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”?
well, if i can be granted the mercy of a hearing, here's what i think, now that it's been confirmed that chigurh doesn't have the weapon with him when he leaves carla jean's house.
i think that carla jean is the only person in the film who truly resists chigurh's understanding of himself, by refusing to accept his 'coin logic', and forcing him to CHOOSE to accept the moral consequences of his actions rather than the absurdist transference of his own responsibility onto the toss of a coin.
he leaves her dead, but he can't pretend to himself that it was anything less than his fault, and he also leaves his weapon behind. we next see him driving, but for the first time in the film he notices something that isn't to do with his quarry or part of the purpose of killing - the two boys on the bikes, reflected in his rear view mirror. is it possible that carla jean has interfered with his sense of self by refusing to accept his version of reality? that he has just decided to stop killing? to notice the world?
the fact that the boys refuse to accept money for helping him appears to me to be evidence against the idea that 'no country for old men' is a pessimistic film. on the contrary, my reading, which i freely acknowledge could be way off the mark, is that the murderous spirit of chigurh is no match for the love and respect that all of us yearn for, can muster, and which is represented by ed tom's dream, recounted as the last seconds of this film: a dream about searching for a warm fire with his father, finding it, and waking up.
now, granted, i live and work in northern ireland, and have been involved in peace-building for 15 years, working amidst people who really have killed other human beings, some in even more horrific ways than chigurh's weapon of choice. so i may be prejudiced by my desire to see stories on screen that challenge the myth that violence against others can be redemptive; by the same token, i saw something in 'no country for old men' that suggests not - as some critics have suggested - that there is nothing we can do about evil, but that we live in a time where we need to find new ways to be human, to rebuild community, and to stop killing each other. wooly liberal nonsense, perhaps; or maybe the most honest portrayal of what ails us i've seen in a cinema for a very long time.
at any rate, thanks for bearing with me. i'm enjoying the conversation on glenn's blog.
Posted by: Gareth | November 27, 2007 at 07:21 PM
Thank YOU, Gareth. Those are fascinating and moving observations.
And yes, Bill...Claire K. is the fabulous and gorgeous Mrs.(aka My Lovely Wife).
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | November 27, 2007 at 11:54 PM
I am surprised nobody else has thought about the suicide angle concerning Carla Jean. I was watching some individual scenes from the movie today, and during the first coin toss scene, the old man says "I didn't put nothing up" to which Anton replies, "yes you did, you been putting it up your whole life, you just didn't know it"
This convinces me even more, that the coin toss symbolizes the precarious nature of existence, and as long as you are living you are "puting your life up" as a wager in the coin toss known as life or death. The only way to escape this wager/coin toss known as existence, would be to kill yourself. I think this is what the final Carla Jean scene is about.
I think she committed suicide because she couldn't handle the death of Lewelyn. This is why Anton/death tells Carla Jean that Lewelyn is resposible for him being there.
maybe I am way off base, but this is what i see.
Can't wait to see it again in its entirety. Great movie and great discussion.
Posted by: Joe | November 28, 2007 at 01:44 AM
Gareth-
Great insight, but the kids take the money...in fact, the one who didn't get any of it says that the one who did "owes" him money. It's sadly, very pessimistic. Well, not sadly...just sadly that the kids couldn't, you know, be more concerned for the guy with "that fucking bone" sticking out of his arm. And sadly that it dings your theory that was very sweet.
And again, Chigurh as death? C'mon you guys....that's way too easy. If he's "death" then who smashes their car into him....God? Death Sr.? And again, why does Death have to take the form of a murderer? Are you saying Chigurh gunned down the whole posse of Mexicans in the drug deal? Then came back?
Too easy. C-....try harder.
Posted by: don lewis | November 28, 2007 at 01:54 AM
Don, Chigurh is present at all of the on screen deaths in the movie. I see the final car crash as just another death (Assuming the other driver died) that Anton was present at.
Chigurh as an allegory for death could also explain the scene where Bell returns to the motel and seems to fear what is on the other side of the door (Death/Chigurh?) yet when he enters, Chigurh/death is not there. It just wasn't Ed Tom Bells time to go.
If Chigurh as a death allegory is correct, then each death takes on a completely different dimension.
I think Chigurh as death, actually adds complexity to the movie. But the the key is not making it too obvious. The Coens even discussed in an interview how they tried to make Chigurh seem more real and human than he appears in the book. Making him seem human, is the key.
