More 'No Country' Matters: Motel Shots, or, Gimme Some Chigurh

I can't tell you how gratifying it's been to watch the discussion of No Country For Old Men progress at this blog. It's gotten into some areas I never would have anticipated, but I'm also blown away by the consistent good nature and smarts of all the comments and commenter. It makes me feel, well, blessed—particularly when I look at the comments on other blogs which I'm not going to name here. So thanks. But on to the real stuff—the conversation below has brought up a point which wasn't as thoroughly addressed as it might have been, which we're going to get into below the fold. I hopefully need not add that if you haven't seen the picture yet, do not go below the fold. If you have, well, let's rock.

The question is, where is ruthless killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) when Sheriff Ed Tom Bell makes his non-official exploration of the motel crime scene after the massacre there? And if he is where we think he is—that is, laying in wait in the motel room Ed Tom enters—why doesn't he (Anton) do anything, where does he go...what does that make him?

The astute and thorough Jim Emerson, over at his Sun-Times blog Scanners and in the comments of my post on No Country below, believes that Chigurh's in an adjoining motel room, not the one Ed Tom goes in. Here's his case as presented in the comments of my earlier post:

1) He took a room adjacent to Moss's in the earlier motel/vent scene.

2) The set-up shot equally emphasizes the two motel doors (with the yellow tape running all the way across both doors -- and the screen).

3) Chigurh is never where you expect him to be, when you expect him to be there.

4) Sheriff Bell is indeed visibly relieved that he did not find Chigurh in that room (the two doors are the equivalent of his "coin toss" -- then he finds a coin on the floor). But he did enter it, look around, and Chigurh was not there.

5) If Chigurh wanted/needed to shoot Sheriff Bell (say, if he were discovered standing behind the front door, where we can see he isn't), he would have. But the movie is about how we all carry on living in the shadow of death.

6) We're never given any indication that Chigurh has "supernatural powers." Yes, he represents impending mortality (he's always lurking out there somewhere), but if you shoot him, does he not bleed? Yes, he does. We even see him treating his wounds, and he's as much of flesh and blood as Moss.

All valid points. But let's have a look at the non-standoff between Ed Tom and Chigurh, shot by shot, starting from right after Ed Tom goes under the police tape.

1) Ed Tom looks down at the door...

2)...and there's what he, and we, are looking for: the lock, blown-out in Chigurh's trademark style.

3) Ed Tom's found what he's looking for, but he's not happy about it...

4)...the blown-out lock again...

5)...and is this in fact what's behind it? Wherever Chigurh is, he's lit by a light source that's coming through a cylinder that corresponds directly in shape to that of the blown out lock. And that's not all, as we'll see...

6) Ed Tom again, almost frozen as he gazes at the blown out lock. In classic cinema language, the sequence of these shots suggests some very direct spatial relations between the objects in them...

7) Chigurh, again, a little closer up, with a slightly different expression on his face. Look at his eye, follow where it would be going if you were in fact there and across from him...

8)...and then consider this shot, a closeup of the blown-out lock cylinder, the yellow light reflecting in it something like a human figure...that of Ed Tom, hovering outside the door?

9)...and we're back to Ed Tom, who appears to have made a decision...

10)...he unholsters his gun...

11) and pushes in the door...

12)...of an empty room. But note, again, the light coming through the lock cylinder as he does.

What say you, readers?

Comments

[bill]

I'm with you, and I think the light source from the blown-out lock is the clincher. Of course, Chigurh would have had to blow out the lock to get into the other room, but I really don't remember any evidence for that.

There's something else I've been wondering about (and my wife, too): in this scene, the shot of the open vent would seem to indicate that Chigurh got the money because he knew where Moss had hid it previously. But isn't the vent in this scene circular, and if so, wouldn't that mean that the case with the money would not have fit?

