See it? Yes, but first understand what you’re getting into (keep reading).
I don’t know how movie trailers are made, but I envision a bunch of marketing types in suits sitting in a boardroom brainstorming on how a movie should be pitched to audiences. After a bunch of whiteboarding and a few lattes, guys half their age wearing tee shirts and headphones go off to their Macs to make the vision a reality. There are a few iterations until the suits are happy at which point the trailer gets shipped off. The end result is often a work of art in and of itself, even though it most likely has very little to do with the movie it’s supposed to be advertising. Trailers, after all, are marketing material designed to sell a movie. They are not designed to help viewers pick movies that are right for them. The purpose of trailer is to convince as many people as possible to see a movie as quickly as possible before word can spread about how crappy the movie actually is.
(If you have any doubts about the ability of a trailer to misrepresent a movie, just watch the preview for this wonderfully inspirational family film called Shining.)
My point is that No Country For Old Men is an excellent movie that, as its hart, is almost nothing like its trailer suggests. So misleading are the previews, in fact, that at least two people in the theater actually booed the ending. I admit to being somewhat confused by how the story ended myself (think Sopranos), however by the time I got to my car, it had sunk in enough that I thought I understood it. By the time I got home, I really liked it. And by the time I finished explaining the movie to my wife, I loved it and already wanted to watch it again.
I’ll start with the easy points. The writing is great. The dialog is simultaneously fun, colorful, and eerie. The monologue at the beginning masterfully written and delivered by Tommy Lee Jones. And the acting and characters are, without exception, nearly flawless.
Now for the plot (don’t worry — no spoilers yet). No Country For Old Men is essentially about a drug deal that somehow goes south, a man who mistakenly comes across the money (Llewelyn Moss), and the attempt of a psychopathic killer (Anton Chigurh) to hunt him down. On the periphery, you have an old Texas Sheriff (Tom Bell) who is more trying to make sense of the violence than actually solve the case, and a combination hit man and bounty hunter (Carson Wells) who is hired to intervene. But don’t confuse the plot with the meaning. As far as I can tell, there are no real heroes in No Country. There is no crescendo which builds up to a climax from which the good guys triumphantly walk away. In fact, I’m not entirely sure there are really any good guys. There is only misdirection and unpredictability, which I believe are the primary themes of the movie.
Now I think it’s only fair that I issue a spoiler alert as I have to give a few things away in order to delve further into the meaning of the movie. However, I guarantee that you’ll appreciate No Country far more with your expectations properly set.
The title of the movie clearly relates to the Sheriff, and to most of the other law enforcement officers in the story. Although Bell is certainly a sharp investigator, he is completely unprepared for the relentless violence of drug related crime. Not only are the Sheriff and his deputies outgunned, but the bad guys seem to be playing by an entirely different set of rules which allow them to stay one step ahead. Although you want the Sheriff to confront and defeat Chigurh, you never really feel like that’s a realistic scenario. The meaning of the title is contained in the opening monolog as the Sheriff says, "The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure."
But there’s much more to the movie than an old man coming to terms with his retirement. To me, the movie felt like it was more about the unpredictable, unfair, and arbitrary nature of our lives, a theme that is both played out repeatedly, and even explicitly discussed. For instance, while Llewelyn hides out at a hotel in El Paso, a girl by the pool notices that he keeps looking out his window. She later has the opportunity to flirt with him, and asks him what he’s looking for. He tells her he’s just watching for what’s coming, at which point she casually responds that you never see what’s coming.
In another scene, the Sheriff is talking with Llewelyn’s wife in a diner, and tells her a story about a rancher who failed to kill a cow cleanly on his first attempt. He decides to put a bullet in the cows head to end it quickly, but since the cow is thrashing about, the rancher misses and the bullet glances the cows head, ricochets around the metal room, and lodges itself in the rancher’s arm. The Sheriff solemnly tells Llewelyn’s wife that even between man and cattle, nothing is certain.
Interestingly, during the same conversation, the Sheriff mentions that cattle are killed with a pneumatic rod now which is much more predictable. One of Chigurh favorite tools is a pneumatic cattle gun which he uses both for killing people, and for blowing locks. The Sheriff never makes the connection between his own story, and a recent murder caused by a deep head wound which was assumed to be from a gun until no bullet was found. It was as though the possibility of something so inhuman wouldn’t even register with him.
The hit man Carson Wells is another device the movie uses to demonstrate unpredictability. Carson comes across as a hotshot who isn’t the least bit intimidated by Chigurh, and manages to track down Llewelyn in a matter of hours. Just when it looks like the dynamic of the hunt is about to change, Chigurh happens to get the drop on Carson, and removes him from the story as suddenly as he was introduced. The audience is sure that Carson can’t be killed so quickly, and that his impact on the story can’t possibly be so minimal, yet he is instantly and unapologetically executed as Chigurh casually reaches for a ringing phone.
And then as if to demonstrate the point literally, there’s Chigurh’s technique of sometimes deciding whether to let someone live based solely on a coin toss. A gas station owner, who is unaware of the extent to which he is in danger, wins the toss after which Chigurh tells him keep the quarter. He tells the man who has narrowly escaped being brutally murdered to put his lucky quarter someplace special. Don’t mix it in with the rest of the change in his pocket, Chigurh warns, even though in reality, it’s just another quarter. From this scene comes one of the eeriest lines of the entire movie: "What’s the most you ever lost on a coin toss."
