[Editor's Note: Spoilers ahead.]
"What you got ain't nothing new," a retired lawman says in No Country for Old Men, counseling a colleague who's so traumatized by a recent mass murder case that he's thinking of quitting his job.
That's hard truth, and the fact that the sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), is more introspective than some of his colleagues doesn't make it go down any easier. Bell's astonishment at the violence unleashed by his quarry, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem)—an assassin tailing a Vietnam vet (Josh Brolin) who filched a briefcase full of drug money—is so deep that it spurs Bell to reconsider his life, his job, the nature of morality, the mind of God, the shifting cultural character of the border country he calls home, and the profound ways in which the United States changed between World War II and the Reagan era. Bell is one of many characters forced by Chigurh's rampage to consider his place in the universe: who he really is; what he stands for; whether he believes what he believes and behaves as he does by choice, predisposition or predestination; whether evil exists and whether God, if there is one, cares one way or the other.
All these elements and more come through in a movie packed with laconic lawmen and criminals that has very little exposition and almost no music. I haven't read the Coens' source material (a novel by Cormac McCarthy), which means I'm not sure whether virtues I attribute to the Coens are partly attributable to the novelist; in any event, No Country is an unsettlingly effective movie, different from, yet consistent with, everything the brothers have made till now. The film's leisurely ruthlessness—picture a John Carpenter ghoul loping toward its prey—is not just another demonstration of the Coens' eerie aesthetic assurance. The novel's title is drawn from William Butler Yeats' poem "Sailing to Byzantium," but the Coens' film adaptation seems more aligned with another Yeats poem, "The Second Coming," with its warnings of a "blood-dimmed tide," a paralysis and decay in the face of seismic social upheaval.
Perhaps because so many current theatrical films have tried to address the post-9/11 world in a boringly prosaic way, the terse period piece No Country has been framed by critics as an assessment of America's moral health circa 2007. To a limited extent, it is that; given the time and place in which it was produced, it couldn't be otherwise. But it would be a mistake to presume that the Coens' main intent is to render judgment on U.S. foreign policy (or domestic morality) post 9/11, or even post-Reagan (the film is set in 1980). The film actively discourages such a narrow reading.
No Country's message, such as it is (the Coens aren't message-y directors) is not about Where We Are Now. It's simpler and more encompassing, less reminiscent of reportage or the editorial page than the admonitions of a philosopher or court jester: Get over yourselves, Americans, and everyone else, too. Look beyond yourselves and the time you live in. What is happening to the United States and the world—and every individual—is a variant of a dynamic that recurs throughout personal and political history, as predictable as the end of one year and the start of the next. What you got ain't nothing new.
Bell narrates No Country for Old Men, or at least begins to. But pretty soon his narration all but disappears. This strikes me not as a mistake, but a telling aspect of the movie's vision. Because Bell is played by Tommy Lee Jones, a star who specializes in hard-bitten, smart-alecky, "rebel" authority figures, we're predisposed to view Bell as a voice of wisdom, an amiable patriarch, and in certain superficial ways, he is that. But in a grander sense, he doesn't know shit. He's the latest in a long family line of local sheriffs. He's proud to inhabit such a mythic post. But he also fantasizes (openly) about what it must have been like to do his job in an earlier, more exciting time, when the world supposedly held more possibilities for heroism. This is a nod to modern Western convention—Bell is a lawman in a closed frontier—but the character's wistful unease is universal. He could be a ballplayer wishing he could have tested himself against Babe Ruth, or a musical performer pining for a time when Broadway meant something. He's a representative of a settled, complacent mindset: a guardian of the dominant culture. Bell's belief that he lives in a time of fixed realities and diminished potential is indicative of the mentality that makes a dominant culture vulnerable to aggressive revisionists. To the people Bell hopes to stop, the future is a wide-open road. The status quo's defenders are speed bumps.
Bell has no idea that his circumscribed perspective as a sixty-something white Texas lawman hampers his ability to understand the forces at war in his territory: Mexican drug runners and Anglo-American bankers, strange bedfellows who have nothing in common but an implacable urge to make a quick fortune. The horrors Bell encounters expand his perceptions—his sense of what's possible, for better or for worse (mostly for worse). But his evolution ends before it can really take root, and his final monologue has a defeated, even mournful tone. Bell gives his word that he'll find and save the Vet, Llewelyn Moss, before Chigurh (or other drug thugs) can kill him; but he arrives too late. (Shades of Fargo: Marge Gunderson's smart police work cracks the case, but when she arrives at the kidnappers' hideout, she finds a dead victim and a perp feeding his partner's corpse into a woodchipper.) Llewelyn's death is made more poignant by the Coens' decision to have it occur off-screen; likewise the sequence with Llewelyn's wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), refusing Chiguhr's demand that she flip a coin to determine a fate that's ultimately settled behind the door Chighur shuts in the film's penultimate sequence.