Posted by: Joe | November 28, 2007 at 02:25 AM
I would go with the theory of diminishing violence throughout as a cinematic technique, than any sort of plot hole. We've seen people garroted and shot in the head, in the beginning but as the film moves along it moves away from the graphio. We know Anton is a killer. We need only see him appear at someone's house to know the person he's talking to will probably die, and he doesn't have to do anything but check his feet to show that he was successful. This reduction of action is - dare I say - near-Melvillian. What the Coens do is speed up their shorthand, trust the audience not to have to see it, because they already have. Because the act of violence is not the point.
Posted by: Damon H. | November 28, 2007 at 02:46 AM
thanks don - of course you're right, i had forgotten that they do take the money, but not because they want to. as i recall it - the kid who gives his shirt initially says something like 'you don't need to pay me to help you'; chigurh can't deal with this - so he gives them the money anyway. i think the fact that they initially don't want to take the money goes at least some way toward challenging the suggestion that this is a downbeat ending. but then again, damon h's point about diminishing portrayals of violence is an intriguing one...hey, if anyone sees cormac mccarthy ask him what he meant, will ya?
Posted by: Gareth | November 28, 2007 at 03:51 AM
Gareth, yes, they refuse the money at first, which bolsters your argument. But once they take it, they both begin to fight over it. Initially, for me, that scene played as an example of normal kid behavior, but thinking about it later, and contrasting it with the scene of frat guys haggling with the badly injured Moss, made me see it as far more pessimistic.
However, you say that the movie points out that "we live in a time where we need to find new ways to be human". I don't think you're wrong about that.
Posted by: bill | November 28, 2007 at 08:17 AM
The whole movie hinges on ideas about money's corrupting influence on people - not necessarily their character, but certainly their judgment (Moss).
Adding a scene like the one with the kids, the inculcation of that greed, loss of innocence yadda yadda (it's all in there!) couldn't just be some convenient Syd Field coincidence.
Posted by: Steve | November 28, 2007 at 04:09 PM
I don't think Chigurh is a death figure, but represents the enigma of evil to the average person. We know little about him, where he comes from, how he learned to do what he does.
He's emblematic of that mystery, yet at the same time is just human; still the others try to find way to de-humanize him and his actions. I don't know where I'm going with this. I think I need to re-read the book.
Posted by: Bachalon | November 29, 2007 at 12:07 AM
I understand that the Coen's made a change to McCarthy's ending that he rejected. In their version, there's a big fight with Lewellen brandishing a chainsaw against Chiguhr's boltgun. Just as Lewellen is about to cut of Chiguihr's head, he runs out of gas and Chiguhr regains the momentum. And when he is about to blast him with the boltgun, the Sheriff comes bursting through the door with both guns blazing. To prepare himself for the combat with Chiguhr, he has adopted a mohawk hairdo just like the one that DeNiro wore in "Taxi Driver". It's good that McCarthy put the kibosh on this revision since we would have been robbed of the pleasure to listening to the Sheriff's crackerbarrel redneck philosophizing about how everything started to go wrong when youngsters dyed their hair green, etc. If I had missed out on that, I would have demanded my money back.
Posted by: Louis Proyect | November 29, 2007 at 02:39 PM
Some very interesting comments from everyone. It's great to have a movie like this that causes such fascinating discussion. But in the end I don't think I can go along with the idea that Chigurh is a ghost or death.
I think Chigurh is very real and I have a completely different take on what happened in the motel room when Bell goes in.
I believe that Chigurh is still someone in the room and that Bell has missed him somehow (for example, I don't think he ever looked under the beds). I found Bell's search to be very half-hearted like he wasn't looking forward to finding anything. Then when he sees the removed screen from the AC duct, he realizes that Chigurh is still in the room.
The movie cuts directly away to Bell in the truck but I believe if the rest of the scene had been filmed it would have shown Bell leaving the motel room as quickly as he can.
Chigurh undoubtedly personifies pure evil. And the coin tossing in his mind removes the moral implications of his actions. He also is completely convinced that the money belongs to him and he has the right to kill everyone who stands in his way. That's how he's able to operate with such detachment and coolness while committing these horrific killings.
Anyone who tangles with Chirugh dies and only those who flee from him (Bell) survive.
The movie is missing the story that Bell tells in the book about how he received a medal of honor during the war for an act of cowardice of his part.
Clearly this is something that Bell is struggling with throughout the story.