Throughout the entire movie, Chigurh seems to be the only one who is in control. In fact, he comes across as the master of everyone’s fate. He is eerily calm and in control whether he is strangling a deputy with handcuffs, stitching up his own gun wounds, or slaughtering people with his cattle gun or silenced twelve gauge. But in one final demonstration of the randomness of the universe, while driving down a completely calm and quiet suburban street, Chigurh is T-boned at an intersection and sustains serious injuries, including a compound fracture of his arm. He tries to gather the strength to flee the scene, but as the sirens rapidly close in, you get the distinct feeling that even the one man who seemed to control everything couldn’t see what was coming.
Living Digitally 
The acting of Javier Bardem is beyond anything I’ve seen recently. That last scene of the auto accident shook me up. The ending left me hanging…”what he just walked away from the accident? No arrest?
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the movie isn’t really about unpredictability. it is about divine punishment from god because the sherrifs have been rendered impotent (hence the title). Chigurh kills anyone in his path of “justice”, which is to bring down those who yield to avarice. that is why he allows perfectly innocent people to go (te store owner and the girl). but he is unable to make that choice and so he uses the coin. he is subconciously a hand of god if you will.
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Shanto,
That’s an interesting interpretation, but I don’t quite see it. First of all, although Chigurh does appear God-like throughout the movie, the car accident at the end made it clear that he is as mortal as anyone else (and just as susceptible to unpredictability).
Second of all, Chigurh kills plenty of people who are not consumed by avarice. The cop at the beginning, the man he pulls over using the dead cop’s car, the chicken farmer. Whether or not he kills people has nothing to do with how greedy they may be. In fact, he doesn’t even get a chance to kill Llewelyn, the character who probably exhibits the most greed. Llewelyn is killed rather suddenly and unexpectedly by a group of Mexicans looking for the money — again, something completely unexpected from the perspective of the audience. Someone we never saw coming.
And lastly, Chigurh did not allow the girl to live — at least, that’s not what we are lead to believe. The last we see her, she is refusing to call the coin toss which aggravates Chigurh. The next time we see Chigurah, he is casually leaving her house, checking the bottoms of his shoes, presumably for blood stains.
The more I think about it, the more I’m certain that this movie is about the inability to see what’s coming next. This theme is discussed explicitly in the movie, and played out over and over again, often at the expense of someone’s life.
I should have noted in my initial review that this movie is the next Pulp Fiction. It’s similar in its approach to violence, and in the way it challenges so many movie conventions.
Christian
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Regarding Christian’s statement that “this movie is about the inability to see what’s coming next”:
I’d agree in the sense that “what’s coming next” is unpredictable, but would add that the film suggests that the outcome is not entirely random but instead is governed by Fate which, unfortunately for the characters, is unknowable. While we did not predict the manner of Llewelyn’s death, it was certainly the eventual result of his poor aim at the opening of the film, despite his best efforts to control his doomed situation. When his wife refuses to call the coin toss, she may be the first character to realize that while her Fate is not hers to control, neither does it depend on the toss of a coin. Here Chigurh embodies Fate, and in the following scene he plays victim to it.
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I presume Llewelyn’s wife was killed, which many think she lives. I wish I would have read the book first, but I could not wait.
Great film, I didn’t quite understand the ending, but I felt I knew what he meant, obscurely. What did you think he meant in the ending with his dream and speech?
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Nathan,
I’m not entirely sure about the very end, either. I know it’s a cliche, but my interpretation was that even though nobody can see what’s coming next, one thing we do know is that we’ll all end up in the same place. The Sheriff felt like his father was up ahead waiting for him. He didn’t know how he was going to get to his father because he couldn’t see through the weather (he couldn’t see what was coming next), but he knew that eventually, he’d get there.
This dream very much relates to the comment Llewelyn made to his wife on his way out the door to bring the Mexican some water. He says if he doesn’t come back, to tell mother he loves her. His wife says his mother is already dead. Lleweln responds, “Well then I’ll tell her myself.”
Again, the lesson here is that he has no idea what’s in store for him (it’s worth noting that his decision to return with the water is what eventually leads to his death), but one thing he knows for certain is that one day, he’ll be with his mother again, just as the Sheriff knows he is on his way to a reunion with his dead father, one way or another.
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Thanks, I needed to read your comments to understand what I had just witnessed. This was a great movie, but I didn’t know why. Now, it makes more sense.
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alright you guys are trying really hard to squeeze a ‘point’ out of this movie and sound really stupid pointing out obvious things and coming up with no overall point or moral. the movie was alright and there was no beautiful point to be derived or interpreted it just ended. that is all…
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Jake,
It’s always possible that you’re right. However, I find it hard to believe that the unconventional nature of No Country was arbitrary. It would have been easy to make a movie that leads up to a big showdown between Lleweln and Chigurh, where Lleweln emerges victorious having eliminated his opponent after some pithy bad-ass comment and a shot to the head. In fact, the movie clearly makes you think that’s what’s going to happen after Lleweln’s comment about making Chigurh his “special project”. Everything about the movie points in this direction (his past in Vietnam, his wife’s comment about how he never backs down, etc.), yet he ends up being killed offscreen by an anonymous character almost as an afterthought. That was not a random twist. That was an intentional device designed to make a point.
The ending of the movie was so unpredictable and unconventional that a couple of people in the theater actually booed. I believe that’s because they thought they were watching a movie with, as you say, “no overall point or moral”. They thought they were just watching an action/adventure/crime movie where the good guys win and make off with the money. The reality, however, is that to understand and appreciate No Country, you have look way beyond what you call the “obvious things”.
Of course, it’s always possible I’m reading way too much into the movie, and that the ending was just supposed to be a surprise. There’s probably no right answer. But it’s fun to debate. :)
Christian
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@Christian: Nah – Cormac McCarthy is a genuine writer, and recently won a Pullitzer Prize. Especially in light of how every other part of the movie was saturated with symbolism, I doubt the ending was arbitrary…
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Steve,
Totally agree. I gotta read the book now. I’ve been haunted by the movie.