The Coens' shift from up-close, graphic violence to obscured or elliptical violence cements the sense that we've been privy to a mysterious but fundamental change in the universe. We see bloodied flesh close-up when it's a new phenomenon; when it ceases to be noteworthy, the filmmakers stop showing it. A notable exception is the climactic car wreck that injures Chigurh. It has the hallmarks of a deus ex machina, but it occurs too late to prevent the assassin's campaign of terror and it doesn't so much end his rampage as interrupt its denouement. Chigurh enlists two teenage boys in his escape, paying one of them $100 for a shirt to use as a sling (echoing Llewelyn's furtive bribery of tourists on a U.S.-Mexico border bridge). It seems significant that the killer's escape is aided by kids who have no connection to, or stake in, the apocalyptic crime war we've been watching. The accident scene's whiff of cosmic retribution reminded me of the Coens' shooting gallery-like dispatching of the bad guys in The Ladykillers. But given the rest of the story, I doubt that's what was intended—and did my eyes deceive me, or did Chigurh have the green light when his car got rammed?
Spiritual but not religious, the Coens are Stanley Kubrick-style secular theologians. Their awe of the unknown is comprised of equal parts humility and philosophical-scientific curiosity. Their films tease our suspicion that powerful, unseen forces move the universe—moral and ethical forces that sometimes seem to be rendering judgment or sending a message.
But at the same time, the Coens insist that no man can verify if these forces actually exist or if we insist they do out of vanity—in order to convince ourselves that our existence matters to anyone but us and our loved ones. The confluence of forces that suggests fate or justice might be evidence of a higher power (represented in the conversation between Bell and the old lawman about what God wants), chance (Anton Chigurh's tossed coin, which decides if a person lives or dies—an intriguing hint that on some level, this stone-cold psychopath feels guilt and perhaps wishes to reassure himself that his bloody deeds were inevitable) or free will (a subject broached in the scene where Carla Jean declines the coin toss to force Chigurh to accept responsibility for his deeds). Or it could be the result of electrons colliding to produce a result that might have been different had a single electron bounced differently. This free will vs. destiny thread runs through all of the Coens' work, even their most maligned and dismissed movie, The Hudsucker Proxy—a comedy in which the story's microcosmic society, the Hudsucker Corporation, persists no matter what executives, workers, stockholders and outside agitators do to influence it. That film's most revealing image is dolt hero Norville's blueprint of three ridiculously successful toys, all represented by the same drawing, a straight line (the side view: free will) and a circle (the overhead view: destiny).
The Coens' narrations often hint at, but rarely confirm, the existence of deliberate, supernatural forces. Their narrators purport to know the whole story, but mostly they know what they saw, heard or read. Blood Simple's narrator is dead; Hudsucker's is a corporate servant who seems to have gleaned much of what he knows from newspaper reports and the company grapevine; Lebowski's narrator is either a literary conceit or a figment of the hero's bong-addled imagination, and in any event, he's so self-satisfied and scatterbrained that he can barely follow his own train of thought. The most humble (and therefore trustworthy) narrator in the brothers' filmography is H.I. McDunnough in Raising Arizona, whose after-the-fact account of a kidnapping gone awry mythologizes and caricatures what is, on its face, a rather sad little story, then accepts a few shreds of hope (a reconciliation with his wife; a coming-to-terms with adulthood; a dream of fertility and old age) as a truly happy ending.
In No Country, Bell's narration primes us to expect answers, but its true purpose is to spur admission of how much we don't know and steer us back to what we do know, or should know, based on a cursory study of history: The new order invariably overthrows the old, then gets comfortable, all the while nostalgically wishing it could have experienced what prior generations went through, back when the world was new and people were decent and there were rules or a code or somesuch nonsense. (It's no coincidence that once Baby Boomers took control of the media, we saw a wave of films and TV shows characterizing the '60s as the most important decade ever, followed by a wave of movies mythologizing the World War II generation.) Once the new order gets settled, it becomes the old order; then, like clockwork, new forces arise that seek to topple the current powers-that-be. These new forces terrify the establishment by behaving not merely as if its written-in-stone traditions were Etch-a-Sketch doodles (in a conversation with Bell, the El Paso sheriff lumps in hippies with the forces of darkness), but as if the establishment itself is merely a glorified obstruction that will be inevitably be toppled or abraded by time.
No Country reinforces this theme from start to finish, in ways both small and large. In a grand sense, Bell, his fellow lawmen and the white, working class Texans down near the Mexican border are representatives of the Powers that Be, forced to reckon with a threat that seems fresh (Mexican drug runners, their American enablers and their unseen customers). But the "fresh" threat is the latest incarnation of meet the new boss, same as the old boss. The Coens' italicize this point by comparing (through compositions and editing) the murders Chigurh commits with an air-gun designed to kill livestock (and Chigurh's impulsive shooting at a pheasant on a bridge, a moment reminiscent of warthog-from-Hell Leonard Smalls' destruction of a lizard and a bunny in Raising Arizona), and the white Texans' subjugation of the land and its resources (acknowledged in the early scene where Llewelyn snipes at antelope from a distant ridge). Once a man has decided (as Chigurh has decided, and as Leonard Smalls and Johnny Caspar and the kidnappers in Fargo decided) that another person (or creature) is a valueless object, he can kill without remorse. In the Coen Brothers' universe, the abandonment of empathy (and the accompanying detachment from civilization's agreed-upon laws and traditions) is a dark key that unlocks the door to absolute and terrifying freedom, leading to existential rampage. No Country makes the key-and-door analogy explicit: Chigurh uses the same air gun to blast through door locks and attack his quarry. The projectile is almost exactly the same width as the lock, and its passage leaves such a clean hole that it's as if the lock never existed.
