No Country for Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007)

[Reliakor]

It'd be one thing if you had something interesting to contribute, but there hasn't been a discussion going on in this thread since February of 2009 until you decided we should know that your misreading of the ending made you laugh a lot

I'd say the distilled truth is pretty interesting.

[tarpilot]

The merest hint of iconoclasm

the distilled truth

Okay seriously, who keeps giving you the names of my death metal band's EPs?

[mfunk9786]

antic quirkiness

[mfunk9786]

My goodness, what a wild thread this was to revisit! I am so surprised to see what is perceived as the Coens' past sins being held against them for a film that contains none of them. I realize that No Country for Old Men won the Oscar for Best Picture (never tends to be a good sign), and was only the third best American film of 2007 (There Will Be Blood and Zodiac are perched above it, although not by much), but it's an absolute masterpiece that's already begging to be looked back upon and discussed now that we've got some distance from the hype machine surrounding it during that year's cluttered awards season.

What shocked me most about this forum at large's reaction to the film years ago was the overall rejection of the Coen's adaptation of the ending of the book - some of the same people who would lavish (and have lavished) praise upon the beach climax(?) of The Tree of Life, just to give one example, decided that peeling McCarthy's perfect words off of the page, framing a brilliant image of an incredibly capable actor, and letting him read those lines with as much conviction, emotion, and fear as he could muster was somehow a bad thing. The film manages to do what preceded it the ultimate justice, and draw what was for most of its runtime a very exciting film about one particular criminal misunderstanding and manhunt back into the overarching themes of the work as a whole. Like his visit with Ellis a little earlier in the third act, we see Sheriff Bell let his guard down with someone he trusts yet again, and verbalize his hopelessness so eloquently (but believably) that my bones practically rattle with sadness when I see him speak in front of that gnarled tree that's looming behind him. It ain't all waiting on him.

[domino harvey]

But they fucked up the Cormac McCarthy adaptation and for that I will NEVER forgive them.

How's that minority opinion workin out for ya?

[JabbaTheSlut]

I guess it's a good Coen brothers movie, a good modern western, that had the same "plot" as McCarthy's book, but what they have missed is the apocalyptic, end of days, lost America etc. tone of McCarthy's novel. Which is the essence of the original story.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well good thing it's a movie and not the original story then

[mfunk9786]

And it's a good thing that subtext is there and easily located

[matrixschmatrix]

Hmm, I would say that's something the movie approaches- the sense that things have gotten worse beyond all recognition of humanity- and then reverses with the story about the Indians attacking at the end- in other words, things are inhumanly bad, but they've actually always been that way. Which was also the sense I got from the book.

McCarthy's smart enough to know that an O Tempora! whine isn't really all that engaging, and I've always seen his broader project as being coping with inhumanity rather than complaining bout it.

[albucat]

The book was originally written as a screenplay that McCarthy couldn't sell, thus it reads like a screenplay (unlike his other works) and the adaptation is very close to the original book. It's probably the worst of McCarthy's later works, too--you can kind of divide up his career into pre and post Blood Meridian--but I love the film and given that McCarthy's at least tacitly a fan of it.

I find complaining about its relationship to the book to be dubious. I totally understand disliking it due to reasons personal taste, but it's not even in McCarthy's best 10 works and I would claim that the adaptation significantly improves on aspects of the original novel.

[JabbaTheSlut]

It's a tonal thing, another level of narrative that the Coens never reach; in my opinion. I never felt the movie being elevated to the vast sight of the mankind that the book reaches. The story elements, the themes, the subtext, are there and so on, but tonally, emotionally it did not feel enough. The other one's a book and the other a movie. It's a Coen bros take on the world, and that is fine.

In all this whining, I forgot that I loved Big Lebowski.

[Mr Sausage]

I never felt No Country For Old Men had the universal apocalyptic vision of Outer Dark or Blood Meridian. It's definitely a much smaller, more narrowly concentrated book. I thought the Coen's movie captured its tone precisely, especially the fatalism that pervades the narrative. The story is one long delaying of the inevitable, and the Coens captured that increasing atmosphere of helplessness masterfully.

McCarthy's smart enough to know that an O Tempora! whine isn't really all that engaging, and I've always seen his broader project as being coping with inhumanity rather than complaining bout it.