Christian
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My take on the ending is that the only way to be truly happy is to resign yourself to your fate. It isnt until the sherrif decides to give up the pursuit of Chigurh and remove himself from his goal of stopping fate (Chigurh) that he begins to find solice. Solice doesn’t come immediately but is instead hinted at by his dream at the end. The dream was very introspective and carried a lot of personal meaning from the sherrif. It signals the beginning of what we can assume to be a long process of self-reflection during his retirement. Retirement is a time to literally remove yourself from the game (fate) in order to find inner peace before death. Great discussion guys!
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Just an addendum to my last post an hour or so ago.
– the sherrif resigning himself to fate and beginning to find peace is contrasted with the guys wife who’s decision to fight fate and refuse to call the flip of the coin and finds her own destruction.
THANKS!
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Ben-it appeared to me at the end that Tom (Tommy Lee Jones) was very unsettled…my take on it is because he had no control over his fate…this didn’t seem to be a world he understood anymore..and even if Lewelyn’s wife gave into ‘fate’ at the end and called the coing…there still was a %50 chance it would have led to her destruction….don’t know….
Jake-you’re either 12 years old…or you’re a moron, flip a coin. How can you possibly think that this movie has no meaning whatsoever…do your research on the writer of the book, and the makers of the movie before coming to brash conclusions and insulting people far more mature than you.
I’m sorry Christian but you have far more patience for ignorance than I do.
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Beyond the idea of fate and unpredictability (I do think the movie talks also about fate, not just unpredictability) I think the movie is a more simple tale of good and evil. The three main characters represent different time periods / generations. Sheriff Bell is from a time and belief when you did the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. Llewelyn Moss is your typical man, making both good and sinful decisions, falling fate to his temptation. Chigurh is representative of the coming evil, the new generation of people that the Sheriff describes in his opening monologue. (Not people given to crimes of passion, but people who simply seem to have no moral convictions. Who know they are going to hell for the things they do, but could care less. The Sheriff describes that he doesn’t understand this generation, and therefore feels incompentent to meet such a mindset).
The title “no country for old men” is in reference to this thought. Sheriff Bell’s generation (older generation) are not prepared to meet this kind of evil. They are living in a time, that they are no suited to live in. It is no place for them.
Note: Cormac McCarthy’s other works often have a very dark tone. This book / movie and his other works are reflections of his views. The world is falling to becoming more and more depraved and evil, and there is NO stopping it. It is only a matter of time. (Read “The Road”, another book with this theme)
That is why toward the end, the sheriff begins talking about “the dismal tide,” (A phrase found in several of McCarthy’s books about the coming evil) and about how there is no stopping it.
The ending of the movie also reflects this point of view. The sheriff never does catch up with Chigurh. Moss dies the same way he got into the mess (falling to temptation.) Chigurh survives the car crash to highlight two facts – one being that he is like a ghost. Coming and going without anyone seeing. The other being that he is unstoppable. Not even the unpredictable fatal car crash is able to stop him.
The dream I believe talks about his father who was a sheriff, carrying a horn and a fire “the way people used to do” in past generations. He is carrying this as far out as possible, before he sets the fire up, and tells his son that he will know he’s found him when he reaches the fire. This dream is symbolic I think for how the father (being a sheriff) pushed back the dismal tide. He knew that there is no way to put the fire out, only to “push it back” and delay “the dismal tide.” The movie ends on the line: “And then I woke up”, because Sheriff Bell realizes that he has reached that fire. He is already living in the hell that his father had tried to push back.
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Can someone please tell me what the last few lines of the movie were? I was distracted and all of a sudden the movie went to black. Something about a dream?
At any rate I loved the movie and would put it in my top ten for the year.
Thanks.
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I have a theory that the entire movie was really one of Sherrif Ed Tom’s dreams. He was just so breezy throughout the picture, so casual. He always had a very good idea of what was going on, yet he was a step behind the action. Ed Tom was a lucid dreamer as evidenced by the conversation with his wife at the end and this movie was his BIG pre-retirement anxiety dream. Chigurh as the Grim Reaper who uses absurd weapons and whose random violent acts & conversations just don’t make a lot of sense yet somehow remain “linear” much in the same way Ed Tom tells stories. The fact that Ed Tom didn’t or couldn’t die in the crime scene hotel room. How his conversations seemed to be mimicking the movie’s action (the cattle gun conversation with Llewelyn’s wife, the Mexican killers conversation with his buddy in the messy trailer, telling his wife about his dreams and saying “And then I woke up” just as the movie abruptly ends.)
Just one man’s theory. Feel free to shoot holes in it ;)
In the end, I thought “No Country for Old Men” was beautifully filmed and wonderfully acted, but I really didn’t like it. It made me think a little, but not a lot. Like Ed Tom, I must be getting old.
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Chigurh refers to himself as having been brought to the store by the same forces as brought the quarter. Whether the storekeeper lives or dies Chigurh leaves to the fate of a coin toss, and he administers either fate with equal detachment – he seems to regard himself as the instrument of fate. Only Carla Jean rejects his false construct and places responsibility for his acts where it belongs.
Yet for the randomness of the death Chigurh deals and of his own car accident, he also acts according to a code. He kills almost every single person he encounters. The ones who live are the storekeeper who called heads, the trailer park lady who would not give out Llewellyn’s employment information, and the Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Some are killed out of pure fate, but others are killed in the administration of Chigurh’s justice. He kills the drug dealers – they are bad. He kills Carson because he is a bounty hunter – he is bad. He kills Carla Jean (I think) to keep his word to do so when Llewellyn forsook her out of manly pride.