Though they are habitually described as snotty formalists with nothing on their minds but cinematic gamesmanship, the Coens' body of work is one of the most sneakily moralistic in recent American cinema. To some extent, all of their movies poses questions that supposedly deeper filmmakers have broached time and time again: if we cannot be certain of God's existence; if there is a possibility that no one's watching what we do; if, to reference Johnny Caspar in Miller's Crossing, "morality and ethics" are agreed-upon lies; if the evil can destroy the good with impunity, and if the wicked often die for reasons unrelated to a hero's good deeds (throughout the Coens' filmography, bad guys often destroy themselves through vanity or stupidity, or get snuffed out by coincidence or bad luck), then what's the point of being good? Just because. "There's more to life than a little money, you know," policewoman Marge Gunderson tells the dead-eyed killer in the backseat of her police car at the end of Fargo. "Don't you know that? And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it."
In Raising Arizona, Leonard Smalls is a manifestation of H.I.'s untamed id; he literally enters the film through the hero's nightmare. No Country visually quotes Arizona at several different points, notably in the sequence where Llewelyn discovers the wounded dog (the cutting between close-ups of his boots striding through the desert and the low-angled shot of his face as he walks exactly mirror shots of H.I. and Smalls in Arizona); in the aforementioned shooting at the pheasant; and in the overhead shot of Llewelyn lying awake next to his wife, thinking about the criminal adventure he's about to embark on. In Arizona it seemed as if H.I. dreamed up Smalls; in No Country, the stalker appears first, and Llewelyn's descent into criminal mayhem makes it seem as though he is an extension, or a would-be protege, of Chigurh. At times Bell, Llewelyn and Chigurh seem like aspects of one human soul, fixed on different spots in a moral continuum: the good (Bell), the evil (Chigurh) and evolving man (Llewellyn). Llewelyn initially suggests a younger version of Bell—with his narrow eyes, walrus mustache and broad-shouldered confidence, Brolin looks like a young Nick Nolte—but gradually, through manipulation, corruption and violence, he becomes more like Chigurh. When Chigurh tells Carla Jean that her husband is ultimately responsible for her impending death, he's being self-justifying—but he's not wrong. Sometimes you reap what you sow—and your loved ones do, too.
The Coens aren't nihilists. There may or may not be a God in their imagination—the only Coen Brothers films that definitively confirms the existence of intelligent, purposeful, supernatural forces are Hudsucker and The Ladykillers, easily their dopiest, least consequential films—but the lack of theological clarity doesn't necessarily mean that the Coens endorse their characters' decision to be indecent or cruel. Quite the contrary, the Coens' movies strongly endorse the notion that one should honor certain bedrock principles for their inherent rightness (or, barring that, for the benefits such a life might confer). Decency is the Coens' version of piety. It's not just a rock to cling to in hard times, but a quality worth cultivating for self-interested reasons, because it makes a character more likely to know love and comfort. The Fargo kidnappers live for the moment, and their existence is defined by cheap motor inns, bored hookers, an increased likelihood of getting shot in the face or stuffed into a woodchipper, and the impossibility of every truly trusting anyone. Straitlaced Marge, on the other hand, goes to sleep each night in a warm bed beside a man who loves her. In the Coens' world, acceding to certain customs and laws means sacrificing visceral liberties to gain deeper and more satisfying ones: freedom from fear of loneliness and the nagging suspicion your existence is meaningless. H.I. and Ed McDunnough and Florence and Nathan Arizona are cushioned against despair by their love for, and commitment to, their respective unions. Leonard Smalls in Arizona, like Chigurh in No Country, is utterly alone in the universe, connected to no culture, beloved by no person; if they weren't committed to the loner lifestyle, they could start a support group, and invite Visser in Blood Simple, Bernie Bernbaum from Miller's Crossing, and the Fargo kidnappers to join.
Chigurh's wraithlike presence makes him a Grim Reaper in a chili-bowl haircut. He's half man, half literary device. Bell likens him to a ghost, and he does have a touch of the horror movie stalker about him. He lopes after prey like Michael Myers or the Terminator, verbally toys with them like The Hitcher and Richard Ian Blaney in Frenzy, and has a Droopy-like ability to materialize in places that his victims chose as sanctuaries. But he's not a contented man. He only seems fully actualized when he's killing people barehanded—as in the early scene where he strangles the deputy, his rapturous psycho grin photographed from overhead as if he's daring God to intervene. When Chigurh uses a gun, he's a Satanic cattleman putting down bipedal animals, like the (invented) farmer in the anecdote that Bell tells Carla Jean. Bardem's astounding performance—he's the most terrifying yet multifacted psycho since Dennis Hopper's Frank Booth in Blue Velvet -- subtly hints at the fathomless despair that must fuel a man like Chigurh. Something in the way this murderer peers at his soon-to-be-victims suggests an internal, perhaps subconscious process of translation: a means of turning self-contempt into contempt. The apparent "code" that Bell attributes to Chigurh is the code of a fascist; to Chigurh, the wrong decision is one that goes against his wishes, and the penalty for resistance is death. He's the freest man in the movie, and he knows it; he carries himself like a self-created dark prince. Yet he enters the story in handcuffs and leaves it bloody and broken-boned, trudging through the suburbs on foot.
