No Country for Old Men: Meaninglessness and the Reality of Self-Mythology

by Christopher Barr

“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 willin’ to die to even do this job.  But, I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet somethin’ 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.’ "

 - Sheriff Ed Tom Bell

“Once you quit hearing ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’, the rest is soon to follow.”

No Country for Old Men was about a man that got his hands on two million dollars of drug money from a cartel deal, in rural West Texas, gone wrong.  Instead of reporting the money or the site that he discovered where several men have been shot and killed, Llewelyn Moss decides to keep the money for himself.  As a result he ends up getting a psychopathic killer named Anton Chigurh on his trail, a man that is an evil force of nature that will stop at nothing to retrieve the money and kill Llewelyn.  As Chigurh closes in on Llewelyn the blood trail they leave behind begins to flow like a river.  While the pursuit unfolds, a laconic sheriff, Ed Tom Bell blithely investigates the carnage path left behind as he struggles with the enormity of the crimes themselves and their seemingly meaningless nature.

The film was beautifully shot by the always clever masterminds that are the Cohen Brothers.  The story was based on a Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name.  The story at its core is about right and wrong, good versus evil, man versus himself and each other.  It’s a reflection of the direction civilization is heading if we are to remain on our current path of progress, a path where greed and power outweigh the health and safety of the less fortunate and worse, the future of the next generation.

No Country for Old Men is best when it is understood as an allegory.  Not quite to the level of the Cohen Brothers’ Homeric comedy O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000)  but certainly echoing Dante’s Divine Comedy with a specific focus on the first of three parts of the epic poem, The Inferno.  I would argue that the film’s characters rather than its mixed structure are Shakespearian in nature.  Unlike Dante’s realized characters of his comedy, Shakespeare’s are all tragic in such a way, as they are usually the reason for their own fall but are oblivious to that fact.  Sometimes, even when it’s too late they can’t see it or certainly don’t want to see it, like in the case of Richard III.

This tragedy is most noticeable though in Hamlet as oppose to the more obvious downfall of Macbeth.  Hamlet represents the death of the fantasy; we ruin our own lives, not the drama that surrounds it.  We do this by the choices we make and by the action we take.  Shakespeare’s psychological message here and most paradoxically is; we ruin our lives but it was going to happen anyway.  One is left with feeling somewhat responsible for their overwhelmingly lack of free will.  Shakespeare’s characters set their own stage and travelled down a path that they couldn’t see their uncontrolled desire for unattainable freedom.

If in Dante’s Comedy the angelic figure of Beatrice is to be taken symbolically and not literally, as she should be, then we are left with the conclusion that Beatrice is who Dante wants us to be.  He sees the secular Vigil as a man that understands the path of real men in our real world but Beatrice is the beacon of light that hangs miles ahead of us.  Therein lies Dante’s conflict within his poem because, unlike Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Dante witnesses a form of infinite horror.  Had Hamlet come before Dante, which is oddly like saying had you come before your father, he would have had a place in Dante’s Inferno.  He almost would have made it into the less treacherous Purgatory but Hamlet’s psychological motives did finally become realized in his actions, even if it took him most of the play to get there.  

No Country for Old Men approaches the Divine Comedy from a more tragic trajectory - backwards.  Tommy Lee Jones’s character Ed Tom, is the beacon of hope here where the Josh Brolin’s character Llewelyn is in purgatory and Javier Bardem’s character Chigurh is the manifestation of the inferno.  These main characters have their various interactions, some more bloody than others, but in the end they don’t knock each other off their respective paths.  Ed Tom doesn’t catch up to Llewelyn and help him off his downward spiral.  Chigurh doesn’t catch and kill Llewelyn and Ed Tom never faces off against Chigurh.  These characters’ paths were already made by them, this can easily be seen as them slipping into a form of preordained fate - but it isn’t that at all.  They as characters made their choices much in the same way as Hamlet did but as symbols, Ed Tom retired the old ways of ‘yes sir’ ‘yes ma’am’ politeness, Llewelyn died as a result of ego and greed and Chigurh, whose the personification of the unruly, unforgiving world and thus can’t die.

I think Llewelyn had to die, symbolically, so we are able to see that there is no future for mankind, if we try to get ahead on our own and not as a unified species.  Like Hamlet, Llewelyn tried to make his quest a solitary one, this is fine when one is seeking enlightenment but when one seeks prosperity to its own selfish end, one must realize that the future of mankind depends on all hands on deck, not by one’s hands in the treasure chest and damn everyone else.  

