The jaws of death

Warning: this article contains plot spoilers

No Country for Old Men, the new film by the Joel and Ethan Coen, has become the most critically acclaimed film of the past year. Released in January 2008 here in the UK, this film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling novel has been heavily supported in the awards season and marks a return for the Coen brothers to the kind of quality filmmaking they demonstrated with films like Blood Simple (1984) and Fargo (1996). Like Fargo, this film shows that innovative artistry and riveting entertainment can co-exist.

The film adaptation follows the novel fairly closely. Even the technical aspects of the film seem to serve as a cinematic homage to McCarthy’s writing style: narrative ellipses, playing with point of view, meticulously crafted scenes, and even some sequences that are near-abstract in their focus on sounds, objects, light, colour, and camera angle. Nearly every scene in the film is executed almost to perfection. In fact, many of the scenes are so flawlessly constructed that we want them to continue, and yet they create an emotional pull which smoothly draws us to the next scene. The acting is absolutely superb and British cinematographer Roger Deakins brings bleak west Texas landscapes to life. In many respects the story functions as a twentieth century Western.

The plot of the film is fairly simple. Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a Vietnam war veteran, stumbles upon a collection of corpses and a dying Mexican in what appears to be a drug deal gone awry. Not far away is a briefcase which contains more than two million dollars. Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is the hitman hired to retrieve the satchel of money. Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is the sheriff trying to track down Chigurh. These three characters frequently find themselves in a cat-and-mouse game in which hunter and hunted frequently switch roles, chasing each other and the money across west Texas. Each character also represents three different strands to the plot, as we follow their stories individually until they converge towards the end of the film. Llewelyn is the conflicted protagonist whom, despite his moral ambiguity, we want to somehow escape from the clutches of Chigurh and survive. Chigurh is the deeply violent, almost omnipresent face of evil. He does not hesitate to kill anyone in his way, whether they intended to get in his way or not. In a way that is reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in the original Terminator, Chigurh is relentless in his pursuit and will do anything it takes to accomplish his mission. Ed is the ageing lawman who increasingly despairs of the level of violence that is forcefully making its way into what he believed was a quiet, peaceful community.

The opening of the film shows a desolate, wide-open Texas landscape in 1980. In a voiceover, Ed Bell recalls a criminal who showed no remorse for the murder he committed. Bell regards him with incredulity, as if astonished that such a heartless person could exist. This opening voiceover sets the tone for the rest of the film, which is essentially an examination of how pitiful and powerless human beings can be when the intrusion of hyperkinetic violence sweeps its way into a normally peaceful setting.

Everything is set into motion when Llewelyn makes the understandable yet fateful decision to take the money and leave the Mexican to die. But he has an attack of conscience later that night and returns with water for the dying man. This good deed ironically results in him being identified by the gang which then hires Chigurh to track him down and retrieve the money.

Chigurh’s killing spree is sometimes purposeful for his mission, and other times not. Some people have suggested that Chigurh’s character might serve as an embodiment of Death, ending the lives of those who crossed his path in an uncompromising and biased manner. It seems like he decides their fate by pure chance (reflected by the coin toss he incorporates for people to call: how they call it determines whether they live or die). His weapon of choice is a pneumatic captive bolt pistol, which is normally used on cattle. His victims included those closely associated with the drug deal, the drivers of cars he steals for transportation, and people he encounters by chance. Llewelyn Moss becomes aware of Chigurh’s pursuit, sends his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) out of harm’s way and moves from motel to motel as he attempts to elude both the Mexicans and Chigurh. Meanwhile, Bell focuses his attention on trying to locate and protect Moss and somehow catch Chigurh.

As with most Westerns, the film has its final standoff where the major characters come together and a battle ensues to determine who will ultimately prevail. In this story, the Mexicans, Chigurh, Llewelyn and Bell all find their way to a motel in El Paso, though they do not all arrive there at the same time.

What happens after this is either a brilliant twist or a deflating misjudgment, depending on how you like your stories to end. As Ed finds his way to the hotel room where he believes Chigurh to be, he sees Chigurh’s reflection in the bolt on the door and forces his way into the room. Upon entering, he discovers that Chigurh and the money are gone.

We find Chigurh at Carla Jean’s mother’s house, following up on his promise to kill her if Llewelyn didn’t return the money. However, Carla Jean refuses to call the coin toss and we then see Chigurh leaving the house and kicking the dust off his boots. As he drives away, he is involved in a car crash and his arm is badly broken, though he still manages to walk away.

The film ends with Ed first visiting an ex-lawman named Uncle Ellis. He laments that times have changed too much and it is time to retire, but Ellis reminds him that times have always been violent and that you can’t stop what is coming. Later on, Bell reflects on his life choices with his wife, and recalls two dreams he had the night before. In the second, he and his father were riding horses through the mountains in the snow. His father, who was carrying fire in a horn, quietly passed by him with his head down. Bell then relates that his father was 'going on ahead, and fixin' to make a fire', and that when he got there, his knew his father would be waiting. He concludes that this feeling may be no more than a dream, and his final words are 'and then I woke up.' The film ends.

The denouement of the film leaves several plot strands unresolved, some of which are interesting and some are maddeningly hard to understand. For example, we do not know the fate of Carla Jean. Chigurh doesn’t get captured, nor do we know if he ended up retrieving the money or not. And how did Chigurh get away from Bell if he really was in that hotel room? But if he wasn’t really there (which has been suggested), then how do we account for Bell seeing Chigurh’s reflection in the door lock?

Despite this ambiguous and unresolved ending, this remains a deeply compelling film. Though it is a very violent, it does not celebrate or smile at violence, but rather despairs of it (which is true of most good Westerns). It despairs of its randomness, pervasiveness, and its seemingly inescapable nature. It despairs at the way it eats at the soul of society. The film is also unusual in the fact that a major character dies, and good does not triumph over evil in the end.

In this sense, the story is a more honest reflection of society. Every time we turn on the news or read a newspaper, we see and read story after story of the innocent suffering at the hands of violence. Sometimes there is justice, to whatever extent justice can be attained. But like Chigurh walking away from the accident, violence continues on and will continue as long as there are humans living on earth.

The film does not really offer a remedy to violence; rather, it leaves us in a dark place of feeling powerless about being able to stand in its way or curbing its destructive path. Indeed, it would be easy to conclude that human history has been plagued by violence, and today is no different. In the perceived battle for survival and pursuit of self-interest, violence is an easy solution.

It is interesting, and perhaps not a coincidence, that the story of the Bible does not evade violence and the tragedy it incurs; instead, it acknowledges that the tendency toward violence is part of human nature, and is often brutally honest in its stories about how violent humans can be. However, unlike No Country for Old Men, the Bible does not end the story there. It offers a redemption of the tragedy of violence - ultimately through the violent and unjust death of Jesus Christ. Jesus, in one of his teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, tells us that we no longer are to hate our enemy but love them instead (Matthew 5:44). This radical usurping of the 'normal' way of rendering justice provides a way out of the cycle of violence, and in so doing reveals the truth about who we are meant to be as human beings. We are not immersed in a battle for survival where it is every one for him- or herself; we are relational beings who are called to love and give ourselves to others. Films like No Country for Old Men are valuable reminders of the injustice and hopeless tragedy of violence. Is our fate hopeless, or can we embrace another way? History seems to reflect the view of the film, but the Bible offers hope that it will not always be this way.

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