Me too, but I randomly came across a comment from Harold Bloom (who considers Blood Meridian one of the greatest American novels ever written) where he deplores the moralism that creeps into No Country. And I can kind of see what he means. Between the frequent comments from Bell regarding Chigurgh being new kind of badness in the world instead of having always existed, like The Judge, and its time period, 1980, when drug-running seriously took off and brought violent crime to new levels--between all that, it definitely gains a moralistic tinge that's absent from his other novels, and isn't any stronger for it.

I liked the book (movie, too), but while it's definitely not as disappointing as Cities of the Plain, it still sits at the bottom of the pack along with that one and The Orchard Keeper.

[Mr Sausage]

Watched the movie again last night and started thinking about the issues of fate and codes of behaviour and all that. I've realized that this is not a movie that expresses the philosophy of fate. It's actually about the different reactions to chaos and meaninglessness.

It is around Chigurgh that the concepts of fate and codes of behaviour entwine. So how does he express them and how are they depicted? Let's take the code of behaviour first. A code of behaviour is a way to ensure a given behaviour is consistent with some concept of value. Treating people fairly is valuable; keeping your word is valuable; being honest is valuable, etc. These actions are valuable because, fundamentally, they assert the need for a particular world: if the world is honest, fair, and true, then it is good, and goodness is necessary for the world to be coherent and us to live in it. Goodness stops the world from being chaos. Any code of behaviour is an assertion of what is fundamentally valuable in the world--and therefore necessary for the world's existence. And that value being asserted is tied into some larger abstract concept: truth, fairness, love, coherence, etc. Most people have codes, and they drop them only when a competing value (wealth, success, pleasure, convenience) is stronger.

Chigurgh is a counter-intuitive villain in that he, rather than the hero, has a strong code of behaviour. Given the chaos and destruction he wreaks, it's hard to understand what value lies behind his code. There is no pragmatic value, for instance. Take the killing of Carla Jean: threatening her safety was a purely instrumental act whose only purpose was to get Moss to hand over the money and submit to death. Once Moss is killed, there is no utility in killing Carla Jean; the act is pointless. Yet Chigurgh does it anyway, offering up as reason only that he gave his word that he'd do it. This makes no sense pragmatically as Moss is dead. If you promise to refurbish your friend's car and he dies before you can, you might do it anyway, but not under the original terms of the promise. Now you're doing it as a tribute, an assertion of the value and worth of that friendship after it's ended. That kind of act requires powerful feelings; but not only does Chigurgh show no feelings about Moss' refusal one way or the other, he even seems somewhat regretful (if that's the word) that he has to kill Carla Jean. So there is no pragmatic value, and there is no direct abstract value, either, as in the example with the car. Chigurgh's code, then, is a pure abstraction--pure in that it refers only to itself. The code is held to only so that the code can continue to exist. Pure self-reference.

So the code is important to Chigurgh in and of itself, independent of pragmatic value or direct abstract value. The code is its own value. That doesn't seem to make much sense, which is part of why Chigurgh is so scary: he seems to exist beyond reason and understanding. But I think there's something comprehensible here.

Let's move to the other concept Chigurgh propounds: fate. Chigurgh uses coin tosses in lieu of personal choice to represent a person's 'luck', that is, their fate, what the cosmos has ordained for them. This belief in fate is not lip-service. When he goes to kill Carla Jean, he is affected enough by her words to say that 'fate' is the best he can offer her. Meaning, there is something of competing value that he relaxes his code for. So fate, for Chigurgh, is on par with his code and perhaps even above it.

It's worth thinking about what fate is, fundamentally: fate is the idea that the world has structure, pattern, organization--that it has design. And things with design usually have a meaning in their design (else it is pure structure). Much like codes, which are a way of designing behaviour to express value and thereby lend a similar design to the world, fate is a way of lending the world a design backed by certain concepts of value.

But, again, we have a problem: Chigurgh's sense of fate doesn't seem to have an attending value. It controls life or death, but it doesn't seem to express anything about the worth of either life or death. It's a pure concept, referring, again, only to itself. So for Chigurgh: codes and fate are valuable solely in and of themselves. Why? Well, the only similarity to them is that codes and fate are modes of order. Most people use order for a particular purpose (eg.: an expression of value), but for Chigurgh order in and of itself is the purpose. His belief in fate and codes is a way of asserting order and structure against what seems the indifferent, contingent, brutal chaos of existence. He in fact wishes to believe the world is not random. This is interesting for a man whose actions seem to inhabit chaos. Yet when a moment of chaos happens, like the random, unpredictable car crash near the end, where we would be tempted to see a frightening lack of order, Chigurgh probably just sees fate/luck, another evidence of design. I don't know if he is capable of comfort, but Chigurgh evidently needs to believe the world is not an incomprehensible chaos, and continually asserts the concepts of codes and fate no matter how unreasonably.

