” And so the Coun­selor, Rein­er, and Westray embark on this dan­ger­ous ven­ture – one promis­ing a rate of return so far beyond what is legal­ly attain­able that it reads almost comically.

Unlike the shrewd Westray, the Coun­selor and Rein­er do not under­stand the risk, let alone the true con­se­quences, of their endeav­our. Nei­ther of them can han­dle it. At a polo club, a for­mer col­league mocks the Counselor’s thin skin; at their home, Reiner’s pref­er­ence for delay over deci­sion is called out by Malk­i­na. Though Rein­er is pre­sumed to have some expe­ri­ence in this dan­ger­ous, unpre­dictable econ­o­my, he is whol­ly unpre­pared to engage the flip side of his greed.

The decap­i­ta­tion of a high-speed bik­er nick­named the Green Hor­net (Richard Cabral) occurs at almost the exact halfway point of the film and marks the tran­si­tion from desire to con­se­quence. His killer, the unnamed Wire­man (Sam Spru­ell), emp­ties the biker’s hel­met and secures his prize: a device that enables the theft of the truck car­ry­ing the drugs.

We learn the Wire­man is work­ing for Malk­i­na in a sin­is­ter con­spir­a­cy to steal from Rein­er and com­pa­ny, but – unknown to Malk­i­na and the Wire­man – the stolen device also alerts the car­tel and ini­ti­ates a relent­less, vio­lent effort to retrieve their cargo.

Like in McCarthy’s ​‘No Coun­try for Old Men’, to touch this world, to even graze it, is to invite con­se­quences. As we move through the back half of the film and under­stand more deeply the log­ic of the car­tel, we real­ize that noth­ing in this realm of drugs and vio­lence exists that isn’t a prod­uct of desire and con­se­quence. There is no hap­pen­stance. Westray remarks as much: ​“They [the car­tel] don’t real­ly believe in coin­ci­dences. They’ve heard of them. They’ve just nev­er seen one.” Like the inner work­ings of a watch, one action begets another.

The car­tel responds swift­ly, and Lau­ra is then kid­napped in an air­port park­ing lot on her way to meet the Coun­selor. The cocaine is retrieved by the car­tel fol­low­ing a shootout. The Coun­selor, des­per­ate to retrieve Lau­ra, reach­es out to the car­tel direct­ly to plead for her life. Jefe, the man he speaks with, pro­vides what is osten­si­bly the point of the film: that ​“Actions cre­ate con­se­quences which pro­duce new worlds,” and that ​“The choos­ing was done a long time ago.”

The Coun­selor is left alone, in a hell of his own cre­ation – an ulti­mate result fit­ting with McCarthy’s oth­er work. Westray escapes to Lon­don, hav­ing slipped the cartel’s vengeance, but Malk­i­na has pur­sued him there. In the absence of Rein­er, he is now her prey.

At the film’s con­clu­sion, we find Malk­i­na hav­ing seem­ing­ly got what she want­ed. She has mon­ey and a plan to con­tin­ue her lifestyle, all while unbur­dened by guilt; in her mind, an ide­al sce­nario. But each char­ac­ter before her had expressed a sim­i­lar hubris, even Westray, who was so con­fi­dent he could dis­ap­pear and escape judg­ment. Know­ing what we know, hav­ing seen what we’ve seen, it’s unlike­ly Malk­i­na sur­vives long. Her banker friend in Lon­don notes that her ​“name may come up” – a chill­ing threat attach­ing her to all she’s wrought.

Malk­i­na touch­es on that pos­si­bil­i­ty in the final lines of the film, mus­ing that ​“the slaugh­ter to come is prob­a­bly beyond our imag­in­ing.” And if, in those final moments, she breaks her self-imposed oath to nev­er hope for any­thing – even to live – it’s irrel­e­vant. She has wel­comed the world of McCarthy’s mak­ing, one indif­fer­ent to regret or repa­ra­tion, deliv­er­ing only consequence.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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