Why did he not kill the trailer park lady or the Sheriff? Trailer park lady stood on principle and refused to give out the employment information. She puffed up at him in refusing on principle, and he smiled at her slightly when she did. Why did he not kill the Sheriff when they were in the motel room together? For that matter, why didn’t the Sheriff start shooting when he realized he must be there? I don’t know. The Sheriff is the only significant character in the story he encounters who is not afflicted by a moral compromise of some kind.
The fate of the accountant and the chicken truck driver are unknown, but in this story there must be loose ends.
The conversation with the retired, crippled former deputy should not be overlooked. The Sheriff wants to quit because he feels overmatched by the rising dismal tide of evil. The crippled deputy replies that “it ain’t nothing new” and talks of the incredible adversity and evil faced by the lawmen of the olden days. The sheriff who was implacably killed in the crippled deputy’s story was still struggling to get to his gun even after he was shot – he fought to the very last.
My takeaway is that the movie is saying that good and evil and random fate are all immutable and that the struggle of good against evil must never be abandoned because evil never rests and never goes away. We can’t see the way clearly, and it’s cold and hard, but our Father is up ahead building us a fire that will warm us if we can make it through.
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Hey guys I just saw the movie, duh. lol. And I’m left hanging ever so slightly. In the end he’s talking about a dream, right? 2 dreams. Well there were 2 blackouts in the movie. Right before the L guy dies and then later by the father. The movie itself seemed clustered as if to be a dream and also you couldn’t really predict anything. Yet ‘you can’t stop what is coming’ via the coins traveling to their ‘destinations’ when the killer brings that up to people. And is it possible that the man in the wheel chair was his father? Given he looked old the sheriff may have even been older. That could have been the second dream. Then you look at it. Okay. The dream makes sense for the cluster f’k of a movie then you go back and look at the themes and it makes it a fantastic movie. Eh, just a thought. Plz resond. :].
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What happened in the hotel room near the end? The sherriff goes back in, sees the lock has been blown out by the air gun, walks in, sits on the bed then leaves. You see the psycho standing somewhere with a gun – why isn’t the sherriff killed like all the others? What is supposed to be happening in that scene? (FYI I’m blonde)
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It seems that all the main characters are trying to play God but are succeptive to death either because of there choice in sin or fate itself.Its a mixture of both. There was a beginning before the story began. Even before the drugs were smuggled in. Its a long vicious cycle. But all cattle(humans)are killed or harmed in the path of others evilness. The wife is affected cause of her husbands greed. Assuming she dies. The Sheriff still not finding God and realizing things are changing these days. The bad guy isn’t in control because of the unexpected car accident. I don’t know. Just thoughts. But I do agree we really don’t know what is coming. Both good and bad all die in the end. Kind of like a punishment from God. Coming to think of it. Twice in the movie 2 kids give their shirt to the wounded guys but are given money first. Both occasions they argue about getting more. Nothing comes good out of greed. Damn, lots of different meanings. Great movie. Apart of me though wishes that it was made a little more Hollywood. But I like the reality in it better. Not sure if I made sense.
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What was the meaning of the sheriffs dream in the last scene of the movie?
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bboy- agreed on the “simple tale of good and evil” part- but think even simpler. mccarthy’s books tend to be about a universally ambiguous division between good/evil, and free will. put more concisely, they are anti-karma.
the characters in no country for old men are involved in a world where fate is either completely determined or completely absent. no matter how evil they are (chigurh), or how distanced from the events driving the story (bell), or how ostensibly innocent (moss’s wife), there is no divine payoff/payback- no country for old men.
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These comments have helped me understand this movie on a whole different level. Thank you all for the insights. The movie followed the novel well. I’ve read most Cormac McCarthy novels and I am often left with a strange feeling after these readings. His writing has a level of genius that often leaves me in a place where I know I’ve just read something profound and great yet I’m not sure why. The themes are often obscure and layered and open to multiple interpretations.
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Art,
Glad you found these comments useful. I found myself very much haunted by the movie which is what prompted me to write such a lengthy and analytical review. The ensuing discussion has really helped me to see the film in a new light, as well.
Christian
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I will have to grasp to the idea that this movie/story is a representation of the Sheriff’s dreams. The different points in the story when things pop up and disappear just as quickly are common to my dream occurrences. I felt detached several times during the story which also fits the dream theory. I was surprised during the first use of the pressure weapon. After this priming the following random acts felt contrived. I can’t recommend it to friends because I don’t know anyone that likes these unconventional movies, although as pointed out earlier it was portrayed as a conventional movie in the trailers.
I enjoyed the acting and find no flaws in the performances. Also the sound effects were well done. I would have to give it an award for best sound effects.
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Christian – I also thank you for this discussion. After seeing the movie I checked a number of reviews, but they were mostly shallow until I found this page. Then I found a review of the book (which I’ve not read), and several others by McCarthy, from the New Yorker, and that also helped considerably. Interestingly, the review says that in the book Moss’ wife in fact calls the coin toss rather than refusing as she did in the movie. Additionally, in the book, Chigurh expounds directly and at length on how he represents and embodies fate, a point made much more elliptically in the movie.
Best regards,
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Wow… some of these theories are pretty off the wall. I guess that is one of the reasons this movie is so good… lots of ways to be interpreted.
To me, this is far more than just a tale about good and evil or the struggle between free will and fate. The main undertones that I saw in the film (which I have now seen twice) are religion, law, and the unpredictability of human nature.