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Matt Zoller Seitz is Editor-in-Chief of The House Next Door.
KcM, re Miller's Crossing: "Speaking of which, what exactly are we to make of Tom's final dispatching of Bernie?"
It's a complicated film with one of the most opaque main characters in gangster movie history, but this one act struck me as fairly cut-and-dried: Tom whacks Bernie for plot purposes and personal reasons. The plot purpose is to get rid of two people who are ruining his life, Bernie and Caspar, one of whom will presumably kill the other in the meet-up. The personal reason is, Tom's life goes from bad to worse when his boss, Leo, decides to protect Bernie out of pride rather than let his upstart rival, Caspar, kill him (a course of action Tom strongly advises). His life gets worse still when he himself gives in to mercy and lets Bernie go in the woods. Bernie says to Tom on the stairs at the end, "Look into your heart," the same thing he said to Tom in the woods, prompting Tom to let him go rather than execute him. This time Tom replies, "What heart?" and blows his brains out. Tom gets a chance at a do-over, and this time he does not make the same "mistake" (being decent) that he made with Bernie in the woods earlier. What I got from this was a sense that Tom had discovered the even more ruthless person inside of his already ruthless personality and was determined never again to let himself get tripped up by the impulse to be kind (equated with a loss of control, which is what the recurring dream of the hat is all about). When he pulls that hat down on his head extra-tight at the end, it's like he's saying, "This will never leave my head again," meaning "I will never again allow my gangster armor to be penetrated."
Interesting that the last scene leaves him utterly alone, and this is equated, in the movie's overall scheme, with utter independence. Here, though, as elsewhere in the Coens' movies, the image of an utterly independent spirit is fraught with ironic undertones. Something about that last scene with Tom in "Miller's Crossing" reminds me of Chiguhr walking away through the suburbs at the end of "No Country," or Leonard Smalls roaring through the desert solo in "Raising Arizona." They're free, all right — free to be without connections of any kind. All of these characters seem pretty comfortable in their own skins, but there's still something sad about them, particularly when they justify themselves to baffled or terrified "normal" people. They're not terribly attractive, either, as a rule. The biker's nasty and dirty, Anton Chiguhr is creepy as hell, the kidnappers in "Fargo" are grimy, petty and vicious, the Nihilists in "Lebowski" are hateful clowns whose very presence is ridiculous, even when measured against non-standard men like The Dude and Walter. Even the most dapper man in this gallery of loner/outsiders, Tom (who, along with the narrator of "The Man Who Wasn't There," is the closest thing to an antihero in the Coens' filmography) is not an outwardly happy person. He's so alcoholic that he'd rather get drunk than get laid, and he's a gambling addict to boot. This is a man with issues, hardly a poster boy for the loner lifestyle.
Anyway, back to Tom: his arc is consistent with everything we're discussing in this thread: in the Coens' universe, being decent is equated with being a full human being; the problem is, being decent exposes a person to being taken advantage of by less decent people. This happens to Tom in "Miller's Crossing," and in a sense it's what happens to Marge in that much-argued-about scene in "Fargo" where her old schoolmate Mike tells her a sob story that turns out to be untrue (prompting Marge to realize she's not as good at detecting untruth as she thought, whereupon she goes back and re-interview Jerry and sets in motion a snowball effect that resolves the movie, albeit too late to save poor Mrs. Lundegaard.) Interesting that there's sort of a decency hierachy, with ruthless people triumphing over marginally less ruthless people. To give just one example, the duplicitous scumbag Visser in "Blood Simple" double crossing Marty, the guy who hired him to commit a contract killing.
Steve: "It sounds mundane, but I doubt Tommy Lee Jones' face would wear the expression it does when the movie cuts to black if the intended idea was a hopeful one."
I agree.
The more I think about it, I have to retract my thought on Bell's dream and the hope therein. He is a decent man, but he is overmatched. He is not of the same ilk as his father – thus the dream of having lost what his father gave him. There's no hope in that. I think it just gave me a measure of peace to go with my previous interpretation. This movie got under my skin in a bad way. I had no idea what to do with myself after it was over. Predominantly, I wanted to find a bunker. This has been a wonderful discussion, and has helped me reason through that sense of being overwhelmed.
Hm. So, I'm just fooling myself too?
KCM — yes, this is my tip of the hat to my much-loved Innerspace.