[Sam Adams]

Isn't Bell the one who says he thinks Chigurh is "just about a ghost"? Possible the scene is just showing Bell's imagination (or a dream like those that close the film), but it's clear that the Coens mean to suggest at a certain point that he's more than human. That this is at odds with the scenes where we see his all-too-physical wounds is clearly not an accident, and at a certain point attempting to reconcile the two is about as fruitful as trying to figure out who killed Audrey in Barton Fink, or what the UFO is doing in The Man Who Wasn't There. It's meant to be a problem without an answer, leaving us just as unable to understand Chigurh's nature as Bell is. The more I think about the movie, the more I'm reminded of the end of Conrad's Secret Agent.

"And the incorruptible Professor walked too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignificant, shabby, miserable -- and terrible in the simplicity of his idea calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men."

[Evil Bender]

I'd love to see the set-up shot again, where Bell has pulled up to the door, to see if I can see anything about the second room.

No matter which room Chigurh is in, the implication is the same: Bell draws up his courage to go looking, one final time, for that which, from the opening narration, he is not sure he knows how to face. He draws his gun, forces himself to enter--and does not find Chigurh. He knows the man has been there, knows he hasn't left through the window. Does he know Chigurh might still be in the room?

I'm not sure. We cut away from the dime, not Bell's reaction. It's safe to say, as some have noted, that Bell does not want to have to face Chigurh--who would? But he does go back to the motel, even forces himself to enter the room. He's not a coward, exactly, but by the next scene he's realized he can no longer do his job. He has either failed to face Chigurh or failed to find him. Either way, he has found himself unable or unwilling to face a future he fears.

I don't mean I want to read this film as overly metaphorical. Chigurh is just who he appears to be, not Death or anything like it. But Bell--distinct from the viewer--comes to see him as a representation of Bell's failing. Whether we agree, it seems to me, depends on whether we feel that Bell--or his father, or anyone who's job it is to keep us safe--has done enough to ride ahead against the darkness.

[Aron]

I think this is a deliberate discontinuity here and there is no guaranteed explanation. The movie in its final sequences accelerates the rate at which you as a viewer become dissociated from omniscience. We suspect highly, but don't know for sure, that he kills the wife or whether she calls the coin. We don't don't see the Mexicans kill Moss. We don't know for sure whether Moss stays away from beer chick. We don't see Moss killed.

The point is to make us feel overwhelmed in a similar fashion as Bell by our inability to understand it all.

This particular example is one that steps slightly over the line into Lynch, and its a great example of artistic decision.

[C]

Can you really tell for sure that Chigurh is not behind the door when Bell opens it? How about a grab of that shot, Glenn?

Chigurh is a skinny guy. And when Bell enters, he doesn't look back where he would see Chigurh behind the door.

Per my viewing, it was too dark to be sure one way or the other. I assumed Chigurh was there, but had already retrieved the money (i.e., he was getting ready to leave when Bell drove up), and so simply walked out while Bell was searching the bathroom. Chigurh had what he came for, and so had no need to kill Bell.

Compare the angle of the door after Bell first opens it (he opens it almost all the way) to the angle of the door after Bell comes out of the bathroom. Has the door moved? (Whether Chigurh would feel the need to cover his tracks by placing the door in its original position is another question.)

Nevertheless, the adjoining-room theory is plausible. If Chigurh didn't get to the motel until after everyone was gone, and the police tape covered both doors, then Chigurh wouldn't know which room was Moss's. He would have blown off both locks and checked both rooms. Perhaps as he was leaving with the money he saw Bell's car approaching and ducked into the other room.

In the setup shot, can you see if the lock on the adjoining room is blown out? More screen shots!

[bill]

Including a screen shot of the vent!

And even before the rest of the strangeness of that scene, I thought there was something strange about the way that door just stopped when Bell opened it. But I've only seen the film once, and others who have seen it multiple times that it doesn't appear that there is any room for Chigurh to be hiding behind it.

Also, Chigurh is "skinny"? Fit, okay, but I don't know about skinny.

In regards to the Lynch comparison: I would love very much for the Coens to make a Lynchian horror film. Or any kind of horror film ("Barton Fink" counts, I suppose, so I guess I want them to make another one).

