NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN

The vast and xuất hiện space of a hot desert drives the moral & ethical emotions of the men who inhabit these spaces.

no-country-for-old-men-ending
The vast and mở cửa space of a hot desert drives the moral and ethical emotions of the men who inhabit these spaces. Ethan and Joel Coen’s No Country for Old Men is about the perils of a lawless land, where violence và dread rule all. It is also about the passing of time, & the men left behind in the wake of all its violent changes, lượt thích Tommy Lee Jones’s Sheriff Ed Tom Bell. Bell comes from a long line of law enforcement officers in his family. The events that transpire throughout the film trigger Bell lớn question his place in this new world. A world that yields morally dubious characters like hitman Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem. Men lượt thích Chigurh have moral codes that extend farther than that of a Mexican drug cartel và Sheriff Bell.

At the over of the film, Bell is a retired sheriff who speculates about the future of law enforcement & the world in general. After spending the better part of the film chasing after Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss and Chigurh in the wake of their violent cat & mouse game, Bell is always just one step too far from ever catching up khổng lồ them. After stumbling on a Mexican drug cartel giảm giá khuyến mãi gone wrong, Moss comes across a large sum of money. Instead of going to the authorities, Moss listens khổng lồ his greed và takes it. Chigurh goes after Moss to retrieve the money, and so begins the chase. Bell, always arriving too late, ends up becoming what he most feared: dispensable. Chigurh escapes, Moss dies, & the fate of Moss’s wife is left ambiguous.

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This becomes the motif of Bell’s final monologue of the film, where age & the world’s ever-changing circumstances catch up to lớn him. It’s a recall of his first few lines, where Bell mentions lớn his young deputy that they wouldn’t even need to lớn carry guns when his father was a sheriff. That’s no longer the case. Sitting in his home, Bell recounts two of his dreams from last night khổng lồ his wife. Having retired already, Bell contemplates these fears of the future through these two dreams. In one vision, he remembers losing money his father had given him. In the other, he and his father were riding through a snowy mountain path. His father had gone ahead lớn make a fire in the darkness & wait for Bell.

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Image via Miramax
Why end the film with dreams? Because dreams are often memories wrapped in metaphors and feelings. Losing the money his father gave him only reinforced the idea that Bell feels at a loss. He feels lượt thích he didn’t live up to his father’s expectations of him, or that he didn’t live up to the family legacy in law enforcement. Bell decided to shoulder the brunt of the precarious and violent world around him because he felt he could’ve done more. An entire legacy behind him, & he feels like it died right then & there with him. The second dream is more of absolution for him. A moment of reconciliation between him, his father, and the end of this legacy he values. Waiting for him in the darkness but keeping that one light on symbolizes Bell’s return home. The return of the prodigal son who’s spent years working lớn leave the world in a better place than he found it.

Amid its ambiguity, the ending of No Country for Old Men is the one part that remains as clear as its title. It’s about the passing of time and generational change. It’s about the growing nature of violence within the men who claim these spaces. It’s no coincidence that these three men were the central focus of the film’s narrative, where each of them represented the past, present, & future of these lands. These lands are overcome by their masculinity & need to uphold their own destructive và self-serving nature. Whether it’s Moss willing khổng lồ risk the life of his wife for money or Chigurh’s cold & callous nature, No Country for Old Men is an escalation of men’s inherent propensity for self-gratification và selfish violence.

In its final shots, Jones’s Sheriff Bell becomes the voice of generations past. As the camera pans ever so slowly into a close shot of his face, his facial expression begins lớn fall và falter. Almost lớn the point of tears, Bell becomes a point of revelation for the audience. This is the reality that awaits the future of men in No Country for Old Men. Men lượt thích Chigurh. That carries some distorted sense of moral code that masks the sadistic nature of humanity. Of the need to lớn kill or be killed. Or of Moss. The prospect of money and fortune so easily sways men like Moss they’re willing to thua trận life và limb for it. Then, there are men lượt thích Bell. Men who thought they’d done everything right their entire life only to find out things have only gotten worse.

That is the true meaning behind No Country for Old Men’s final scene. The moment of cold water hitting someone’s toàn thân in the middle of winter. Where the chill stings so bad, it leaves anyone suspended in time. That’s what that monologue does. It stops its audience in sheer disbelief that this is how it ends. It makes that final cut all the more jarring. There is no resolution. There is no comfort in what’s transpired over the past two hours. There is no promise of the sun rising once again. It’s just the words of a broken man who’s bared witness lớn so much violence in a couple of days before his retirement that even he can’t offer any solace. What else is there left to lớn say but that of the dreams of a broken man? In following these characters, it’s like ending up back in square one, only with the realization that things aren’t going lớn get better. That things seem only lớn get worse.