I think Chigurgh's attitude is meant to be contrasted by Tom Bell's. The latter begins and ends the movie not knowing what to make of things. The first voice we hear is the story of the psychopathic kid that Bell doesn't know what to make of. One of Bell's last scenes is when he visits his old partner and receives the astute comment that this current batch of violence is nothing new; it's how things always were. The world seems miserable, full of actions that don't make any sense. For Bell, there is no order he can see, and that breaks him.

So Moss' story is something around which two ideas interplay: that the world has order; that the world has no order. And, counter-intuitively, it is the villain who is on the side of order and the good guy who isn't. Perhaps that's the tragedy: it is the agents of brutality who seem most able to deal with a world of seemingly random brutality and violence.

Where do you fall?

[matrixschmatrix]

I've always read Chigurh as someone who ultimately does not believe in any external notions of fate or God or order, but who assumes that he can impose his will upon the world and create order, if only in his own image and idiom; he also seems to see the world as inherently pushing back against his attempt to do so. Thus, he is introduced having allowed himself to be taken into custody to prove that he could overcome that situation through force of will, but he also chastises himself for taking a needless risk. The coin flipping, I took as almost an extravagance of power; it's something he does only after he has demonstrated that his will has become absolute within that situation, and that he can no longer be hurt. I don't think he believes, or cares, that fate is protecting or condemning these people, because I don't think he cares whether they live or die, only that he has demonstrated (mostly to himself) that he has forced a chaotic situation to become one over which he has power.

Bell, on the other hand, has no power and no real ability to influence events, nor does he seek any, really; he is baffled and terrified by the horrors of the world he lives in, but he is also able ultimately to leave a hellish world without having to become something awful.

[Mr Sausage]

I've always read Chigurh as someone who ultimately does not believe in any external notions of fate or God or order, but who assumes that he can impose his will upon the world and create order, if only in his own image and idiom; he also seems to see the world as inherently pushing back against his attempt to do so. Thus, he is introduced having allowed himself to be taken into custody to prove that he could overcome that situation through force of will, but he also chastises himself for taking a needless risk. The coin flipping, I took as almost an extravagance of power; it's something he does only after he has demonstrated that his will has become absolute within that situation, and that he can no longer be hurt. I don't think he believes, or cares, that fate is protecting or condemning these people, because I don't think he cares whether they live or die, only that he has demonstrated (mostly to himself) that he has forced a chaotic situation to become one over which he has power.

I do like this reading, tho' it leans heavily on information we only get from the book. I prefer the movie's version of Chigurgh (I prefer the movie in general), so I don't treat the two interchangeably.

I think we agree on internal notions of order, at least, since having a code of behaviour is of course a way of imposing an order on the world. Chigurgh's imposition of this order on others is an imposition of himself, is fundamentally self-regarding. Indeed, unlike most others, who impose their versions of order on behalf of what they believe to be larger concepts of value, Chigurgh imposes order as an end in itself. That control does much for him. Chigurgh asserts himself against the idea of chaos. Anyone who feels they can control things must feel that order is important. Unlike The Joker in The Dark Knight, Chigurgh would never profess to be an agent of destruction, using violence to reveal the pathetic pretension behind humanity's attempt to control their lives. Chigurgh is a monster of control, a code that orders only so that there will be order.

I disagree with you on his idea of fate, tho' I think there is evidence for your reading. But Chigurgh never flips the coin at a moment of having, say, overcome peril, or in a moment that had any risk. He does it in moments of quiet, to those who pose him no risk. I don't think it's a simple caprice or power display. It's certainly meant to taunt others with their own lack of power (eg. the gas station owner), but it's also offered almost as a consolation later on, in a scene where Chigurgh comes the closest to a human emotion. That moment with Carla Jean is not a taunt or a caprice, and Chigurgh is genuinely bothered when Carla Jean denies the workings of fate and says it is only Chigurgh and nothing else. He does not react as one who agrees. I think his speech about the coin getting there the same way he did is meant to link fate and himself, not because they're identical, but because Chigurgh believes himself to be a force similar to fate: vast, controlling, an order beyond regular things. But unlike McCarthy's The Judge, I'm pretty sure Chigurgh thinks he's a lesser example of the two. Chigurgh dispenses order because he feels he is within something that is ordered, and therefore orderable, ie. not a hopeless chaos. The presence of order (tho' not an orderer) is central to him, and he believes himself to be on its side, an agent of it maybe.

