Although it puts a crimp in the elegance I aspire to in this post, I have to begin thusly: WARNING—SPOILERS AHEAD.
And welcome, linkers from the official No Country website. Enjoy, and look around—there may be more here you'll like. There's another post going even deeper into the motel scene here.
No Country For Old Men, Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007
I: By way of a preface
Godard: […] Any great modern film which is successful is so because of a misunderstanding. Audiences like Psycho because they think Hitchcock is telling them a story. Vertigo baffles them for the same reason.Cahiers: So freedom has moved from the cinema to the Serie Noire. Do you remember The Glass Key? The end?
Godard: Not very clearly. I’d like to re-read it.
Cahiers: In the end a woman who was hardly featured in the story suddenly recounts a dream.
Godard: The Americans are marvelous like that.
Cahiers: In the dream, there is a glass key. Just that, and the novel is called The Glass Key. And the book ends with this dream. If one did something like that in the cinema, people would say it was a provocation. This sort of reaction is typical of a public which has a cinematographic pseudo-culture but nevertheless indulges in terrorist tactics.
—“Let’s Talk About Pierrot,” an interview with Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinema 171, October 1965, from Godard on Godard, translated and edited by Tom Milne
II: Beyond The Glass Key
At Cannes in May, where I saw Joel and Ethan Coen’s No Country For Old Men for the first time, I called the film’s final scene, which corresponds very closely to the final passage of the Cormac McCarthy novel from which the film was adapted, the “Glass Key ending.” It seemed apt for reasons beyond the fact that both works end with the recounting of a dream. There was also the fact of the Coen Brothers’ sort-of adaptation of the Hammett novel (mashed up with Hammett’s Red Harvest) and the occasions Hammett’s work provided for the Coens to mix pulp with cinematic poetry…to go for effects that reach beyond telling a story, you could say. On a recent episode of Charlie Rose, discussing why they made a movie of McCarthy’s novel (although they spent a long time developing James Dickey’s To the White Sea, and admittedly borrowed liberally from Hammett for Miller's Crossing, No Country is the first official literary adaptation realized by the filmmakers), Joel Coen noted that the book was “pulpier” than anything they’d read by McCarthy before…”and then, it wasn’t.”
Now, Ed Tom Bell is not a character who "hardly features" in the story...but for the most part he operates on the periphery of it. As his opening voiceover tells us, though, he is the filter through which the story is being poured, as it were. The book intersperses Bell’s musings throughout the narrative; here, like Sam Elliott’s Stranger in the Coens’ The Big Lebowski, he just has the first and last words, as it were.
Writing about No Country from Cannes, I called it “at least three-quarters of a masterpiece” and then had this to say about the ending: It turns ruminant, elides what some might consider major high points of the story, and goes for something more deeply elegiac than anything the filmmakers have ever attempted before. I wasn't the only one thrown by this shift…"
Having seen the film a couple more times since, I’m convinced it’s pretty much perfect, and that the film is a fully-realized you-know-what. A friend of mine who’s in the business calls it his “litmus test.” We recently had a conversation wherein he raged about a colleague who said he “could have done without the Barry Corbin scene.” (Barry Corbin plays Ellis, an old character who’s visited by Tommy Lee Jones’ Sheriff Bell late in the film.) “That scene is the whole point of the movie!” my buddy fumed. Indeed; when the wheelchair-bound Ellis tells Bell, “You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity,” well, that’s what McCarthy and the Coens are telling us too, and the book's and the film’s final sentence, “And then I woke up,” is the mordant capper to Ellis’ stern truth.
III: You don’t get it? You got it.
Since the movie’s release, there’s been a good deal of controversy about the picture’s ending—at least two posts (but I'm only gonna link to the one) over at Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere site have occasioned some fierce debate; some commenters are insulted at the presumption that they don’t “get” the ending; they get it fine, they say, it’s just that the ending sucks. The general consensus is that such an ending just doesn’t belong in a thriller. I know, I know, we’re getting close to that word again…”pretentious.”
Well, that’s not where I’m at with the movie or the ending. But looking at the book, and what the Coens did to compress it into filmable form, I’ve realized that I’m not sure that I fully “get” the ending myself, or that I’m completely meant to. There are two very significant things going on in the last quarter of the movie that differ from the book.
