Reflections on ‘No Country for Old Men’
Note: This post assumes you have seen No Country for Old Men and it contains significant spoilers. It’s bad enough you’re missing one of the best movies of the year, don’t compound the tragic error of your ways by ruining it before you see it.
When my mom died in 1994, I think the person it was hardest on was my father. It’s true we’d lost our mother which is a terrible thing, but we were grown up. We had made our own lives and we didn’t depend on her like we once did, but for him it was different. A big part of his life was gone and once the shock of being alone for the first time in 40 years had worn off, I think he felt he didn’t have much reason to continue. Looking back it’s probably not so surprising that in 6 months time he was gone too.
What happened to my father I think is something that happens to a lot of people when they get older. They stop being a part of the world they live in. They don’t understand it and they’re just sort of hanging on. After a lifetime of moving and shaking, of calling the shots, they become irrelevant and sometimes they even get in the way. I only bring this up because I thought of it the last time I watched No Country for Old Men and it helps explain the powerful sense of melancholy I feel every time I see the jarring ending. To me, part of the essential sadness of what happens to Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is that he is a man who ceases to matter.
When Bell tries to articulate how he’s feeling near the end of the movie, the only thing he can say is that he feels “overmatched”. He’s talking about his job when he says this, the sting of having failed to protect two innocent citizens of his county still fresh in his mind, but it runs deeper than that. The world he has spent a lifetime protecting no longer even makes sense. What’s worse is that he’s afraid. He’s powerless to stop what is coming and he shrinks from it. In the case of Llewelyn and Carla Jean Moss, he arrives too late to be of any use to either one and the hard part is that even if he’d showed up on time, he knows he still might not have been able to make a difference.
In some ways, Bell is one of the lucky ones. He wasn’t shot and left dying on his front porch as had happened to a relative. He wasn’t put in a wheelchair like his grandfather’s deputy, Ellis. Physically, Sheriff Bell has gotten away clean, though the irony is that this only magnifies the guilt he feels when ultimately he decides to run away.
In the end, no amount of running will save Ed Tom from his own obsolescence which is perhaps, for anyone who lives long enough, life’s inevitable cruelty. He retreats to the comfort and safety of his own home, but even there he finds himself a stranger in a country no more comforting than the one he’s left. His wife Loretta loves him and is patient with him, but she’s still a part of the world and he’s just in the way. When she gently informs him she’d prefer he not help out around the house, there’s a slightly bewildered look on his face that reminds me of my dad after mom had gone. Finally, when Ed Tom describes the dream he’s had of his father waiting for him by the fire at the end of the trail, I think he at last understands that for a man like him, irrelevance is a fate worse than death. Like my own father when faced with a similar realization about the world, Ed Tom is probably not long for it.
Filed under: Analysis
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I think after a certain point in our lives, some tragedies are too much to recover from. What you describe with your father is exactly what happened to my maternal grandparents when I was a teenager. A broken heart, a lonely life, these are not things we expect to have to recover from when we retire to the simple life. Maybe if we lose someone we love and care about after a long life together, it’s better to follow them then stay behind.
I wonder if Ed would have been content to arrest or kill Chigurh? It feels as though Chigurh is just the final straw for him in accepting his own sense of inadequacy and fear. He doesn’t know what’s coming and he can’t stand in the way of it.
Wow, just read this post. Thanks Craig for sharing how the film resonated so deeply for you. I can really appreciate why it’s your number one. Not just because it’s a great movie by the Coens expertly adapted from the work of a master craftsman but also because the melancholy poetry of the ending speaks so directly to you. Art can be such a personal gift. Thanks for reminding us.
I can see how this wonderful film touched you very personally, Craig. Thank you for sharing that.
Completely beautiful and deeply personal writing, Craig. This is what films can–and when they are at their best–should do for us.
I agree, joel, that Chigurh is the final straw. He’s also, though, on a deeper level, the personification all of the evils and inhumanities Ed Tom Bell has witnessed and investigated on a regular basis in Terrell County, Texas. It all seems to be bundled up in one elusive, evil man.
I love how the final passage of the film relates to the Coens’ “other” look at the toll crimes take on a law enforcement officer so well. (Another “homespun murder story.”) Marge has just taken down two criminals–Lundegaard and Grimsrud–and when she arrives home to her loving husband all she can tell him is that she’s proud about his stamp, boosting his own opinion of his “award.” In No Country for Old Men, Bell has not caught anyone of note, has seen the guy he tried to save be killed minutes before he was able to get there and woefully “overmatched” in his pursuit of Chigurh. For Marge, life goes on–she’s going to have a kid, she and her husband have a wonderfully mature marital relationship and the criminality in the future will be dealt with. For Bell, he’s at his final breaking point, finding less and less reasons to keep going, loving his wife and being loved by her, but there is a hole that he cannot fill up. He’s seen and been privy to too much, and, as he intones at the beginning of the film, though he knows one must be selfless to hold his position, he nevertheless does not want to bump into something he doesn’t understand. And, it seems to him, in his despair, he no longer understands the caliginous world that is closing in around him.