Bell has been telling the audience all along that things have changed for the worse. But near the end, Ellis reminds him that this evil is nothing new and again those who stand up to it are killed (Bell's uncle who was shot on his porch).
In the end, Bell decides that he just can't confront evil -- that this is No Country For Old Men.
Bell knows that he's escaped death for now but that it will catch up to him soon or later. The dream he recounts to his wife tells of his hope of being reunited with his father in the afterlife.
Posted by: Dave | November 29, 2007 at 03:15 PM
my own, overly academic take (sorry, this is just the way i think). the movie can be read as about law and objectivity:
-- bell is like the philosopher habermas, lost in nostalgia for the enlightenment, when law and order reigned and there was cooperation and communication among people who agreed on the basic rules of life in society. he knows that this idyllic past never truly existed (as his uncle ellis has pointed out to him), but he can't stop "comparing himself to the old-timers... wondering how they would act in these times." he keeps constructing and reconstructing this false past, because it is a beautiful dream and far preferable to the reality he sees himself as unable to confront.
-- moss and chigurh then appear as equals of a sort -- in the aftermath of the breakdown of law, we have a state-of-nature type situation where everyone is out for themselves. for some, this manifests in a kind of crude materialism, overconfident self-reliance, and a sense of entitlement. thus moss never thinks to call the police on his initial discovery of the massacre, assumes a right to the money, and constantly thinks he can defeat chigurh despite much evidence to the contrary. his family is an extension of his ego, and if he can help them, he will, but it's all pure assertion.
chigurh, on the other hand, is a nietzschean ubermensch: a world-creator. he has decided that the world just IS a certain way, and he enforces this on everyone whose path he crosses. hence the coin-tossing, the relaxed confidence, the flat affect. it's not about getting what he can -- he has no life within which he could enjoy money, no desires for which money could be a means. it's simply about bringing his world into being and enforcing it, in the absence of any higher law. thus the killing of carla jean despite the prior death of moss.
where woody harrelson fits into this, i don't know.
Posted by: S | November 29, 2007 at 03:51 PM
Has it occurred to anyone else that the scene with the two kids, Chigurh, and the $100 bill is just the whole movie writ small, and littered with fewer corpses? I think it's fair to assume that when Moss first found the money, he contemplated leaving it alone. Similarly, the kid initially turns down Chigurh's offer of money for his shirt. By taking the money, Brolin invites violence and horror into his life. When the kid gives in and takes the money from Chigurh, he and his buddy immediately start fighting over it (remember, I said it was "writ small").
And really, with the car accident, you have violence in the scene. If the other driver died, you have death. With Chigurh, injured and fleeing the noise of police sirens, you have another wounded man on the run.
I'm probably reaching a bit in that last part, but still...
Posted by: bill | November 29, 2007 at 04:12 PM
My take on the final scene is that in all the darkness in the world, Bell's father, a lawman like all of his ancestors, was able to guide him to a place of light and comfort to ward off the blackness. . . and then he "woke up" to reality. A grim message indeed. There will always be evil in the world.
I seem to remember Chigurh taking one of the kid's bicycles in the book. I think that scene should have been left in, especially if the bicycle had a bell on it. Ring a ling! Ding a ling!!Then he goes to hang out with this guy: http://pixyland.org/peterpan/
Posted by: Ben | November 29, 2007 at 06:41 PM
If Sheriff Tom Bell sees the dime, why does he not lift a fingerprint off it? We know it will be Anton's. Are we to assume that he decides not to do this because he's afraid of "what's comin'"?
Also, am I the only one who thought that Anton was next door in the motel scene with Sheriff Bell? It makes sense if you remember what Moss did earlier with the 2 rooms.
Posted by: Jason | November 29, 2007 at 07:49 PM
S.,
You ask the question I have been racked by and no one has discussed: how does the Woody Harrelson character fit into this? Since I viewed the movie in Old Testament terms, was he a prophet or angel, who explains how Moss violated God's law no matter how righteous Moss feels his cause is?