Re: the ending of NCFOM…I feel like there is hope there, regardless of the look on Bell's face. The image or idea of one's father riding ahead in the dark and preparing a fire for you is undeniably one of comfort, I would say. Certainly there is the idea that Bell's father is waiting for him in the great beyond, which Bell's knows he is close to, and maybe Bell is also melancholic because he doesn't feel like he has lived up to his father's standards (his being overmatched) and that he will be called to account when he does face his father again by the fire. So yes, the hopefulness is certainly tempered, but I don't think it is completely drowned out. I would argue that if the Coen's wanted to end on a total note of hopelessness, they could have done so with Chigurh staggering away after the car wreck, suggesting that evil always triumph. By ending with Bell's speech, I think the Coens allow a little sliver of light into their world. It also ends with a very comforting "at home" kind of scene, with Bell being ribbed good-naturedly by his wife for being retired and not having anything to do.
Carla Jean is the real hero of the story.
Enjoyed the commentary, and I linked to you at my own post.
http://otherpoisondevils.blogspot.com/2007/11/free-will-and-anton-chigurh.html
Great article/discussion; a few rambling thoughts:
In one scene, Chigurgh says to his victim “hold still.†In the very next scene Moss says “hold still†as he hunts for antelope. There is a connection between the two. Granted, there’s a huge difference between killing people and hunting animals (some may argue that the degree is negligible, if non-existent), but violence is violence.
There is also the contrast in the scenes of Moss buying a jacket for $500 from the frat boys and Chigurgh trying to buy the shirt from the kids after the car crash. The frat boys are pure capitalists. Instead of trying to help, they’re out for money and want more for the beer. The kid at the end is willing to give his shirt for free. He took the hundred (ostensibly to keep his mouth shut) but the money was irrelevant – until his buddy wanted a cut from it. When one has money it begets greed.
The doling out of money is also a recurring image. The two scenes mentioned above, plus with the Mexican Band, the cabbie and the hotel clerk. Money buys silence or action.
Finally, no one has mentioned the performance of Kelly MacDonald as Carla Jean, but her performance blew me away. I recognized her, but couldn’t put a name to her face till the middle of the movie and then I realized she was from “Trainspotting.†It was a hell of a southern accent given her English/Scottish accent. In contrast to Woody Harrelson’s scene, Carla refused to cower. Woody tried to make a deal. Carla refused. If she died, she died honorably and refused to let Chigurgh win.
"My reading: The only "hope" in Bell's speech at the end comes from his ability to realize he can't reconcile his dreams with the reality around him. (which, of course, he realizes once it's too late)
It sounds mundane, but I doubt Tommy Lee Jones' face would wear the expression it does when the movie cuts to black if the intended idea was a hopeful one."
I don't think the Coen's were even as subtle about it as this, considering the dialogue note on which they cut to black.
"And then I woke up."
Oh, man. I'm actually going to see this movie a second time in an hour and a half. It will literally be the first time I've ever seen a movie twice (in the theater) that I really don't want to experience again.
I blame all of you.
Yeah. "And then I woke up" is a line loaded with subtext, regardless of whether or not you end a movie on it.
I've been meaning to see this movie twice, but haven't gotten to see it again yet. I am curious to hear from more people who've given it a second viewing. Does it seem stronger or weaker the second time around? Vaguer or more specific? More timeless or more obviously of-the-moment?
I was unhappy with my first review and so wrote a follow-up after my second viewing, Matt. The complicated answer to your questions is all of the above: a stronger film just in terms of following (mostly) everything that happens; a weaker film regarding the character of Chigurh, whom the Coens seem to want to be both omnipotent and fallible at the same time (hence much of the confusion in the last 20 minutes). For me, he's less scary and a shade more ridiculous the second time around. This is my favorite movie of the year so far, but it's got some holes.
I saw the film a second time, after watching the film first and then reading the novel. The second time, I was viewing it as allegory – and it was a very different experience.
I also think you can (need to) bookend Bells opening and closing monologues because they provide insight/context for the Chigurh/Bell tension.
Re: Bell's dream – it's a pretty overt reference to a prophecy in the gospel of Luke.
On second viewing: More timeless; stronger, but I think not more so than any very well made film is going to be when you're able to take in details and layers that you were unable to absorb the first time through. Vaguer or more specific? Um, both?
On Bell's dream at the end, the second one: For me, my first reactions were confirmed. Hopeful? Not exactly. But comforting in that they assure Bell that despite his own feelings of failure and inadequacy, his father loves him, knows he did his job as best as he could — and, as well as any of them did facing the same "nothing new" horrors.
Bell's expression at the end there strikes me as one of deep emotion, perhaps a kind of release of the sense of duty he'd held onto for so long, which would be at once painful and new — potential freedom of acceptance, but also the acknowledgment that his life is coming to a close. But . . . well, now it's going to sound like I'm talking about another movie, but I can't help hearing his wife saying, "I'm not retired," and wondering if Bell, who's clearly at sixes and sevens sitting there without his work, is going to go back. I know, I know, that's a different picture, but, still, why do they have her say that like that? Anyway, back on track. I do not find Bell's final words hopeless, nor his expression hopeless.
