Bell states that he thought “god would come to him” later in life (but that apparently god never did).
However, previously when Bell re-entered the crime scene just after Chigurh: not getting blown away was god’s intervention, unknown to Bell.
And Bell’s dream of going to meet his father waiting with a warm fire offers Bell the belief that god too waits for him after life.. Even though he lost the fathers money.

The money his father gave to him that he lost in his dream parallels the power god gave him as sheriff, which he too lost by failing to bring in Chigurh. And just as his father waits for him even having lost the money, so too god waits for him.

Guys I’m not a very religious man but that’s what I thought the closing scene depicted.

Anyway my head hurts having read all your comments; you obviously know your stuff!!

Of course, this is my not so humble opinion.

That is why 9/11 looms so large in my imagination still. For 24 hours in the US all ads stopped, the country’s endless parade of news, consumerism, and mindless bullshit was frozen in its place. What became apparent immediately was that without these things the darker realities of our imperialistic policies abroad and at home became more apparent. A break in the endless broadcasting of our mediated lives in the moments immediately after this international tragedy was captured beautifully by Spike Lee in The 25th Hour, which for me makes a film like NOCFM neither shocking nor terribly necessary. And its grandiose push for the end of the world seems almost trite, not unlike I am Legend, which has the benefit of always being a hollywood blockbuster that won’t pretend to move outside of the predominant logic, something NCFOM promises but fails to deliver on.

@James,

I think you have some pretty solid points in your reading, but I agree with Scott’s suggestions that many of the moments and lines you choose might just as well be interpreted as a moment where the Coen Brothers nihilism manifests itself. Particularly the scene when the sheriff meets up with his wheelchair bound uncle, like Scott, Ica’t help but read “You can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity” as a moment of nihilism that in many ways allows the sheriff to opt out of the hunt for Anton all together. If he can’t stop it, why on earth would he pursue Anton and risk his life? It would be a meaningless end, much like Carla Jean’s. Should she take pride in the fact that she refused Anton;s paying God? Would it really have worked out differently either way? Probably not.

I don’t usually go into movies looking for hope, inspiration, or some kind of moral coda, and that is why NCFOM hit me so hard, it was far more sinister in its moral than I would have expected. And while the film did have an impression on me, it seems to have been a problematic one at best. And I won’t suggest it as a bad film, for I think there is a lot behind your sense of its beauty and power. I just can’t reading its ultimate movement towards total annihilation and desperation as the more general state of cinema. This moves towards self-cannibalization for effect and violent intrigue, yet the violence and intrigue are all but empty and pointless. But I don’t know, I feel like I am preachy about this film in a strange way that I’m usually not about others. So I have to contnue to think about my very strong reaction to it.

@Scott,

What a spot on response. You’re a madman; I love you more and more everyday

Did we watch the same film? The gas station attendant is begging, even before the coin toss, for Anton to go away. He looks up from the counter and sees nothing but trouble. What is so disturbing about that scene is how relentless Churgin is in forcing him to make a choice that is not a choice.

And it’s not nihilistic that the only character, Carla Jean, who, in your reading, makes the “right” choice gets (we presume, I think the fact that we don’t see it is intentional) summarily executed?

The kids? They offer him the shirt, for free. For Anton, they *must* accept the money. It’s not their choice but his imposition of his will even in the face of charity.

“You can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” That is a clarion call against nihilism how exactly? I’m all for undercutting the certainty of ego and choice, that’s the playground I was at first arguing the Coen’s inhabit in all their films, but the openings here do not feel very big, if they exist at all.

There are definitely people who make choices in this film. But it is precisely the choices that are not choices (and morever, comparing this to other Coen films which I began to see also toyed with the character’s agency in favour of authorial/narrative majesty or simply fate and chance trumping all) that turned me around to the idea that this was far more nihilistic than I first read it as.