Throughout the whole film, one can see many religious connotations but the most prominent example is at the end when he is talking to the man in the wheelchair (who might represent the law of the past). In their discussion the man makes Bell realize that even though humanity seems “less moral” (with bones through their nose and green hair) humans have always been a brutal and violent species. Though these seem like red flags in coming of the “dismal tide”, the true personification of pure evil dresses conservatively with a button up shirt and slacks, and is very quiet and arguably polite (for a psychotic killer).
While he is still talking to the man in the wheelchair he says (paraphrased) “I always thought that when I was older God would come into my life. Ahh hell, I don’t blame him if I were him I wouldn’t want me either.” This supposes that he still believes in God (or at least wants to) since he is still referring to God as a “him”. This statement is further expounded upon by the second dream.
In the dreams he tells his wife, his father (who was also a sheriff) is in both. In the first one he young and went in to town. He met his father and his father gave him some money but he lost it. To me this represents him taking over his father’s position as sheriff but feeling completely helpless in this cold world of unpredictability.
The second dream could represent many things but to me it represents one of two. In his second dream he states that it was “old times” and that he was riding horseback on a snow covered mountain. His father passes him on horseback with his face completely covered by a hood or shawl. He is carrying a horn with fire in it. The sheriff says the he knew in his dream that his father had gone ahead and prepared a warm place for him in all of this cold (AND IF THE SYMBOLISM HASN’T HIT YOU IN THE HEAD WITH A TON OF BRICKS YET THEN THIS MOVIE PROBABLY IS NOT FOR YOU). “And the I woke up” (which is the last line of the film).
This second dream carries the most heavy handed symbolism. As to what it represents– that can be debated. To me it is either religious (his “father” went before him and prepared a warm place in all of this cold, which the warm place could either represent heaven, the afterlife, or the promise of comfort in finding God.) When he “wakes up” he is still human and in this “cold” world without God (very agnostic).
My other interpretation is that it represents the changing face of law, and the fact that even in retirement (or his “warm place” that he seems to have settled in (quite unsettled actually)) that when he “wakes up” to reality there is still a lot of “cold” in this world to deal with.
So after writing my thoughts down, I have also realized that to me the main theme of the movie is that human nature has ALWAYS been this way (as demonstrated in the story about the sheriff and the Indians).
Like Llewelyn’s wife said and Tommy Lee Jones’ character said in a story (in so many words)– killers are going to kill because of their mentality. Regardless of the situation, if a human being is set on killing he or she can and will eventually… this is a COLD cruel world and we are not the first to deal with it and certainly won’t be the last. The Cohen brothers managed to sum up life in a film. Pretty damn impressive.
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All of the above listed interpretations are most informative; this seems to be a thinking person’s movie.
While reading all of the above posted reviews, I found something that really hit close to home and has me pondering my own future.
Christian Cantrell wrote “Retirement is a time to literally remove yourself from the game (fate) in order to find inner peace before death”.
It was then that I realized that I am only three years away from retirement and I too share the some profession as Tom Bell.
I am planning to watch No Country for Old Men again, this time with a new insight.
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A brilliant movie! I loved how it kept you guessing all the way to the end (and then some). Now I want to read the book. It’s definitely not for someone looking to watch a cookie cutter Hollywood movie but then again if you walk into a Coen Brothers movie, you should already know that. My only gripe was the filming of the car accident near the end. For such an unpredictable movie, I saw that crash coming a couple blocks away :P
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Great site,great comments,(most), …hope my side of the elephant is of some use.The material universe may indeed be a an empty meaningless abyss but our experiance of it is not by necessity.We are presented with a trinity of extreams ;Lewellyn,Chigur and the sherriff.The sheriff represented a ‘lineage’ of piece officers administering the law.”If you ask me ,things started goin wrong when kids stopped sayen yes sir and no sir.”He respected the law as the end result of paternalistic decisions meant to govern human relatedness.He had ‘faith’ in a well meaning athority.Lewellyn as a ‘Nam vet’,(2 tours), regardless of your political persuasion could safely be regarded as symbolic of those betrayed by authority.Fundamental human decency struggling to servive on his own.Chigur on the other hand is niether related nor decent.Thus the creepy hair cut.An androgenous adolesant boys hair cut splayed over that dead eyed bear of a face.Makes him look like some alien preditor wearing a human suit.You know, they can never get the look right and keep forgetting to blink and they laugh at all the wrong times.So that’s our range with relatedness at one end and alienation at the other.And alien he was.He seemed to regard people as if they were other species,(and decidedly lower),exemplified by the cattle gun used to dispatch many of them. The prop worked both practically for the killer,(left little trace), and metaphorically for the authors.What feeling he demonstrated for people was one of bemused contempt.This was never clearer than in the mildly incredulous snicker he’d give the pleas of imminent victims who’d say ;”you don’t have to do this ..”.You see the joke,(for him ), of course,people are so predictable,they never ‘get’ him or accept the obvious.People look for logical wiggle room in the face of instrumental evil.Instumental evil are bad deeds employed to accomplish some end.Ya only do what you ‘have’ to do.”Hey you can have the money”,”Hey I won’t tell”.What they couldn’t accept was that he just wanted to do it.He was human destructiveness just looking for an excuse….When he strangled the young policeman he looked like some goulish little kid masturbating…he liked it.When he demeaned and intimidated the gas station attendant it was because he wanted to.He enjoyed it.After the deluge of psychopathophilia we’ve been subjected to for the past 15 to 17 years in the wake of Hanibal Lecter, the characterization of Chigur is appreciated fresh air.It is indeed closer to the original idea of Lecter .A remorseless preditor who’s ultimate motivations, even if they could be explained ,couldn’t be properly said to be ‘understood’.It is hard to believe that an individual so debased, so malicious could linger much longer but whatever Chigur’s ultimate fate , his is an unfortunately recuring theme in humanity and hardly one that could be envied by any one.I could spend a lot of time meditating on the nature of this thing but the truth is he makes me sick and he can be summed up better by simply recognizing what he isn’t, and that is the ‘related’ human being.We assume roles relative to other people in our lives and these roles more or less accumulate in an identity.The normal human even has a relationship with himself where attempts to identify his true motive and negotiate between that and his role.This is what made Lewellen and the Sheriff vulnerable ,their humanity.It’s possible the drug dealers would have found Lewellen with the transponder, but his real problems started because he couldn’t get to sleep with that guy suffering to death out in the desert.He knew it was stupid and boy howdy I guess a Viet Nam sniper with 2 mean tours under his belt knows a mortal wound when he sees one but his human decency haunted him.And that is the state of most of us humans…Ambivalent.Decisions are not as easy as the flip of a coin or the number of rings.Feeling complicates everything but it’s the true composition of the actual universe we all navigate through.As a post script I’d like to speculate on the hair cut again if you’d bear with me.It apparently wasn’t part of the original story but came from a picture Thommy Lee showed the Coen’s.Do you suppose it was another stab at the consequences of the betrayal by authority?An adult residue of brutalized adolescents?