The first is the emphasis on the idea of Chigurh as an actual supernatural figure. By the time the killer, so fantastically incarnated by Javier Bardem, strides into the office of Stephen Root—whose character is merely billed as “Man Who Hires Wells”—with that enormous gun at his side, even a filmgoer who’s not one of “The Plausibles” (as Hitchcock derisiviely referred to plot nitpickers) might well ask “How did he get past reception?” But the ugly galvanic action kicks in before the question can finish, and then there’s the exchange with the fellow from Accounting, who finally asks, “Are you going to shoot me?” To which Chigurh replies, “That depends. Do you see me?”
A little later, after the motel massacre, discussing Chigurh with “local law enforcement,” Bell muses, “Sometimes I think he’s just pretty much a ghost.” In the book, Bell summons local law when he thinks he’s got Chigurh locked down at the motel...which he figures by watching the cars in the lot. The film places him in much closer physical proximity to Chigurh, to much more mysterious effect.
Bell goes back to the motel, through the crime-scene tape; he looks at the door and sees the blown-out lock. In a subsequent shot, we see Chigurh himself inside the room; the hole in the door is the only source of light, and Chigurh’s gazing at it, expectantly. We still can’t place him in the room. There’s a close-up of the cylinder where the lock was and we can see Bell’s reflection in it. Then there’s a cut to outside, and Bell unholstering and cocking his gun before he enters the room. This cinematic language does condition us to believe there’s a showdown coming up. But Bell opens the door and…nothing. Blood on the carpet. His own shadow on the wall. The bathroom window locked, from inside. Then this series of shots…
Having checked out the room as thoroughly as he knows how, Bell sits on the bed, exhausted...
...cut to a shot from the other side of the bed, with an illuminated Bell seeing something...
...the AC duct, the screen unattached. We recall the screen Moss removed, so as to store the money-filled satchel in the vent...
...a look of revelation comes on to Bell's face, and his gaze gains concentration...
...there's the removed screen, the screws, the dime that was used to unscrew the screws...
...and then, without even cutting back to Bell's reaction, it all starts to disappear, into a dissolve of a house on a horizon...
...a house Bell is driving to in his pickup. Ellis' house. (Although Ellis's relationship to Bell is not specified in the film, the book notes that Ellis is Bell's uncle. Or, at least, that Bell sees this man as "Uncle" Ellis.)
So, then, Bell's visit with Ellis. Wherein he tries to explain to Ellis why he's quitting, and Ellis offers him words of, well, not-quite consolation. After this, in the Coens' film, comes the scene where Chigurh visits Carla Jean, and has the car accident. And then the finale, with Bell, retired, telling his dreams to Loretta.
The order of the action in the book is different, and creates a different feel. Chigurh’s visit to Carla Jean and his accident happen pretty much directly after the massacre and Chigurh’s escape. Bell continues to pursue the case after hearing of Carla Jean’s death, contacting the FBI in the hope of getting a fingerprint. He questions the kids who witnessed Chigurh’s auto accident. In the book, his retreat from the case, and from being a lawman, is more gradual, and finally leads to this:
He’d felt like this before but not in a long time and when he said that, then he knew what it was. It was defeat. It was being beaten. More bitter to him than death. You need to get over that, he said. Then he started the truck.
And here, then, is the second thing. In the Coens reimagining and restructuring, Bell does not so much accept defeat as admit defeat—sitting there on that bed in the motel room, he abdicates.
He had walked into a motel room where we’ve seen Chigurh standing…only once he goes in, Bell does not see Chigurh, and Chigurh does not reveal himself...and then Bell sits down... and sees the dime...and the screws and then…it’s over for him. He drives to Ellis’ and talks about why he’s finished with it all. In the meantime, Chigurh, ever baleful, still walks—damaged, finally, but functioning.
The last we see of Llewellyn Moss, he’s telling the pretty girl by the pool that he’s “just lookin’ for what’s comin’”; later on Ellis talks about what’s coming being nothing new; and later still we’re left with the fact that the force for good in this story could not face down what’s coming—what could have been a ghost but is in some sense very clearly not. Always coming. “And then I woke up.”
I mean really, what’s not to “get”?