[don lewis]

The adjoining room theory stumbles due to the light source as evidenced in the shots above. Chigurh wouldn't blow out his own lock.

I mentioned in the other thread about the "mirroring" in the film. I wonder if that ties in here? I'm thinking specifically of the shot earlier on where Chigurh drinks some milk while staring at his reflection in Moss's TV and a few minutes later, Bell does the same thing. Is this another mirroring shot?

Also...
"Ed Tom" and "Anton" sound prettttty close in pronouncement. Are these 2 opposite sides of some kind of same coin?

[matt]

Some relevant comments from the Coens (re: Barton Fink, from Jim Emerson's scanners blog on suntimes.com):

"Ethan Coen: ... 'Barton Fink' does end up telling you what's going on to the extent that it's important to know -- you know what I mean? What isn't crystal clear isn't intended to become crystal clear, and it's fine to leave it at that.

Joel Coen: The question is: Where would it get you if something that's a little bit ambiguous in the movie is made clear? It doesn't get you anywhere."

[bill]

Also - and this is all getting a bit obsessive, but what the hell - in the screen shot of the close-up of the lock cylinder (#8), what is the light from outside shining on on the right side of the frame? Had I just seen the movie, it might be obvious, but looking at it now, I take not of the where that lock cylinder is in relation to the rest of the room, and it doesn't seem to me that it should be shining on anything. In that screen shot, though, it looks like something or someone is very close to that hole.

Okay, I'll stop now.

[Perry Clark]

An interesting thing I noticed while watching this scene: During the shots of the empty lock cylinder, it appears on more than one occasion that there is some ghost-like movement on the other side of the door reflected on the inside of the empty cylinder. I was convinced that someone (never sure it was Chigurh) was inside the room. That said, it seems pretty clear that the Sheriff didn't find anyone in there. And as the scene played out, I was readily convinced that Chigurh must've been in the adjoining room. (And after all, Chigurh's old friend Carson Wells tells us that Chigurh'll kill ya just 'cuz of the inconvenience, and it's hard to imagine he wouldn't look at Bell's arrival as some level of inconvenience. so the fact that Bell survives the scene implies that the two were never in the same room.) As for any supernatural bits, I think Chigurh is a representation of the banality of evil, and his persistence the ubiquity thereof, so no supernatural effects needed or desired.

As I first read the book some time back, I remember thinking that in many ways, the style and substance were all things McCarthy had done before, but that this one seemed written almost with the screen in mind. Now that I've seen the movie, that impression is strengthened.

[Perry Clark]

Oh, and FWIW: To my eye, it doesn't look like the lighting of Chigurh matches what it should be if it's coming through the empty cylinder and bouncing around the room until it gets to him--he's not in line with the cylinder, he's back against the wall. Much more like lighting coming through a gap in drapes or similar. If it were from the cylinder hole, the shadows of Chigurh would be much less distinct, and we'd be able to see more or less all of his face in the same light.

[C]

After more thought, the adjoining-room theory makes the most sense. Chigurh, not knowing which room was Moss's, would have blown out both locks to start with. (Contrary to what another commenter suggested, the adjoining room was behind the police tape and thus the motel wouldn't have rented it to Chigurh.) Or he could have guessed correctly at first and then blown out the lock on the adjoining room in order to get in there to hide.

The adjoining-room theory is, essentially, the Silence of the Lambs trick: cutting between two perspectives on two different locations in such a way as to make viewers think they are seeing two perspectives on the same location. I guess the Coens rejected as too banal a "surprise!" moment in which the deception is clearly revealed to the viewer.

Of course, if we accept the possibility that the Coens are screwing with our heads spatially, we must accept the possibility that the Coens are screwing with our heads temporally. That is, maybe Chigurh's perspective happens PRIOR IN TIME to Bell's arrival.

[Dan R]

I was bothered by the lackadaisacal way Ed Tom went in the room- man up dude- kill that mfer. I know it was symbolic in some way but still bothered me.