As Nietzsche pointed out, it’s not human suffering that bothers people, its pointless suffering.  This is where the film explores its nihilistic angle, if people don’t believe there is any point to their death, if they see meaninglessness and irrationality at work, then what is the point to life?  I think that’s why Llewelyn dies in an anti-climatic way, the chaos and ruthlessness that fuels the man chasing him, stripped Llewelyn of what little meaning he had in his life.  This was also the point where the insignificant plot about money and drug cartels disappears and the focus is put on the actual protagonist of the film, Ed Tom and his quest for meaning in a meaningless universe.

This nihilism is further explored in Chigurh’s coin flip.  The gas attendant was not killed by Chigurh at the beginning of the film because he guessed ‘correctly’, while toward the end of the film, Llewelyn’s wife, Carla Jean died because she didn’t.  Ed Tom didn’t confront Chigurh in the motel room after Llewelyn’s death, even though he seen his reflection in the door tube where Chigurh had blown the lock through, and Chigurh at the end getting into a car accident, all represented chance.  Not only do we live under the illusion of free will but we also live under the whims of chance in the universe.  Although Chigurh has remnants of a Greek god of chaos, an avatar of death, he uses ‘sir’ and ‘ma’am’ and follows many of the rules invented by men, but adds to the undefinable chaos that he unleashes on his unsuspecting victims, while attempting to psychologically disarm them to free up his own sick need to kill.  Like the Joker in The Dark Knight, Chigurh’s madness is unquantifiable by psychological standards; they are both ‘agents of chaos’ that only wish to ‘watch the world burn’.

“Momma, take this badge offa me, …I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.” 

– Bob Dylan

Good versus evil becomes no longer significant is this chaotic world which leaves our values in many ways, not applicable.  Good in this form of chaos cannot triumph in the ways we would like it to, like in the case of Llewelyn dying or in the case of Ed Tom retiring.  Chaos on the other hand can be shot and survive a serious car crash, only to walk down the street and into the future. 

The interesting thing about the car accident is the car that smashed into Chigurh’s failed to stop at the red light, failed to halt according to the rules of the road.  Chigurh was following the rules of the road and proceeded as one would through the green light.  One must then reflect on an earlier line of dialogue by Chigurh; “If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”  This is likely a question about the ever expanding universe itself versus the security we all think we have built for ourselves.

This film seeks some comfort in Ed Tom’s telling of his dream in its last minutes, where his father makes a fire for him up ahead, as he travels on horseback in the mountains through the dark stormy bleak night.  This is where the film doesn’t let its audience off the hook and likely is why so many have disliked the ending.  Ed Tom was the shinning knight on horseback to save the day but he didn’t.  He quit and left the crazy world behind him.  He gave up because he finally realized that he can’t “stop what is coming”.

During a coffee break at a relative’s place at the end of the film, Ed Tom speaks to an old feller in a wheelchair about the chaos of the world and the absurdity of what he is chasing, stating; “I don’t know.  I feel overmatched.  …I always thought when I got older God would sort of come into my life in some way.  He didn’t.  I don’t blame him.  If I was him I’d have the same opinion about me that he does.”  Life didn’t turn out the way he thought it would and Ed Tom is angry about that fact.  He’s angry that his father wouldn’t like the man that he’s become, a man in retreat.  Like in his above quote relating to God, Ed Tom has the same opinion about himself as he thinks his father would.

The great irony of No Country for Old Men, relating to Macbeth is; it is a tale told by idiots.  Its characters and narrative is a chaotic mess, with no order or structure in its message, this is demonstrated when the capricious Chigurh at the end, confronts Carla Jean, after her mother’s funeral no less, and gets her to choose a side of his coin flip.  Chigurh is attempting to push his chaos theory on everything but Carla Jean refuses and thus proves to be freer then he is.   We must go back to philosophy and apply reason and meaning to this whirlwind of chaos.  We need to structure our thoughts and organize our lives; we must never retreat to save ourselves because we think we are special and are worth saving above all others, while we face the evil in the world.  ........That would be vanity.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra:

It is time for man to fix his goal.  It is time for man to plant the seed of his highest hope.  

His soil is still rich enough for it.  But that soil will one day be poor and exhausted, and no lofty tree will any longer be able to grow there.  

Alas!  There comes the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man - and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whiz!  

I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself, to give birth to a dancing star.  I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves.

Alas!  There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star.  Alas!  There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself.

Lo!  I show you the Last Man.

"What is love?  What is creation?  What is longing?  What is a star?" - so asks the Last Man, and blinks.  - Friedrich Nietzsche

......And then I woke up.