No Country for Old Men Explained

what's the most you ever lost on a coin toss hi I'm Matt and this is logos made flesh like most Coen Brothers films No Country for Old Men is a compelling story with a rather ambiguous end no no go what's the film trying to say Hugh matically has much in common with this 1957 classic in which a knight returning to his homeland is met by the finger of death ready Rick a deal is proposed as long as the night plays chess death will not take him and if the night wins death will let he live no country also has a symbol of death offering reprieved through a contest as with the classic depictions the film's villain Anton Chigurh wears contrasting black attire with a hood is strange haircut and employs the use of a harvester a cattle gun in place of acai sugar is a clinical automaton of destruction he's clean and principled he casually stalks his prey killing anyone else motive him and as with death he operates by the invisible hand of chance call it this is symbolizing the one reprieve he sometimes offers his victims yes you're dead you've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know look I need to know what I stand to win just tend to win everything call it alright hey if they call it he lets them live and if they get it wrong well you know but one thing they cannot do is refuse to play I'm gonna call it the coin don't have no say it's just you I got here the same way that coin did a refusal to play is an instant loss the coin tosses life-and-death stakes coupled with the uncertainty of its outcome are no countries defining metaphor and theme stated no the knight uses reprieved to search for meaning and certainty of he wants to know not just to believe God exists maybe I'll get him he fears the silence of God means God isn't there and his life lived mostly in crusade was therefore meteors like commission hunt opteka stanczyk talk then I'm Keaney likewise uncertainty weighs on the age Sheriff Edie Tom Bell who longs for the promise of an earlier time I was sheriff of this County when I was 25 years old hard to believe my grandfather was a lawman father teeth some of the old-time sheriffs never II more gun you can't help but compare yourself against the old-timers can't help but wonder how they operate at these times the film's opening shots evoke the piece of Eden which it situates in repeated allusions to the classic Hollywood Western early westerns were simple morality tales of white hat versus black hat of Justice versus corruption in the end though the audience just enjoy prevailed but in evoking Hollywood's moral order no country breaks it yes sir I got under control the film presents our modern era has a past future dystopia Belle also embodies this tragic shift his occupation southern accent small-town location goofy deputy and his clear reluctance to use a gun evoke the sheriff from The Andy Griffith Show so I don't carry a gun because I don't want the people of Mayberry to fear a gun I'd rather they would respect me you won't drive out there like an aged Andy Taylor Behl is an exile from the past reluctantly patrolling the ruins of that bygone guarantee and yet he's forced to confront our modern vulnerability and trailing the young and daring Llewellyn Moss from the beginning Moss is the clear hero of the film beginning when he stumbles upon the remains of a Mexican standoff in the $2,000,000 the dead left behind Moss tears to take the money becoming the target of both sides in particular Anton Chigurh time again mah stays one step ahead but when she Gert turns to threaten monstas wife even going to come look for me at all Moss promises a showdown but the showdown never occurs Belle finally catches up to Moss dead the film offers no window to mosses death he dies like everyone else all right significantly Moss doesn't die for any moral failure he's repeatedly depicted as a decent guy I know what bare leads to bells discovery this standoff echoes mosses earlier discovery the similarities between the two unseen standoffs suggest that we like moss our inheritors are forgotten dead and will soon be dead ourselves given life stakes and the uncertainty of the outcome Bell has a clear aversion to risk the primacy now it's hard to even take this measure it's not that I'm afraid of it I always knew you had to be willing to die they didn't do this job but I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand and yet belt does come to a moment of risk when he returns to the scene of the standoff and finds a knob punched out evidence that Shigure has also returned the shadow reflection of sugars head and whole echoes the uncertainty of the coin heads or tails is sugar there or not bell calls it and sugar it turns out isn't there Loretta tells me you're quitting I feel overmatched I always figured when I got older God would sort of come into my life somehow didn't bail in his crisis of faith seeks wisdom from his cousin Ellis who significant lives near a windmill the wind is omnipresent in the film shots of three windmills appear at the beginning and because the film has no music the wind is brought forward as the film's only consistent score it's Alice who provides the winds meaning what you got ain't nothin new Alice reminds Belle of how their own uncle died shot in the back by a band of Indians in 1909 in essence a classic Hollywood Western and yet the uncle's death was an absurd tragedy this is the world as it always been not as we'd like to remember it she buried him the next morning you can't stop what's coming that's vanity would you hold still you hold still like a biblical book of Ecclesiastes no country wrestles with the inevitability of death hell they even shot the dog I mean an animal's diet like in the film which according to the book challenges our confidence that the fate of human souls will be better in the end nothing we do guarantees time and chance happened to us all Shigure himself calls it in the duel disk of the traffic light and finds that uncertainty there applies equally to him dutifully obeying the law possesses no guarantee which led shigar earlier to rhetorically challenged if the rule you followed budget of is of what use was the rule such uncertainty leads bail to similar conclusion in the end he sits at home pondering the emptiness of his dreams had asleep I don't know dreams to both had my father and I'm secure I'm older now and he ever was by 20 years so and since he's the younger man in the dream I knew that he was going on ahead he's fixing to make a fire somewhere out turn on that dark on that cold I knew it whenever I got there he'd be there now woke up its bells conclusion the same as the film's it would seem the film agrees with bells resignation er but this conclusion is missing a major part of the film no country is equally about risk and it's only those who refuse to risk who ensure their end sugars coin toss interestingly has much in common with the wager proposed by the philosopher Blaise Pascal this is the best I can do call it deciding for or against a belief in God is not unlike being forced to bet our lives on the uncertain outcome of coin toss given the inevitability of loss the only reasonable action is to bet on something we could win bail could be right his father may not be waiting heaven may not exist this world may never be put right but given the certainty of death the only sensible option is to risk for the possibility of reward to fight the good fight to call for life and to live with the hope that we have something in store let Damon hunt I can roll them blow depress a rhythm soon stir food for undirected bohemian York York and Tunis block spinner Shrek me dude cool

Channel: Logos Made Flesh

Views: 3,539,027

Rating: 4.8742728 out of 5

Keywords: No Country for Old Men, Death, Personification, Meaning, Symbolism, Risk, Chance, Seventh Seal, Andy Griffith Show, Western, Genre, Classic Hollywood, Coen Brothers, Silence of God, Pascal's wager, Coin toss, film analysis, video essay, meaning, analysis, car crash, final scene, ending, allusions, dead, death, essay, explained, shotgun silencer, opening scene, logos made flesh, interpretation, review, nerdwriter, looper, like stories of old, storytellers, now you see it, just write, screenprisim

Id: xKyp9rGzZ20

Length: 9min 17sec (557 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 23 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/JJGerms]

Fun fact: The Coens made a last minute decision to change the story's setting from 2007 to 1980.

But except for altering the dates and cutting the scene where Llewellyn Moss sings a few bars of "Chocolate Rain" while he hides the money in the air conditioning duct, the rest was shot as is.