I think you’re mis-interpreting the film. I think that it is far from being nihilistic. Anton seems to be the only nihilistic force in the film and he is most definitely not an admirable character. The way I interpreted it was something about how people react in the face of such evil and terror that Anton represents, as well as the things like the drug deal battle in the beginning. Llewelen chose to become a part of the evil by taking the money, as did the gas station attendant when he decided to call the coin toss, and Carson when he decided to hunt Anton. Even the boys at the end made this decision, when they took the money in exchange for no telling the ambulance or police about Anton. The only character who for sure made the right choice that we see in the movie is Carla Jean. She was the only one who refused to humor Anton, refused to play his game and become a part of theevil. Yes, she did die for her action, but her action was still a beautiful one. She knew what would happen if she refused to play Anton’s game, and refused anyway.
The final scene seems to me to be the climax of the film. Will Ed Tom decide to go after Anton, to finish waht he satrted and do what he needs to do as a force of justice? or will become complacent and ignores what he knows is right? the scene when he meets with the old man in the wheelchair shows him what the right choice is. “You can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.” He sems, at least to me, to be a symbol of consciousness, and how we know what we should do in the face of such evil. Ed Tom’s dream is foreshadowing of what he now must do. Has to follow his father into the nothingness, the blackness, following his father’s light. Ed tom becomes here a symbol of justice, but as we all know people do not always do what they should in situations where we are faced with such horrific evil and nihilism as Anton represents, and become complacent, retiring from life like Ed Tom retired from his post as sheriff. Ed Tom wakes up as soon as his dream ends, as if the dream itself is leaving him the choice. The film cannot answer the question of what Ed Tom will do, because although he knows what he should do, if we take him as a larger symbol of justice it is impossible to call his action because it can go both ways.
This is not a nihilistic film, in fact if you ask me it is flying in the face of the nihilism that permeates so many other movies. it is, however, a realistic film, which is why it cannot answer the question of whether or not Anton’s evil and nihilism will be stopped. I could see how you might see it as nihilistic, but I think that you have misinterpreted the film. I personally find it to be one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen, perhaps because of the way that I interpreted it. Maybe I can win you over? =)

The more I think about the Coen Brothers films, the more I am willing to write them off entirely, as opposed to filmmakers like Tarantino. Reason being is that their style lacks anything resembling a soul. I think it is telling that Miller's Crossing got left out because as much as it is near perfect, great cinema, etc., it doesn’t have a soul –like much of the Coen Brothers “oeuvre.” And unlike what it seems I am arguing for at times in this post, I am not so concerned with a moral order or filmmaking being somehow socially responsible, I think that is beside the point and is often only accomplished as an unintentional historical side effect. Miller’s Crossing isn’t the beautifully textured world of Coppola’s The Godfather, nor is it tantamount to just about any of the Noir greats, I’m thinking Billy Wilder, Richard Siodmak, Robert Wise, etc. Miller’s Crossing is kind of a cross between the gangster film and the Noir, and it seldom lives up to the power of the best of either of these genres, no less both. As a gangster film, it is the meta-gangster film. The film about film that explores the tropes and executes all the beauty of what makes a great scene flawlessly –I’m thinking about Albert Finney’s operatic machine gunning specifically here) but in the end it was all about symbols and hats and heads and the like.

As a Noir (and I’m not sure it’s much of a Noir at all despite it being loosely based on The Glass Key and Red Harvest (both far superior narratives, btw)), it never really frames a compelling space to become engaged in the questions of fate, happenstance, and the absence of will –all of which are key to the darkness of that genre in my opinion. Gabriel Byrne is the “Smart Guy,” and he’s in many regards the antithesis to the Noir character, he controls the action rather than being controlled by it, and in the end it leaves me pretty much unsympathetic with him, Albert Finney’s character, and the rest of the film’s players. The film is about caricatures of these two great genres, but none of them ever become anything more than that –resulting in it being a truly flat masterpiece (like much of the Coen Brothers work now that I think about it). A dead fish that signifies far better than it swims.

It is bizarre, but this thread has made me think harder and harder about the space I have heretofore given the Coen Brothers on my movie shelf, and I find it is shrinking evermore these days (only the The Big Lebowski and Barton Fink are left and I am now afraid to re-watch them).

As for comparing Nabakov’s irony with the Coen Brothers, I’m not so sure they’re even in the same ballpark, so very few film writers are. I think the only consistently great writer for film who I would dare to compare the power of irony and great dialog with the likes of Nabokov would be the equally great Billy Wilder. The Coen Brothers are too good, their lines are too crisp, and they’re derivative of all that came before them in the worst, rather than the best way.

Man, why have I turned so hard on the Coen Brothers so quickly? Well, I really believe No Country for Old Men was the moment for me when I realized the emperor has no clothes on. It was without question a cumulative failure for me

I definitely didn’t hate this film, and hopefully it is obvious that over the years I’ve loved watching Coen brothers’ films. But this discussion definitely got my radar up for their next film – I am not unsympathetic to the idea that style is important, and that “ironic style” can counter-balance or undercut more overt messages. And the Coens are without a doubt masterful stylists. But this can also be too glib by half, indeed this gets for me to the heart of so many major cultural clashes and disconnects I feel surrounded by right now.

Perhaps, though, this is what in the end rates this as a piece of art, that it inspires this dialogue and is not easily dismissed as either ‘just style’ or else moralistic pedantry (unlike say, to be contentious, Tarantino’s films, which I’m increasingly willing to write off as ‘just style’ or style that does not end up as effect counterpoint to the overwhelming violence and degredation in his films.)