Saying you could have done without Barry Corbin's scene is like saying you could have done without Quint's speech about the Indianapolis in JAWS.
Posted by: Marshall | November 24, 2007 at 09:44 PM
Very nice analysis and appreciation! I completely agree that the Chigurh character has a supernatural quality--he kept reminding me of those baleful Satan figures in Flannery O'Connor stories like "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Call him death--or the embodiment of evil--or, to scrap the theological language, "what's comin'."
It's hard not to compare the Bell character with Margie from "Fargo." The differences are what matter though: as you say, GK, the tone here is elegaic. Bell has been saying all along that "these days" are different and worse than the old days, but it's significant that Ellis tells him that gruesome tale about the man murdered on his front porch, and then says that it happened in 1909. So there are no good old days, and all a Bell character can do is try to endure and, if he's lucky, retire. And maybe find some epiphany in his dreams.
"Fargo" ends--or nearly ends--with Margie's saying to the murderer, "and look--it's a beautiful day." The ending to this new film complicates and deepens that other ending beautifully. Wow--what a spectacularly moving monologue it is!
And then there's the topic of Tommy Lee Jones--first "In the Valley of Elah" and now this one, two brilliant, unforgettable performances in a row. Some critics are saying he's just recycling his characters--but that "character" is put to such good use by the Coens that I'll be happy to see him keep doing it for as long as he wants.
Posted by: Ray | November 25, 2007 at 01:57 AM
Thanks for posting on this subject, Glenn, which I recently wrote about (with less certainty than you) on my blog.
I think the problem with the Chigurh character, which results in the confusion in the motel scene that you described, is that the Coens want to have it both ways. On one hand, he's a supernatural ghost along the lines of Leonard Smalls in Raising Arizona (I know, Leonard got blown up in the end, but nevertheless); on the other hand, he's fallible too. (Missing his shot at the pigeon on the bridge; getting shot by Moss in the street and later tending to his wound; getting hit by the driver near the end.) I don't care one way or another if Chigurh is in that motel right before Bell enters or if he's a figment of Bell's imagination, but I wish the movie were more clear on this point.
Posted by: Craig | November 25, 2007 at 11:48 AM
Nice piece of writing, Glenn. I happen to like my movies cut with a dose of narrative incoherence, of which I think there's a little in NCFOM. Makes it feel like a fever dream. I don't go to the movies looking to "get" anything. I don't "get" most of what goes on in my daily life, nor do I expect to. Inscrutability is the spice of life. People who go to the movies expecting to "get" anything perplex me. Isn't the movie enough? Why do you have to go home with a souvenir, too?
NCFOM reminded me of Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia. Especially the scenes with Stephen Root. I love nameless, faceless quasi-criminal corporate syndicates.
Posted by: Chris Goldstein | November 25, 2007 at 03:13 PM
Nicely done, GK....got me rethinking all over again. I really need to see this film again...and maybe again after that. The reflection of Bell in the blown out keyhole really set me off thinking about the ways in which scenes are repeated between the 3 main characters in the film. The scene where Chigurh is in Moss's trailer drinking milk and staring at his reflection on the TV is repeated by Bell later. The shirt Chigurh buys at the end is reminiscent of Moss buying the jacket on the way to Mexico. There's other "mirroring" going on as well.
I guess I'm saying...I don't know why these things repeat, but there's gotta be a reason, right? RIGHT?!
And, Chris...good call on Alfredo Garcia. Michael Sragow at the Baltimore Sun did a nice (albeit short to the point of pointlessness) piece drawing parallels between "No Country," Norman Mailer and Peckinpah. I actually sensed alot of "The Getaway" in "No Country" as well.
http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-et-peckinpah23nov23,0,2430583.story
I'm just happy such a great movie is out there in the world and making people talk about film again. Plus, I'm nutty about "No Country," Friend-O's
Posted by: don lewis | November 26, 2007 at 01:40 AM
I had originally thought (foolishly, it now appears) that Chigurh had escaped through the air vent. After talking to my wife about it, it seems he wouldn't fit (though he would have fit through the other vent in the film, which is what lead me to that conclusion).