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Theory that the Sheriff is in on the whole thing with Anton. Just a thought but there are a lot of scenes that make me suspicious. I’ll try to remember all of them….
1/ The sheriff and his dipshit sidekick ride up on the shootout scene. We know his sidekick is dumb which would be perfect as he would’nt suspect anything. While there, they spoke about whether or not the transaction was for money and it was pretty obvious the sheriff knew there was money involved.
2/ The bodies in the bed of the truck that the sheriff pulled the driver over for. Probably means nothing as the guys was just cleaning up but made me suspicious. Why include that scene?
3/ The sheriff goes back to the scene of the crime where Louellen was shot. He goes back and looks nowhere but the empty air conditioning space. Did he know that’s where the loot was and did he go back to collect?
4/ Why is the sheriff so interested in finding Louellen? He keeps saying its to protect him but he knows Louellen has the money. He even goes into other counties trying to find him.
5/ In the diner when he brings up the device used to kill cattle to Louellen’s wife. We never see how he comes to know of this, in fact he acts puzzled when his partner describes a mysterious death involving a hole in the head with no bullet.
6/ The final scene where the sheriff (suddenly retired), was describing his dreams. I think they both involved his dad, the first one was his dad owed or had a lot of money for him which he got screwed on and never received. The second was something that involved his dad and he meeting up at a later time. I don’t remember the second one too well as I was trying to piece all this together but I took Anton to be his dad in his dream.
I don’t think these are all of them but it just seems like there are too many questions involving the sheriff. Not sure why Anton didn’t kill the sheriff in the hotel. Maybe since he already had the money why risk it by killing a sheriff, just let him go away. One interesting thing also was the similarity between the 2 coin flip scenes. The store owner who “married into” ownership of the house, store, land and Louellen’s wife who would have inherited the money, both by chance. Anton asks them both to pick heads or tails, no one else. Any thoughts?
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Great movie! We are wondering, however, whether the ending was left open for a sequel?
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I’d like to address a couple more aspects that seem to have sparked some rather ‘wild’ speculation.The dreams of the sherriff in the final scenes represented the mournful lament of a tired old man who had lost his faith in himself or the credo that had underscored the major part of his identity thus far.He “woke up” to the fact that there wasn’t going to be any ‘light at the end of the trail’ where the faithful and loved could together bask in the glow of the justice they’d wrought.That an old man should wearily have to face the futility of a life time of efforts might seem bleak…why then is the scene strangely uplifting?There were 2 people in the scene ;the sheriff and his wife.It was perfectly obvious that regardless of what came out of his mouth she had nothing but love for and faith in him ..in his company she was completely confident.The loss this caracter faced in the loss of the dream was a final ‘vanity’ falling away.Youthfull and well meant to be sure but a vanity.All that remained were the loving bonds we’ve formed.How else could that craigy face of Tommy Lee look so beutiful in the final sequence.The Coen’s had masterly managed to do that with us and this old man too.Your heart goes out to him like a beloved old dog you know your gonna loose.That’s why this Chigurh seemed so wretched and pathetic.He was truly a man for himself alone and in that he was like the astronaught in 2001 cut loose and cast adrift in an empty abys.And if I could briefly respond to one bloggers interpretation of Chigurhs ‘Code’ of honor.BULLSHIT!The only reason the fat lady in the trailer park was left alive was because there was somebody in the bathroom,(the toilet flushed just as he seemed to incline in her direction), and he decided it wasn’t worth it.He didn’t kill any body because they were ‘bad’…what the hell did he care.He simply opporated on impulse and what ever the odds dictated most advantageous(and pleasurable), to him at the moment.His feeling for a ‘code’ was summed up in his question to Carson wells”if the rule you’ve lived by brought you to this, what good was the rule?”.Basicly he was still a human being and he still needed an identity.Nature abhors a vacuum and the usual means of identity are not available to him.Fate became an identity…random chance an order,and his relation to this was deffinately some kind of angel of death but this was just his version of vanity.I think he was left unsatisfied by Lewellen’s end.He wanted to do it,( and let me take this opporatunity to asure any of you who missed it ,Cigurh deffinately recovered the money),.He killed Lewellens wife cause he didn’t get ‘satisfaction with Lewellen.When she made him face it he left feeling a little naked…He’d gone off the reservation and was on uncharted ground.As for why he ‘spared the sheriff when he was in the same room; he wasn’t in the same room .He was in the next room ‘WITH THE MONEY!’.I’ll admit the Coen’s made this scene delliberately ambiguous ,(almost to the point of silly supernaturalness),.Chigurh only moved on unsuspecting or completly vulnerable prey and the sheriffs behavior put him on edge .The sheriff could scence his presence and he could scence the sheriffs scence and it unnerved him.It’s almost corney to to say but the movie was about ,on the one hand,not all evil really having a why.Some evil is for it’s own sake and the sheriff had to finaly see it for what it was…a perennal.