Fargo concludes with notes of closure and fulfillment for the enforcer of the moral order. No Country for Old Men is far blacker in its stark ambiguity and bitterly dissatisfying conclusion for the enforcer of the moral order.
Ultimately, the depth of a person’s soul is incalculable and the comparions between your father and Ed Tom Bell are beautifully outlined. Again, just fabulous.
Sorry to get all personal on you there all the sudden. I hope I didn’t sound too maudlin with this, that wasn’t my intention, but I wanted to try and articulate one of the things No Country got me to thinking about.
I don’t know if he would’ve been satisfied arresting Chigurh or not Joel. He tells that story about the boy he put on death row who said he’d kill again if he got out. Even if he arrested Chigurh, he still hasn’t really stemmed the tide of evil he perceives around him.
The difference between the endings of Fargo and NCfOM Alexander is one of the things that sets it apart from most of their other films.
In Fargo, Marge looks into the maw of evil and returns from the experience perhaps changed a little but if anything more secure in her comforts of home and family. In NCfOM, Ed Tom is broken by it. It’s a much sadder, bleaker story than any of the others for me.
There is nothing to apologize for Craig. The tone wasn’t maudlin, it was poignant and tender. A tribute to an aspect of your father’s humanity and your empathic and soulful connection to it. You gave us something special.
Talking of the Coens, I’ve always loved their moments of deeper poignancy, wistfulness, and affection for characters. Alexander expertly describes its expression at the end of Fargo. But one can also see it elsewhere. For instance at the end of Raising Arizona with H.I’s projection into the future reverie of a family dinner, and numerous moments of wistfulness in Miller’s Crossing exemplified by the hat being blown in the woods imagery.
Alexander I’m enjoying your word power -> caliginous is the second word I’ve had to look up.
Yeah, I’d agree with that assessment Craig. Bell seems almost nonchalant as he deduces the means and cold authority of Chigurh’s path of destruction. Even when he tells Carla Jean that cautionary story it’s almost as though he’s reassuring himself that Chigurh’s weapon of choice is equal parts intentionally brutal and methodically surgical.
I could go on and on about this movie, covering points in detail we’ve already discussed heavily elsewhere. I would have to agree with Ebert that this is very likely a perfect film, not an unnecessary or wasted frame in the whole thing with many layers of meaning throughout.
Can’t wait to see There Will Be Blood now.
I’m with you Sartre on the ending to RA. Makes me misty eyed every time. It’s true of so many of the Coen endings. A combination of wry humor and whistful emotion,
I hope TWBB lives up to what must be impossibly high expectations for you Joel. I find myself torn between not overhyping it, but wanting everyone to know about it.
I too agree, sartre. The Coens are at their very best when their bizarre streak and their compassionate streak meet. Their depictions of hideous cretins invading the worlds of innocents (for instance, Loren Visser stalking Abby in Blood Simple or when the two kidnappers break into the house in Fargo, or Chigurh waiting for Carla Jean in No Country) in particular have always expressed an epigram for the hope of a more innocent time or place.
You’ve touched on the key flaw in the argument of people who say the Coens are misanthropic or hate their characters.
It’s a common beef among people who don’t get the Coens and it’s complete bullshit belied by the enormous reserves of affection they have for their collection of misfits.
Oh, I know, Craig. It’s one of the more absurd criticisms of a filmmaker (in this case two) that I’ve run up against. I would say that they have, as you say, failed to “get the Coens.”
It’s their loss in my estimation. I hope they will, though, look at their films again without the blinders and realize just how completely wrongheaded they are in their analysis.
Just read the post, Craig. I agree with the others - very powerful at the same time poignant. It felt like we were in my living room towards the end of our second, or maybe third, inspired Manhattan, sharing a little bit more about ourselves. I feel I know a little bit more about your parents and the time surround their deaths, but as mentioned earlier, also more about how you are affected by the films you see and the meaing you find within them. The exciting thing for me is that your reviews an comments have caused me to look at films differently and appreciate the message they have to offer. Your insights, behind a typical review, are what make this blog so important. Keep it up.
Thank you Peter. I don’t mean to get all mushy, but I think movies can be a very personal thing and they should be embraced and shared when they are. Whatever kinds of movies we like, in the end I think we all want to be moved in some way for a couple of hours in the dark. It doesn’t happen every time, but it’s cool when it does.