The cut to black is, to me, a somewhat irritating reminder that we're not watching a sentimental film. "Don't get too carried away with romanticizing these dreams; this is still a disturbing, ambiguous film." Similarly, with his saying "And then I woke up." I don't truly feel we're meant to take that as "and then I woke up to the grim reality of what life really is." That's too easy. But it is another way of countering something that could, God forbid, slip into a kind of unironic sentimentality that must be avoided, sometimes to a fault. However, since the Coens rarely move so far in that direction that something can't be read another way, I can just as easily see that line as the final line of anyone telling any dream, particularly in the context of a man, the only man in this movie, able to sit at breakfast with a woman who loves him and understands him. What he's gone through ain't nothing new, and she knows that.
BUT what really tripped me up this second time through was realizing in a much more specific way that Bell is never really going after Chigurh like a law man should, in the way he should. We come away from the movie thinking, hell, that monster was unstoppable (or, with broader more philosophical versions of that same idea.) Maybe true. But there are numerous instances of Bell simply not doing all he could. The most explicit is at the trailer park when his deputy (Garrett Dillahunt!) upon realizing that they've just missed him says they've got to go put this out immediately. Bell says what are we going to say, looking for man who just drank milk? Huh??? The woman in the office there could have described him to a tee.
He's given up. He doesn't believe he's capable of stopping what he sees as an un-understandable force of evil. He still wants to save Moss, and does go out of his way to try to do that. He sees Moss as an over-matched pig-headed innocent, identifies with him, and wants to be able to protect him, save him.
He fails. But is that because we can't fight these forces, or because Bell thinks he can't?
I agree with Dragon management. Carla Jean is the real hero of the movie. But does her triumph compensate for the obvious satisfaction we are denied? Hell, no.
The comment about "did my eyes deceive me or was his light green?" raises an interesting point. I believe his light was green and after spending two plus hours with this character and every situation you can think of he gets hit by a car. Love the thought of Chigurh leaving this world in such a banal way.
Great essay! I purposefully avoided reading it until I was able to see the film on Saturday. Like many other commenters have alluded to, it was an overwhelming experience and I've been puzzling over what I saw for the last two days. For me BLOOD SIMPLE, MILLERS CROSSING and FARGO have been the perfect Coen Bros tryptych. It's now a quartet.
I had no knowledge of the novel and so had the thought as the screen faded to black that Sheriff Bell DID fall victim to Chigurh in the hotel room and his subsequent scenes with Ellis and his wife were occuring in some sort of afterlife state (hell? purgatory?). I see now that is probably not a valid theory/interpretation…if such can ever be said of a Coen film.
A few rambling thoughts:
- Excellent review, Matt, as always.
- If you like Kelly Macdonald, you should check out Two Family House, an excellent little film from a few years back. She was also in Gosford Park and Intermission (well, I enjoyed Intermission). Um, and she was Peter Pan at the end of Finding Neverland.
- On the green light, I'm pretty sure it's actually the second time he goes through an intersection that he gets hit, but with the first intersection, there was something about the framing of it that I was actually expecting him to get hit. (Maybe it was in the trailer?)
- Someone at another site was asking what we were supposed to take away from the last scene with Chigurh. My quick response was that it was such an obvious callback to Llewellyn's earlier scene that Chigurh is now where Llewellyn was then, which is not a good sign for him. I know he took out Stephen Root, but does that mean no one else is coming after the money? Granted, Chigurh is more capable than Llewellyn (he knows enough to buy silence as well as the jacket), but he's now the prey, not the hunter. That's just a theory, though.
- I wasn't all that crazy about Bardem's performance, and this seems to be just me. But the character was just so over-the-top and theatrical, from the haircut to the exotic weapon to the coin-tossing, it became too much for me. (Then again, if he's not supposed to be real, it may make more sense.)
- Did Chigurh kill the accountant? We don't know how he answered the question.
- Yeah, Llewellyn did try to go and bring water to the injured man, but how many hours later? Even if he wants to get the money away, he still waited until the middle of the night. (Also, it turns out there's a river not that far away, which someone who goes out hunting in that area regularly would presumably know.) If he'd done the right thing at the start, he'd have been much better off.
I think the thing that bugs me most about the idea that Chigurh isn't really in the motel room, that he is either supernatural in this sequence, or a figment of Bell's imagination, is that the Coens, it is safe to assume, are well-versed in film theory. And isn't the first thing you learn Eisenstein's theory of montage? The way in which disparate shots can be cut together to form a reaction? (The example I was told was a shot of a branch snapping, and a second shot of a deer looking up. Two completely separate images, but together you assume the deer is reacting to the branch.)
Anyway, the cutting in the film suggests that Chigurh is looking at Bell's reflection in the key lock cylinder. This can't be accidental. The Coens know exactly what they are doing, and this sequence would not be put there haphazardly. I believe the sequence goes:
Bell approachs motel door
Sees cattlegun-blown lock, considers it
Reflection in lock
Chigurh looking at door (and presumably, the reflection)
Must. See. Movie. Again.
To me it is cut as though Chigurh is behind the door. The problem is, though, that when Bell opens the door, Chigurh's feet would have to be about four inches long to fit in the space left — the door appears to open virtually all the way.