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The word I was trying to type at the end of the last comment was PERENNIAL!
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I believe the Cohens’ art invites “off the wall” interpretation. The viewer can express an individual reaction. My own (from an Australian) perspective is that the movie is about the USA’s loss of moral leadership in world affairs. When LBJ’s misreading of Vietnam was spun into a falsely heroic tale the USA had become vulnerable to the immoral excesses of Abu Graib. The sherriff records that it started going wrong when people stopped saying “Sir” and “Ma’am”. Simple respect for fellow human beings. Some of the old sherriff’s didn’t even feel the need to carry guns. What replaced that system of social cohesion? Being a Vietnam Vet – especially two terms – earns respect. But as the hitman says “If your method has got you to this point, how good is your method?” I read the film as an injunction to Americans to ask themselves that question. If you are seen by the rest of the world as failing in moral leadership, and have rising fears for your safety in your cities and homes, isn’t it time for a new approach based on respect rather than power?
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I find a lot of your comments truly fascinating. However, if I may, I would like to ground the discussion to a more concrete level. I really liked this movie. And yet, I couldn’t get over the one thing that bugged me about it. And that was about the money, the suitcase it came in, and the transponder.
Wouldn’t any ‘real’ person, once they have the suitcase full of money, in some personal space where they feel safe and alone in, be it in your vehicle, or more than likely, at your home, dump the money out, check it out, count it, and then transfer it to some other suitcase, backpack, or bag of some kind – and thus removing the transponer from the equation?
Don’t get me wrong, as said, I liked the movie a lot. But I just thought this flaw in the movie was inexcusable. It just seemed a convenient cheap oversight. How about you? I mean, aren’t people paid decent money in the production of a movie such as this to ensure that such mistakes like this aren’t made? Cheers!
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I think Sheriff Bell was killed when he entered the motel room with the blown out lock. That was his blood he was looking at on the carpet. The car headlights cast a halo of light around him as background light did as he looked at his reflection in the TV at an earlier time, as it did with Chigurh, as if they were already ghosts. Everything we witnessed after that had to do with the Sheriff getting new information that was not available to him while alive. His father had gone ahead to light the way for him, but he resists. Death is not a place for an old man, or is it? He tells us this in the opening lines.
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great story and I love these comments. I am looking at it in a completly different way now. I would love to hear others opinions as to why woody harilson’s character was added. Is there any significance or was it only a cameo appearence??? I like the fate thing, nothings for certain,I sure didn’t see woody dieing so fast but really his character brought nothing new to the story. maybe im wrong.
O yeah I loved that the movie wasn’t a hollywood cookie cutter though it resembled a good clint eastwood movie at times. Also the plot structure seemed uncoventional. or atleast not so obvious. great.
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I like the Coen’s use of metaphore.They made Lewellen a ‘welder’…in other words; one capable of forming strong bonds..of his own.
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I loved the movie all the way through! But then the end left me empty. It has taken a couple days to soak it all in. I think the biggest moral of the story (though there are many in this film) deals with taking what’s not yours. Examples: Leweylln taking the money. Anton stealing from the drug store. Anton stealing lives all over the place, Anton stealing cars, etc, etc, but ultimately, the sheriff has his confidence, peace, and self-esteem taken from him. He was going to die eventually and he was going to feel pretty empty looking back on his life. I had a very difficult time listening to the content of the dream at the end. I was looking at the window behind him, waiting to Anton to walk past, or a bullet come through the window. I kept watching and watching, then the dream explanation was over and the credits rolled. I was shocked! There was people booing in the theater I was in & I was initally left empty. But thinking about the movie the past couple days, that emptiness was filled with some meaning for me. I think every viewer can fill their own void left by the movie with their own lessons to be learned or morals to be challenged, and direction in life.
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To (Chris C.); I think the Coen’s,( and David Lynch,Stanley Kubrick,Won Kar Wai.. ect ) make films for audiances like you.
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Yeah…Up above someone argued that bringing the water back to the Mexican led to his death…the transponder was still in the case and even if he had found it, they would have tracked him.
Second, I’m wondering why, when Bell returns to the site of Llewelyn’s death, does he not look behind the door.
Clearly there was movement reflected from the lock hole. Also he notices the air duct grating off and does not thoroughly search the place?
What’s the deal?
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Props to Harry and Christian. Best comments
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When Sheriff Bell walked into the hotel room, I thought “He is in on the entire thing.” He never cared to solve the crime and why would he enter seeing the lock blown open? I also think Todd’s post on January 13th is a possiblity. It makes a lot of sense that maybe Sherrif Bell was killed in that scene. I say either he was in on it or he was killed.
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I agree with a lot of the interpretations above…but regarding the motel scence i offer 2 other interpretations that i have yet to read…
1. It is possible that Sheriff Bell knew Chigurh was behind the door; however he was too scared to do anything about it. This is yet another reason why he decides to quit and feels inadequate etc etc.
2. Chigurh is never there (not even in the room next door). It is clear he is shown to be in the room with blown out lock. However, i feel there is a chance that he is just a figure of Sheriff Bell’s imagination. It’s possible that Sheriff Bell is hopeful he will be there…and even feels he may be there..to a point where he is certain he can sense him on the other side of the door. Ultimately, he is let down by the fact that he was wrong and has failed his job.