Posted by: Hank | November 29, 2007 at 11:24 PM
it's been a while since i read the book, but i remember feeling that chigurh was to be taken both at face value as a ruthless, absolutist but ultimately mortal killer and also as an allegory for the inevitability of death, and of the potential for violence in all men. i don't understand why the literal read and the allegorical read of his character should be mutually exclusive. mccarthy regularly confronts us with this sort of complexity... consider the character of the judge in "blood meridian".
another way to look at it would be to consider chigurh as a very pure conduit of these dark forces. death, violence, and perhaps "evil" being constants in the world, anton chigurh is simply a character who is completely reconciled with the existence of these constants and makes sense of his world through their application. mccarthy concentrates and distills these forces in chigurh so that we can see them clearly, and the role that they play in each of the other character's lives as well as in our own.
the scene after the accident with the two boys is key in this regard, it ultimately doesn't matter whether chigurh the man survives, dies, goes on killing or gets caught, the dark thread continues on, death is still inevitable, violence and evil march on. i'm not sure if my recollection of that scene from the book is still accurate but i seem to remember the boys not only taking the money, but also finding a pistol in chigurh's car? the torch being passed on.
maybe the coens' decision to leave the weapon out of chigurh's final scenes was simply to shift our focus from the basic violent acts to the larger allegorical themes.
Posted by: kitonga | November 30, 2007 at 12:06 PM
I recently heard Javier Bardem speak at a screening of NO COUNTRY. He seems firmly in the camp of Anton as a specter of death, a quasi-supernatural force unleashed by a country consumed by violence. He was asked very specifically about the motel scene and said he had asked the Coens how Anton escapes from the room. They shrugged, which made him conclude that his character was just as much a ghost as anything else.
Posted by: Geoff | December 01, 2007 at 06:36 AM
Very interesting discussion here. Does anyone remember: Did the kids at the end call Chigurh "Sir"?
Posted by: Brian | December 01, 2007 at 10:50 AM
I still don't understand the dead woman in the pool. Not that it matters anymore.
Posted by: Sally | December 01, 2007 at 04:14 PM
Sure, it matters. She's the woman who offers to share her beers with Llewelyn as he's going back to his motel room, an innocent victim in the bloodbath. She's billed as "Poolside Woman" and she's played by Ana Reeder. The entirety of their dialogue is worth going over again...it begins as Llewelyn is walking by the pool...
Poolside Woman: Hey!...Mister sportin’ goods!...
Llewelyn: Hey yourself!
PW: You a sport?
L: Yeah, that’s me.
PW: I got beers in my room…
L: Oh, well, I’m, uh...(indicating wedding ring with thumb)…I’m waitin’ on my wife…
PW: Oh…that’s who you keep lookin’ out the window for…
L: Um, half…
PW: What else, then?
L: Just, uh, lookin’ for what’s comin’…
PW: Yeah, but no one ever sees that….(further pause as Llewellyn nods)…BEER! That’s what’s comin’…I’ll bring the ice chest out here, you can stay married. (gets up to go fetch ice chest)
L (shaking his head): No, ma’am, I know what beer leads to…
PW (chuckles):…Beer leads to more beer.
(Llewelyn straightens out, fade to black)
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | December 01, 2007 at 05:30 PM
In the book, doesn't Chigurgh give the two boys his gun or they find it in the car (it's then used a few years down the road and ballistics tie it to some violent crimes)? If so, that would seem like a definite choice of omission by the Coens to further the idea of the "apparition of Chigurgh".
Posted by: AJW | December 01, 2007 at 05:43 PM
He doesn't give it to them; they find it. Here's the passage:
"They walked out into the street where the vehicles sat steaming. The streetlamps had come on. A pool of green antifreeze was collecting in the gutter. When they had passed the open door of Chigurh's truck the one in the T-shirt stopped the other with his hand. You see what I see? he said.
Shit, the other one said.
What they saw was Chigurh's pistol lying in the floorboard of the truck. They could already hear the sirens in the distance. Get it, the first one said. Go on.
Why me?
I aint got a shirt to cover it with. Go on. Hurry."
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | December 01, 2007 at 06:12 PM
I thought someone who read the book said that Bell is just imagining what is behind the door, and the Coens chose to adapt that literally, without illustrating that it was in his head.
This person also said that in the past, Bell as a lawman would have wanted his quarry to be waiting for him behind the door so he could kill or arrest him, but in this situation, because Bell couldn't understand the nature of what he was dealing with, he was hoping Chigurh WOULDN'T be there. This is what causes him to, as Glenn puts it above, abidcate.
Glenn you pointed out some of the differences between the book and film in this scene, but didn't mention whether or not the Chigurh-behind-the-door was an invention of the Coens or McCarthy.
Anyone care to clarify this?
Posted by: lazarus | December 01, 2007 at 06:26 PM