No Country for Old Men, echoes and reflections

Ok, I watched No Country for Old Men again, just to try and cement some things in my mind, but I think I need to read what I write to see what I think. So here's one of those rambling reviews that will only seem interesting to anyone else puzzled/fascinated by this film's blatant use of symbolism. (I've kept myself from reading other reviews while I let it bounce around in my head, but I think I'm ready to flesh out some thoughts and then see what others have to think.)

The first thing that strikes me is the opening/dawn of the film starting from darkness into dawn as Tommy Lee Jones' thick Texas accent narrates:

I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carry one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Camanche I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how theyd've operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I sure don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."

There's something going on here about the loss of a respect for history as well as the soul. They are tied together somehow. I just haven't quite worked it out.

The first death, as Anton Chigur rises as a shadow in the background, slips up, and slowly, agonizingly kills the deputy contrasts the very next scene with the quick but graphic death of the man he simply tell to "hold still" and drops like an animal. The intertwining of man and animal keeps popping up throughout the film. And the third scene is picks up the thread with the exact same phrase, "hold still" as Moss scopes his prey and then misses, only wounding the animal instead of dropping it. Chigur did have the advantage of being point blank with a man willing to hold still, but the juxtaposition of the two men's success/failure is a clear indication that evil holds all the cards. I'm not too sure I can put Moss in any kind of category close to "good" but he's clearly less bad than Chigur, and this is a movie that waffles between relativism and absolutism. Chigur seems to view himself as an agent of fate, amoral in some ways. But he is also a fan of absolutes: what the coin is called determines fate, irrevocably. Refusing to call it doesn't fit into his system.

Maybe there is something more to the question of distance and space to think about here, as well. Moss is shown high above his prey, far away with the advantage of a high powered scope that really doesn't help him at all. Chigur is on the same level as his prey, eye to eye.

That Moss is probably hunting illegally is indicated by the distance between him and his truck, and by his careful retrieval of the shall casing. That he does not seem particularly concerned about the dying man and that he steals the 2 million without so much as a twinge of conscience also aligns him on the side of a not quite as bad guy as the sociopathic killer, but clearly not good either.

A limping black dog leads him to his doom. His perspective of the scene is, at first, high above. But he quickly descends (by the very next shot) into the fray. He is down on their level. And the dogs and men are in exactly the same death positions. And storm clouds brew in the sky. And he remains impassive. Why DOESN'T he have any water in the middle of that godforsaken land?

And then there are the two trees. The two trees in the center of this twisted paradise? The tree of life (where the dead guy isn't, just shade) or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he needs to stay away from. Of course he's going straight for the "knowledge."

And why the heck isn't that combination case locked????

The storm clouds (not seen in the two trees scene) returns with a vengence as he returns to his truck. It's followed by the first humorous scene of the film, between Moss and Carla Jean. That's a welcome relief.

Wide awake in the middle of the night, Moss' "alright" confuses me. The slightly smart thing to do is go back and make certain the only witness to his presence is dead, but why take the water along? Even if the guy IS still alive, isn't he going out there to hasten his death? And his flatness continues with his admission all of this is incredibly stupid and likely to result in his death. But it's been done. The coin has been called.

How they filmed complete darkness and made it believable is beyond me. The complete blackness swallows up the dead man in the truck and the approaching lights signal the turn of the tide. Moss is now the hunted, facing the far superior force of the truck. They too have a higher angle and good weapons and only manage to nick him. Killing this first relentless dog is only the prelude. And it will be the few evenly matched confrontations.

Quick cut to the far superior force eating peanuts at the Texaco and contemplating killing the overalled clerk. Everything Chigur says to him is designed to suggest he is operating on a very different plane:

Is there something wrong with anything?
Now is not a time.
You don't know what you're talking about, do you.
I don't have some way to put it. That's the way it is.
When he closes his eyes with that deep sigh and says "call it" it is with utter inevitability.
I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair.
You've been putting it up your whole life. You just didn't know it. Now it's here.