Bell, on the other hand, has no power and no real ability to influence events, nor does he seek any, really; he is baffled and terrified by the horrors of the world he lives in, but he is also able ultimately to leave a hellish world without having to become something awful.

I don't think corruptibility is a theme.

I think the world made sense at one point to Bell. He begins with a story of him and his father being sheriffs at the same time, a memory that means a lot to him and which implies a specific kind of order and coherence: legacy, continuity, cycle, etc. We meet the older Bell on a cusp, where his confusion upends and he finds himself adrift in these crimes, unsure of the world. It ends with a dream of his father carrying a fire out into the cold and dark to light up the world, like Prometheus, with the understanding that Bell will meet him somewhere ahead. The dream is that his father will bring warmth and light--goodness and understanding--back into the world. But Bell's melancholy tone betrays the emptiness of this: it's only a dream, his father is long dead, and the world will continue to make no sense to him.

[matrixschmatrix]

I disagree with you on his idea of fate, tho' I think there is evidence for your reading. But Chigurgh never flips the coin at a moment of having, say, overcome peril, or in a moment that had any risk. He does it in moments of quiet, to those who pose him no risk. I don't think it's a simple caprice or power display. It's certainly meant to taunt others with their own lack of power (eg. the gas station owner), but it's also offered almost as a consolation later on, in a scene where Chigurgh comes the closest to a human emotion. That moment with Carla Jean is not a taunt or a caprice, and Chigurgh is genuinely bothered when Carla Jean denies the workings of fate and says it is only Chigurgh and nothing else. He does not react as one who agrees. I think his speech about the coin getting there the same way he did is meant to link fate and himself, not because they're identical, but because Chigurgh believes himself to be a force similar to fate: vast, controlling, an order beyond regular things. But unlike McCarthy's The Judge, I'm pretty sure Chigurgh thinks he's a lesser example of the two. Chigurgh dispenses order because he feels he is within something that is ordered, and therefore orderable, ie. not a hopeless chaos. The presence of order (tho' not an orderer) is central to him, and he believes himself to be on its side, an agent of it maybe.

Hmm, that's a good point; I think it's out of character for Chigurgh to taunt generally, as that's just out of keeping with the internality of his character, but I'd forgotten how much he resists Carla Jean's effort to convince him that there was no larger fate involved. I think, then, that you are right and he sees fate as an external, powerful, and cruelly heartless force- which jibes with his relatively easy acceptance of the car accident near the end. That he behaves similarly to his own projection of fate is presumably not a coincidence. I don't know that he would see himself as an agent of fate- there's a messianic quality to that, which I don't think fits him, and he seems so consistently able to impose himself on the world that I think it might be more a sort of respect between likes; fate is the only other force he respects, perhaps because it is so like him. He certainly never shows any respect for Moss, and never seems to show any real awareness of anyone else.

I don't think corruptibility is a theme.

No, I don't think so either, because I don't think the characters in this world are capable of change, really- Bell cannot be corrupted because Bell is fundamentally himself, but to become a force in this world means acting in a way that is anathema to Bell, as even Moss does. It is an ugly world, and it is one divided between the killers and the powerless. Bell cannot accept that, because it's an unacceptable premise, but it seems to be supported by virtually everything that happens in the movie.

[flyonthewall2983]

Talking to my parents about Uvalde has put that infamous ending in a whole new light for me. The world is making so much less sense to them in so many ways, that on the surface makes perfect sense because that’s how we generally make out those who are in their twilight years what place they can or cannot find for themselves in a world so different from the one they grew up in.

If the value of life is so unimportant to a growing number of us, what of us that keep the faith that life is worth at least preserving for the survival of not just ourselves but the people we love and care for? Even amongst all the killing and treachery happening here, there is this sense of self-preservation that reaches breaking points for the film’s protagonists in far more brutal ways but Bell sitting there realizing the symbolism in that dream is only the sort of violence an intensely guilty conscience or the full weight of the evil he has witnessed as indicated in the story he tells in voice over at the beginning.