Thoughts?
ps- i am still cluecless as to who got the money.
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Well, after seeing reviews that gave this movie a 5 star rating I just had to go along and see it.
I’m still unsure whether I’d rate it one star or six – or both.
And the meaning? :
1. Certainly, as has been discussed here – fate.
2. But also the Sheriff maybe felt he’d pushed his luck just a little too far in entering the Motel room where the killer could (was hiding). So for him it’s time to move on into retirement – the senseless violence and unpredicability in the new Texas makes it no country for an old man like him.
As an after thought, for those who enjoyed the theme, treatment and setting in this movie, I’d suggest “The Proposition”.
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WOW! Betcha didn’t blink much in that film! And that “ending”! I was one of many who, when the Ending Credits started rolling, sat bolt up-right and incredulously blurted, “Whaaaat the hell just happened there!???” I felt like I’d just been thrown a cold-cut when I’d been led to believe that fillet mignon was coming.
However, something told me that “No Country” absolutely had to be more than just a cheap tease. It contained WAY too much genius. Everything was brilliant: acting, script, scenes, casting! Thus my mind kept me awake that night trying to make some sense of it.
Then it hit me. I think that every single scene, character, and word are very powerful and clever symbols…symbols of the many facets of what has grown to become our country’s Great Pandora, drugs.
Some of possible interpretations:
*The Sheriff represents the law who earlier had a problem they could handle -but now sees that it may have grown way beyond what even smart, experienced veterans can deal with;
*Chigurh reps the pure cold-hearted violence that has mercy for NO ONE who’s around drugs;
*Llewellyn reps those who don’t take drugs…but just want to get in on the money -and believe that they’re “much too smart” to get hurt in the process;
*Llewelyn’s wife reps all of us who get hurt simply because we love those who are involved;
*The great old character who runs the Gas-Stop reps ordinary citizens who try to refuse to have anything to do with drugs…but it’s “only a coin toss” as to whether they will be hurt simply by living on the same planet. (Thus we ALL are affected by this Pandora). And hmmm…was the date of that coin, 1978, the time when the (Pandoric) Organized Crime took over the drug business? Or…?
*The Sheriff wasn’t killed by Chigurh because there’ll always be those people who dedicate their health and lives to fight drugs;
*Chigur was badly hurt in the crash at the end -but not killed because…
*And the actions of those two boys at the crash scene? Wow!
*Ah, there’s SO much more!
Watch it again with this premise in mind, and see if your mind doesn’t solve symbols all over the place! Undoubtedly, the Cohens didn’t put ANYING in that film that is meaningless. As such, I think that you and your companion(s) may have some very stimulating and moving discussions afterward.
Don’t you LOVE films that make you really think about what’s happening…instead of just plopping it all on your plate like a big heap of creamed tuna on toast (sh– on a shingle). I am now a big fan of the Brothers Cohen.
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I am quite sure Chigurh got the money.He saw the scratch marks on the base of the air duct and realized why he’d got the wrong room earlier.Also,recall, he paid the young boy at the end with a crisp 100 dollar bill.As far as all this buissness about the sheriff in the room with Chigurh.The scene was so deliberately ambiguous.I mean it was obviously suggested that Chigurh was behind the door but once the sheriff was in the room it was obvious he couldn’t be behind the door.I’ll have to see it again but the damn thing is turning into a soduko.
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Chigurh wasn’t behind the bloody door! When Bell pushes the door open you can see the door swivel all the way before it hits the wall with a thud! Also in the shot where the door swivels open you can actually see for half a second that the darkness is pretty even in the space where the wall is and that there is NO ONE behind the door.
Further, when Bell sits down on the bed you can see the door again in the background – it is flat against the wall, leaving no space for a grown man to stand behind it. Thus, one interpretation could be that Chigurh is in the *next* room, just as Llewellyn was in another room when Chigurh first tracked him down in a motel.
When Bell checks the bathroom, the camera zooms in on the window latch – I can’t tell the significance of this because I can’t tell if the latch was shut or open. If it was open, it leaves open the possibility that Chigurh escaped through the window (assuming he was there in the first place). If shut, it means Chigurh was never there at the same time as the sheriff because the window can’t be latched from the inside.
This ambiguity is what is so annoying about interpreting this film. With films like Memento the ambiguity is fairly structured and you can generally eke a fair bit of ‘meaning’ from the movie. With Old Men, I’m of the opinion that the plot itself is inherently weak.
All in all, a very unsatisfying movie for me. It’s always possible that I am missing something, but I’ve trawled a lot of movie analysis websites and I haven’t come across an explanation that is remotely satisfying. Comments that ‘read’ the movie as political commentary (like the one from the Australian above) are the worst. The most improbable, hackneyed and cliched interpretations tend to be the ideological ones. I’d like to think that the Coen brothers are more philosophical auteurs than masters of agitprop. Besides, I HIGHLY doubt Cormac McCarthy intended any political point.. so such interpretations are as frustrating asthey are offensive to someone trying to glean genuine – and not the political cause du jour – meaning from the film!
So: I would class this as one of the Coen Brothers’ weaker movies.. especially in contrast to the other films in the oeuvre: Fargo, Lebowski.. even O Brother Where Art Thou. Unless there’s a satisfying interpretation that I can hang my coat on, I’m inclined to think that “No Country” is really an overhype ‘arty’ vehicle riding on Cormac Mccarthy’s literary cachet rather than a solid film. In a year of exceedingly weak Hollywood offerings, I would submit that this is probably the case.
PS. Pappas, your lack of paragraphing stopped me reading beyond the third line. Really. If you expect people to read your insights.. paragraphs help.
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