Is life is "everything" in Chigur's philosophy? ("you stand to win everything")

Don't put it in your pocket. It'll get mixed in with all the others and become just a coin. Which it is. (with that knowing look) Now, here's my problem. This gets back to the problem of whether this film is verring towards relativism or absolutism. Is it suggesting random fate is at the root of our destiny? Or the choice to take a bite of the fruit and the consequences of the Fall?

We get this again in the very next scene when Moss tells Carla Jean, "anything you leave you ain't going to see again" (and she's leaving him) and his conclusion, "Things happen. I can't take 'em back."

back... to the darkness and the death scene, where the dogs and men are interchangable and Chigur leaves two more, one of whom had pointedly continued the dog language when he asked, "Mind riding bitch?" Then the light, where the real good guys survey the scene, mounted on horseback which probably means something, too... And the first thing Wendell says? "Oh, they even shot the dog." Ed's assertion that "age will flatten a man" is played out in Tommy Lee Jones performance here.

Once we get to more of the interior scenes, such as the next one where Chigur has arrived at Moss' trailer, the play of reflection moves to the forefront. He stares at his own reflection in the television and Ed Tom takes up the exact same position minutes later, same milk in hand, although he's a bit more civilized by using a glass (Chigur sees no need). "He's seen the same things I've seen" Ed Tom says, in regards to whether Moss has any notion what he's up against.

But clearly, Moss doesn't understand. He's made the choice and he thinks he's in control.

He gets to the motel and closes the blinds, plunging him back into the dark. The play of that blinding light on the bleak landscape against the black darkness doesn't quite match up to the characters, who are certainly bleak and dark, but none really fit the "light" mode. Ed Tom seems to squint against it, not embrace it.

Why are Moss' feet bloody? What did I miss? He's in the bathroom stripping off bloody socks, much like Chigur will be later that night. They keep coming back to the same scenes with these two. Is one just the logical conclusion of the other?

Why does Chigur shoot at the crow in the dark on the bridge and miss? (I rewound this to make sure: there's only one bird and it's shown flying off behind the car.)

And then we're back with poor old befuddled Ed Tom, who can't eat when he hears that there wasn't a bullet in the second victim's head. He just doesn't understand. It is, after all, no country for old men.

Chigur closes on his prey, the transponder lighting up and playing the game of "warmer, warmer, hot" with that constant beeping. He holds the map exactly as Moss has done in the scene before, same stance, same man?

He walks in sock(ing)/ stalking. Sound becomes a focus, between the beeps of the transponder, the silence of the walk, the sounds of the air popping, the silence of the dead... the mirror, broken, throws no reflection here. He realizes the Mexicans, too, had a transponder and he has been betrayed. He sits beside the upside down lamp (more light in darkness here, topsy turvy) throwing strange shadows all about him as he strips off his own bloody socks.

We're given a light moment by the dark man who tells Moss he shouldn't be hitchhiking. It's dangerous.

What to make of the reflective building where the businessman behind the drug deal sits? How dangerous is he? (a direct connection to the scene right before). Compared to what? The bubonic plague? Carson's (Harrelson) shrug that there's plenty of killers like Chigur around suggest the proliferation of Chigur's brand of violence is not something younger men concern themselves with too much.

And then we're back at another hotel, this one compressed somehow, everything is tall and thin, squeezed from both sides. Moss's second bed scene has him in the same position but instead of "alright" as his answer, it is "there just ain't no way." He's talking about how he's been found, but the viewer knows, like Chigur, there's always much more to the meaning. And there's not.

The showdown takes place, of course, in the dark instead of high noon, each man taking his turn to extinguish light by which the other might find him. (What's with all the panoramic paintings of landscapes in every motel shot? You know something's going on there, too.)

The violence spills into the dead night streets. The lone driver killed violently, wrong place, wrong time. Chance? or not? The dark shadow of Chigur against the white building throws him larger against the imagination. He is mortal, but still able to disappear into the darkness.

We're then left with two wounded animals: Moss is between countries, asked if he was "in a car accident" (foreshadowing) by stupid American kids who still manage to make a tidy profit off his troubles, and is somehow saved by mariachis at dawn on the steps of a church who take him to a hospital?? What?? Chigur, on the other hand, gets full light of day, a car bomb in the middle of the street, and can slip by everyone unseen to heal himself (using mirrors of course). Blood coming out of boots is clearly of interest to the Coens, too.