I do agree that there is a suggestion of the supernatural about Chigurh's imperviousness. But not in a literal way. I can't buy that he simply disappears. That would be ludicrously inconsistent.
But where the heck is he? I understand the idea of frustrating or subverting our expectations, but I don't understand the usefulness of this kind of confusion.
One more thing to throw into the mixer…was anyone else told the story as a kid about looking through a keyhole? That if you did, you would either see the Devil or a ghost?
That just occured to me in thinking about the motel scene, and Bell looking through the blown keyhole…
I thought maybe Chigurh was hiding under the bed in the motel room.
Nomi, you touched upon one of my problems with the movie: Bell is not a good lawman. He spends most of his time whining about how times have changed (granted, it's Tommy Lee Jones in laconic Southern delivery, but to me it still registers as whining), he doesn't diligently follow up leads, and he continually destroys evidence at crime scenes.
Forensic science wasn't nearly as advanced in 1980, but they still had stuff like fingerprints. If Chigurh already had a record, maybe they could've circulated a photo of him or something?
I just didn't have much respect for Bell, which I think is problematic when his character is intended to carry significant moral weight.
I'd like to change my previous post just a bit. It helps to "re-read" the post in word (i need the cheater spell check help).
I also added my last bit of opinion regarding the line "Then I woke up". I end the post with my thoughts on this. Thanks.
**************
In my opinion the 'message' of the movie was left for us in the last speech of the sheriff (Jones) where he describes not one, but two dreams.
The first dream was about receiving 'something' from his father while in town. The sheriff believes it was money, but he wasn't sure. Whatever it was 'he lost it' and felt devastated for doing so.
The second dream was about being on a perilous journey with his father. His father went on ahead, left him behind, and the sheriff hoped he was going to make a fire.
Then the movie ends.
Now, before I give my interpretation as to the message of the movie we can all agree that about three quarters of the way through the movie it changed – dramatically. For me, it started when the cowboy, Lewelyn (spelling?), was all of a sudden found dead in that hotel room. I don't know about you, but that was really abrupt. For me, he was the guy I was rooting for so when he all of sudden showed up dead … well, at that point I said to myself, "This movie is not going to be about what I thought it was going to be about … about the money, the drugs, the bad guy, the good guy, etc. It "MUST" be about something else."
So, I started to look for something else and I found out loud and clear in the last speech of the movie – the two dreams.
That being said, here's my take:
1. The two dreams are prefaced by the movie itself and they change the movie entirely – from what we all thought was the "plot" to becoming simply a "point" trying to be made. And in my opinion the point is this: we are an absolute mess. There is too much random violence and senseless evil stampeding all around us. And we are focused way too much on this violence b/c of the pleasure we receive from watching it (or participating in it). We thought the whole point of the movie was the cat-mouse game between the cowboy and the killer … and right about as we were going to get to the climax of that storyline the director's pretty much pulled the plug on us as to say, "Ah-hah. We caught you all with your hand in the cookie jar! See how titillated you've become with this violence, money, drugs, etc." Taking this away from us right when we wanted it most shows us exactly what we want so much. What a genius way to show us.
2. We are in such a mess b/c whatever fathers have passed down to their young sons the sons are confused about what they actually got. Additionally, "whatever" it is they were supposed to receive from their fathers while young sons they've gone ahead and lost it anyways (the first dream).
3. The sons are still alone today in their scary, perilous journey through life – REGARDLESS OF AGE. Not only did fathers not pass down to their sons whatever it is we all needed them to have in order for our society to escape the epidemic of vile, random, and senseless evil acts AND our entertainment of it, the 2nd dream reveals that we as sons are still not getting what we need from our father's today. Our fathers have left us and we're still holding on to a hope without hope they've gone ahead to make us a fire (warmth, light, security, etc). But, just as the inference in the movie was one of despair and defeat, we too in our hearts know there's no fire up ahead. Dad is gone. He' left us and we're on our own to fend for ourselves on a long, cold, lonely dark road.
Lastly, we need to start as the movie ended, “Then I woke up.â€
We must wake up. We must wake up and stop the violence. We must train our sons, as young men, to be men and stand up for what is right and good. We must as fathers pursue the “fire†in our dark journey. We’ve been left no light, path, or company, but we must move forward with the “hope†of the fire being the best light to guide us. And, we must as fathers build that fire WITH our sons, showing them how to build it for their sons to follow.
Just my opinion and what I took from the movie. Great movie in that regard.
Re: Craig’s Coens’ [w]holes: Chigurh’s as omnipotent as Death and as fallible as the universe. And so should Chigurh be 'less scary and a shade more ridiculous' at second glance; a slave to “Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate menâ€. When all, all is said and done, Carla Jean’s defiance outlives, transcends the skulking, pathetic, absurd cipher who only kills to cover his backs, and checks his boots for tracks. Death be not presumptuous;
like my comments.
I can't believe nobody has picked up on a very important part of the film just before the crash. It's the only time we see the behind Chigurh's mask, a clue to what he was and how life shaped him. I'm referring of course to his reaction to the boys on the bikes with the clicking from the spokes, an expression washes across his face almost Mona Lisa like. Is he thinking about the innocence of youth, his own one time innocence or indeed what it happened in his youth that made him the way he is?