Something that struck me about the scene in question is how the door just stops, as if it gets stuck, against the wall after Bell kicks it open. It doesn't rebound off the wall. I'm almost certainly focusing on something meaningless here, but it looked very odd to me at the time, and now I wonder, if I saw the movie again, if I would notice a) that the shadows in that corner of the room would conceal Chigurh, and b) if there would be room for him to hide behind the door.
I don't know. I just don't know.
Posted by: bill | November 26, 2007 at 08:09 AM
fascinating thoughts on this page - i have a question to add to the mix. does anyone else think it is significant that when chigurh leaves carla jean's house at the end of the film he has left his weapon behind? or did my eyes confuse me?
Posted by: friendo | November 26, 2007 at 12:13 PM
I agree with Don about all of the "mirroring." While watching the film, I also wondered, before learning that Jones' character is named "Ed Tom," why everyone kept referring to him as "Anton." Could the similarity of the two names be a coincidence? The reason that I can't see Chigurth as a supernatural figure is because of his final scenes, when he essentially takes on the role that Moss has played, turning from hunter to hunted, cracked and limping through the streets while "the Mexicans" are probably not too far behind him, looking for their money. Overall, I thought that the first three-quarters of the film was terrific, if a bit generic for a Coen brothers movie. This last fifteen minutes turned it into something radically different--a great look at spiritual exhaustion in the face of death. Why the objections?
Posted by: Joel | November 26, 2007 at 01:15 PM
Fine stuff, Glenn.
When I saw this back in Toronto I thought a. "Well, this ending sure doesn't give me any closure" followed quickly by b. "And that's the point." I think it's the Coens' best since "Fargo" by far.
And another great performance by Jones, too. At first, it seems that Chigurh is just the bug (chigger?) that gets under his skin. But by the end, he's realized that the title is indeed correct -- this is a land he no longer understands or can operate in --and you read every bit of that in his face.
A great film and, with "The Assasination of..." and "There Will Be Blood," one of the year's great Western revivals.
Oh, and on a personal note, btw, liked the beard. Very "In the Name of the Rose."
Posted by: Stephen Whitty | November 26, 2007 at 01:58 PM
Agreed Glenn, great piece of writing. I think it's important that we differentiate the concept of what Chigurh represents metaphorically - he's not a "ghost" in any sense physically, but for me, without question, he is Death. One thing that's absolutely critical is his conversations - specifically with the gas station owner, Woody Harrelson, and finally Carla Jean. This last confrontation is the most critical, as Carla Jean's statement "You don't have to do this" and her refusal to call the coin toss are clearly representative of how Death comes to us - it is uncompromising, usually unbiased and is often decided by pure chance. Death's "damaging" when hit by the car is also clearly meant to parallel the scene with Jones' return to the hotel - he's one person that death didn't claim - but it will.
Easily the best film of the year so far, and the ending is perfect.
However, one thing needs to be agreed upon. I mean no personal offense to anyone who's used it in this thread - but the word "elegiac" has to be retired from the lexicon, like a football player's jersey. It's done, played out and WAY too often used as a crutch. It's over.
Posted by: Mark | November 26, 2007 at 02:55 PM
What about "laconic"?
Posted by: bill | November 26, 2007 at 03:13 PM
Hey, wait a minute. I said "elegiac." Back in May, at Cannes. It came easier, surrounded by all the non-English speakers. But really. Nothing wrong with that word. Unless you're trying to apply it to "Enchanted" or something. "Laconic" is fine, too, provided, as with all other words, it's used appropriately. If you think you're overdoing it, go for "terse." Anyway, we're off topic here.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 26, 2007 at 06:24 PM
sorry to be difficult, but i'm still wondering if - as i recall, though i could be wrong - chigurh leaves his weapon behind when he exits carla jean's house. if someone can confirm this for me (i'm in ireland where the film hasn't been released yet so i can't see it again to check myself) i'd be grateful - i think it has huge significance for interpreting the film. thanks.
Posted by: Gareth | November 26, 2007 at 07:24 PM
I can't say with absolute certainty, but I definitely do not remember him holding his weapon when he checks his boots.