When Carson gets to delineate Chigur to the rather stupid Moss, the key of course is that he is NOT like either of them. He has principles. On the other hand, he'll kill you just for inconveniencing him. We really can't take Carson's assertion that "he doesn't have a sense of humor" seriously, can we? Some of the blackest funniest moments have been his wry humor.

How the hell does Carlson know to find the case where it's been thrown? HOW???

And then there's the conversation between Ed Tom and Carla Jean. "Tell him I can make him safe" Again I must ask, HOW? This man can't bring himself to even look it in the eye.

Chigur's sense of fate gets showcased in his exchange with Carson. "I know something better. I know where it's going to be." We aren't shown Carson's killing. This marks a turning point. The last victim was the truck driver, gruesomely shot through the throat. Here, we see nothing but Carson's hand up in a defensive posture and the sound of his last breath. And from this point forward, we will not see the deaths. The first death goes on for what feels like forever, with close ups. And each one successively gets shorter (though no less violent) until sight is removed. Well, no, not entirely. We still have the businessman's shot through the throat after this. Why his?

Chigur waxes philosophical right before killing Carson:

If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
(Carson) Do you have any idea how crazy you are?
You mean the nature of this conversation?
(Carson) I mean the nature of you.

And then Carson is dead. Carson Wells is not here "in the sense that you mean." Not crazy, and completely funny.

Chigur tells Moss exactly what we've known all along: "You know how this is going to turn out. . . I won't tell you you can save yourself. Because you can't." So much for random fate, right?

Ed Tom gets to echo the "not here" sentiment in the following scene when Wendell changes the tense from "is" to "was" about the dead men and "there's the question. Whether they stopped being. And when." Mortality is not the only question at stake here.

I typed this out while watching it, because it seems to be the root of the thesis:

They died a natural death. Natural to the line of work they was in. It’s just all out war. Who are these people? Here last week they found this couple out in California. They rent out room to old people, kill ‘em, bury ‘em in the yard, cash their social security checks. They’d torture em first. I don’t know why. Maybe their television set was broken.And this went on until, here I quote, "Neighbors were altered when a man ran from the premises wearing only a dog collar." You can’t make up such a thing as that. I dare you to even try. But that’s what it took to get somebody’s attention. Digging graves in the backyard didn’t bring any. (Wendell laughs, then looks embarrassed) It’s alright I laugh myself sometimes. Ain't a whole lot else you can do.

The accountant does the same tense correction when Chigur kills the businessman: he feels...he felt...

Chigur kills the chicken farmer and we don't see a thing, just the washing out of chicken feathers. We already know. Why do we need to see?

Echoes: next scene: beer girl and Moss: "I'm looking for what's coming." "Yeah, but no one ever sees that." And then they are dead. She face down in the bloody pool, him in the door of his motel. What's coming never seen.

Ed Tom is nothing but a powerless witness to the dismal tide.

When he returns to the scene, his shadow casts long into the darkness, his palpable dread. The shadows are doubled and tripled in this scene, with only a small sliver of light across the face of Chigur. Alone in the room with this killer, he is spared. Why?

The darkness of that scene fades into the bright light of Emmitt's farm. Here we get Ed Tom's articulation of his loss of faith and of the self pity that Emmitt refuses. Ed Tom may be overmatched, but he "doesn't know what God thinks" and what's he's got "ain't nothing new. This country's hard on people. Can't stop what's coming. Ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity." It's got inevitability and morality and choice, determinism, absolutism, and relativism all rolled together here. I love it. But I can't make a lot of sense of it.

Carla Jean's refusal to call it doesn't stop it. His decision, the coin's, hers, all one. No death scene. Just the examination of his boots for blood and his business is concluded. So of course the jarring car accident, what he never saw coming, brings him back to echo Moss' scene of paying for a passers-by clothing, limping away, another black dog who got there the same way the coin did.

The dream interpretation doesn't take much, back to Ed Tom's loss and hope, light and darkness, dawn and waking. It's pretty, but it doesn't shed any more light on the intentions of Cormac McCarthy. But then again, I'm still thinking on it all.