No Blogosphere For Old Men

No Country For Old Men is one of my favorite movies, and I thought I'd elaborate on some possible deeper implications of the film's incredible writing, directing, and cinematography.

            In my opinion, the message of No Country for Old Men is primarily concerned with showing how a slew of modern individuals deal with the absurdity of existence. The absurdity is presented in the form of an anomaly: a sock clad silenced shotgun toting stranger who’s taken a liking to ripping through locals frontal lobes with an air pressurized captive bolt pistol; a brutal tool used for slaughtering cattle. An absurd condition if there ever was one, especially in the open terrain of west Texas.

            Dealing with the absurdity of life is the locus of direction for the film; as the crime thriller is presented through the first person, perspective-bound lens, the audience is introduced to the story as it unfolds; in the midst of the action. Hurled violently into the absurdity. Characters die meaninglessly, brutally, and tragically without a sympathetic inch sacrificed from the ruthlessly tense and continuous action.

In the midst of all this madness, every character adopts an angle, a strategy, a plan of attack. The younger sheriff, Carson Wells, tries to work with the absurdity and profit from it, the main character, Llewelyn Moss,  refuses to get attached to anything, remains nihilistic and is thus indecisive, his wife, Carla Jean, decides to appeal to Anton Chigurh’s better human nature. All resist the absurd tide, or try to manipulate it or control it in some way. All die.

The only character who survives is the old sheriff, Bell, who has learned to set no expecations, hold no standards, and roll with the horrifying absurdity of life. The only way he reaches his salvation is, sadly, by waking up from his dream. His waking represents death of all the nice convenient little fantasies of control that killed the other characters. The only way to survive the absurdity is to stop searching for order, cease resisting it, desist denying it, wake up, realize it’s at your doorstep, and look upon it with a cool unfettered gaze. 

 Some cool smooth blue moon image harnessing