Posted by: bill | November 26, 2007 at 07:25 PM
There's a shot of him leaving the house and checking his boots (for blood). He hasn't got a weapon visibly on him, no. But here's the weird part: during the whole confrontation with Carla Jean, you never see a weapon, period. He doesn't brandish one. There's no gas tank. Nothing. His checking his boots as he leaves indicates that he has, indeed, shot her. But the weapon is never seen.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 26, 2007 at 07:34 PM
Mark-
Chigurh as plain ole "Death" doesn't fly for me. Death doesn't "have" to be a murderer you know. Sometimes people just die without the aid of cattle thingy. There's got to be more than that easy of an answer. Or, maybe not.
The lack of a weapon-specifically the cattle thing-during the Carla Jean scene is pretty significant I think. Man, I'm actually going to have to pay to see this thing again, aren't I? Film Threat only gets shitty homemade DVD's from studios....hardly ever anything good.
And...
If we're cattle thingying "elegiac" can I throw "due diligence" on the pyre? I freeking hate that term.
Posted by: don lewis | November 26, 2007 at 09:34 PM
I will see the movie again soon, but after thinking about it for a few days, I think Anton's character symbolizes death (He really doesn't exist as a human)and The coin toss illustrates the percarious nature of existence. If the Anton character is veiwed through this prism, then many things in the movie fall into place and take on an entirely different appearance. Carla Jeans refusal to call the coin toss could mean that she has decided to take her own life, in essence refusing to let her own death be random chance. The death of Woody Harrelson's character could have possibly been at the hands of Lewelyn Moss. And why did Lewelyn Moss really return to to the desert massacre scene? Was it to save the man or make sure he was dead?
If Anton indeed isn't real and just symbolizes death, then every murder he committed in the movie can be reevaluated with different and interesting insights into the movies meaning.
Posted by: Joe | November 26, 2007 at 10:07 PM
Joel, McCarthy is definitely doing something with names in the book -- Anton vs. Ed Tom and the trio of other male leads, Moss, Bell and Wells, all one-syllable, double-letter names, again contrasted against the unpronounceable Chigurh.
Posted by: Sean | November 26, 2007 at 11:09 PM
Couldn't the fact that you don't see Chigurh carrying a weapon at any point during that scene just be a mistake? I'm a huge fan of the Coens, and I know there is much that is intentionally mysterious about "No Country for Old Men", but I've caught pretty glaring continuity errors in their films before.
Posted by: bill | November 27, 2007 at 08:49 AM
I dunno, Bill. A continuity error—maybe—would be showing a gun in the confrontation scene and him leaving without it. For it not to be shown at all is something wholly other.
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 27, 2007 at 09:33 AM
I suppose. But if you're right, what are they getting at, for God's sake!?
Also, it's been a couple of years since I read the book. Does anybody remember if McCarthy makes any special mention of a weapon in that scene? Carla Jean's death happens "off-stage" in the book as well, but apart from that I can't remember how the scene specifically plays out.
Posted by: bill | November 27, 2007 at 09:54 AM
Bill, I happen to have the book right in front of me (I'm rehearsing for a TV pilot entitled "Breakfast With Cormac McCarthy"), and it's pretty specific on the point. Here's the whole paragraph, sans-quotation-marks dialogue and all:
"Good, he said. That's good. Then he shot her."
Curioser and curiouser...
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 27, 2007 at 10:05 AM
What the!? I thought her death was referred to after the fact. Boy, my memory is lousy.
Anyway, yeah...strange. Good luck with the pilot, by the way. I'm assuming it will be remeniscent of Rupert Pupkin's talk show, with a life-sized cardboard cut-out of McCarthy occupying the guest chair. Hell, I'd watch it.
Posted by: bill | November 27, 2007 at 10:16 AM
Well, of course, Chigurh doesn't always kill with the cattle thing--he garrotes the deputy in the beginning; on the other hand, that was by necessity & he's clearly coming to Carla Jean's with a purpose. Maybe he killed her through some other means equally likely to leave a mess on his shoes?
Posted by: Claire K. | November 27, 2007 at 04:47 PM
That's the thing - if it was a mistake (and I guess it probably wasn't), it can be easily made logical with Claire's (Mrs. Kenny's?) explanation. If it was on purpose, then there's something else going on -- because why not at least indicate the different weapon if that's all they had in mind? -- and I can't for the life of me guess what it is.
Posted by: bill | November 27, 2007 at 05:03 PM