Here's my take on the Bell/Chigurh scene in the hotel room. In the scene immediately preceding it, Bell & his deputy marvel at how Chigurh returns to the scene of his own crime (killing the hotel proprieter @ the hotel eagle), to kill again (carson wells). I think that this thought is in Bell's mind when he approaches the hotel door behind the police tape–he imagines that this is the case here as well and that Chigurh is behind the door waiting for him. You can see the resolve in Bell's face as he decides to enter anyway, letting fate be what it may. So it seems to me that it was Bell's imagination at work, and that Chigurh wasn't actually behind the door. I do like how it is left a bit ambiguous though!
Greets all …
Here's my take on the final Bell/Chigurh scene in the hotel room.
In the scene immediately preceding it, Bell & Old Deputy sherif speak of life (theres "NO Counrty for Old Men"….Realy.) and Chigurh's audatious returns to the scene of his own crime (killing the hotel proprieter @ the hotel eagle), to kill again (Carson Wells). I think that this thought is in Bell's mind when he approaches the hotel door behind the police tape–he imagines that this is the case here as well and that Chigurh is in the room.
You can see the resolve in Bell's face as he decides to enter anyway, letting fate be what it may. Most blogs I read say Chigurh is behind the door.
The film trick- is in the split screen of both Chigurh and the dead bolt hole in the door.The hard to see Split-Screen showed Chigurh on the left and door hole on the right.
THIS confuses the viewer into thinking Chigurh was behind the doorhiges. He was UNDER the BED.
The next view of the hole only shows it from the eye view angle of Chigurh's under the bed position.
It seems to me that it was Bell's poor detective work, sitting on the bed etc…and that Chigurh simply did not kill him because Bell "did not see him" like the Accountant had.
I do not really like how this type of filmography has to be anylzed to this level of ambiguous depth though!
I also never could figure out why Chigurh deserted the money under the tree in the first place.
A plant maybe?….he had the homing device….Perhaps he was cleverly caught by the cop he strangled.
But a great movie anyway.
Wolfgang Youngs
Poughkeepsie NY
shoulda read the book fellow, lot of stuff you praise the filmmakers for came strait out of the book.
anon: I did read the book prior to a second viewing of the film. This is not an article about the differences between the movie and the book.
The point of this piece is not to imply that the Coens are responsible for ever single element of characterization and plotting. If there were things that the Coens didn't like or agree with, they would have changed them outright or altered them to bring them in line with what they wanted — and they did make changes, some major, some minor. The purpose of the piece is to show how their adaptation of a source results in a movie consistent with the values and themes expressed in their other work. For "Goodfellas," Martin Scorsese kept the core of Nicholas Pileggi's book "Wiseguys" and changed and embellished a lot of the particulars, but the movie is still an expression of the director's artistic sensibility and world view.
"shoulda read the book fellow, lot of stuff you praise the filmmakers for came strait out of the book."
i agree. i love the book. i love the movie too although i don't think they dealt with the character of the sheriff as well as they could have and i think that's kind of essential to the take-home message of the movie.
anyway, as far as the sheriff/chigurh scene in the motel room, i just wanted to throw some comments out there because i'm writing a paper about this movie for a class right now and this scene is driving me fucking nuts!
i've read a lot of good interpretations but i just wanted to point out some erroneous observations that have been made as well as air a couple of questions about the scene that bother me.
1. the shot of chigurh inside the room does not show the shot-out lock on the right. instead, what you see is a circle of yellow light shining through the hole in the lock and onto a wall. therefore, chigurh is not behind the door. instead, he must be against the back wall, or i guess really in the back left corner of the room (what would be the left as you enter the room).
2. based on this, i think my favorite explanation is that SOMEHOW (though it's kind of a stretch), the sheriff does not see chigurh when he enters the room, and chigurh slips out while the sheriff is in the bathroom. i agree with what others have said, that chigurh doesn't kill people unless he needs to.
3. what still BOTHERS me, though, is that after the movie makes such a point of showing us that the bathroom window is LOCKED, the sheriff HOLSTERS HIS GUN and sits down on the bed with his head in his hands! the first time i saw this movie i thought the window was unlocked, and that the sheriff therefore presumed that chigurh had escaped through the window and that the scene was now safe. obviously that's not what happened. i guess i just don't get why they make such a point out of the window being locked if the explanation i described is correct. to me, the locked window screams, "CHIGURH'S STILL IN THE ROOM! TURN AROUND WITH YOUR GUN DRAWN!" but the sheriff's actions obviously don't jibe with that.
so what's the deal?!
great movie, but now i'm going crazy!
Rachel: I went into detail about this scene, complete with screen shots. Might help you. I'm not sure we agree on where Chigurh is standing in the shot of the light coming through the door, but when Bell opens the door Chigurh certainly isn't behind it.
It is interesting that Bell sits down on the bed and puts away his gun. Then again, he's seen enough of Chigurh's carnage to think that if Chigurh was in the room and wanted to kill him that he'd be dead by that point.