[Joel]

I usually suck at figuring out what is literally happening in these kinds of movies. However, the emotions of this sequence seem to be more important than the logistics of who is standing where. Once Ed Tom opens that door and finds nothing on the other side, he is both relieved and sort of disturbed by his own relief--I'm sure that he "retires" from policework at that very second. I imagine that his name is so similar to the two other protagonists (Ed Tom and Anton are near-homonyms, Bell contains the first three letter of Llewelyn) because he finds himself playing both "cat" and "mouse" in his policework, chasing down crooks yet every once in a while finding himself at the other end of the gun. It's a game for younger men, foolish men who think they're going to live forever. Of course he quotes Ecclesiastes ("all is vanity"). There's no better expression of death's stubborn inevitability.

On a side note, why not five straight posts on I'm Not There? That movie was so much fucking fun it should be a controlled substance. I'd enjoy some screengrabs and near-Talmudic scholarship on that one. How about the cast of Riddle, MO next to a picture of the Basement Tapes cover?

[don lewis]

Hey, I'm allll for the Coens screwing with us spatially...or by intercutting 2 scenes together that aren't actually "together." However I think that simply cannot be the case because you just don't introduce a new twist in your plotline during the END of the movie. Had they done this a few times earlier (and they may have, I've only seen the film twice) I would buy it whole hog. However it's just lame to try to pull off something like that in the final act and this film is far from lame.

[John]

Advancing a theory here - what if Chigurh IS in the room, behind the door as we all seem to believe. Is there anything to suggest that he kills Ed Tom then and there and the post events are Ed Tom having death dreams about what might happen? His fear about the fate of Carla Jean, his hopes for an impediment to Chigurh? Speeches from relatives that defeat is inevitable and warm, comforting dreams of fires and his father? Horse rides and sandwiches with the wife. "And then I woke up" as the moment of his death? I saw the film once, read the book once and have played it out in my head over and over, but this idea just occurred to me based on these conversations here. Could be totally off, but wanted to throw it out there.

[burko]

I read the book right after the movie, which unfortunately isn't too helpful, because the sequence plays differently in the book. In the book, Chigurh is apparently outside, in a truck. And I just don't think there's a way to interpret it that way here.

I like the adjoining rooms theory, myself, which I hadn't thought of. I'm not sure there's a concrete answer either way unless the Coens' clear it up, though I really want to see the sequence real-time again. But that he'd just be standing behind the door seems cheesy to me; both a cheesy place to hide, and too difficult to believe that the Sheriff, with his honed intuitions, wouldn't perceive that Chigurh was there. I too was a bit disappointed by how lazily the Sheriff entered, which didn't feel right. Maybe it's all part of his moment of realization that he just doesn't have that much fight in him, and if he's going to die he's going to die, but, it didn't feel quite right.

In the opening of the novel, the Sheriff states flat out that "Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don't want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out and meet him."

That might support the "he's in the room" theory, if the Coens adhered to that bit (he was watched from the truck in the novel) -- but of course, since the scene itself is different, they may not have worried about the literal translation of that detail. "Prophet of destruction" is left open anyway, but he seems to mean both Chigurh literally, and the overall force that Chigurh happens to represent so sharply in the instance of this particular tale that ends in the Sheriff's resignation.

[tuck]

Great thread here and GK's earlier post. Some ruminations:

I think Glenn's screengrabs and theory of montage points are right on. The Coens are steeped in film theory and structure. One thing they are is not lazy or imprecise. The cutting of the film tells you that Chigurh is in the room. Now, if he's in there as a ghost, or as Ed Tom's imagination, or there in a very real physical way, is a different matter.

Personally, I think he's in the room. Throughout the movie, we have seen Ed as less than a completist. He's is simply not thorough in his job. (This is hard for us to believe because Tommy Lee Jones is so damn likable in this part, but it's true. Ed Tom Bell has gotten lazy in his old age.)

So when he comes into the room, he doesn't check behind the door because it doesn't occur to him, or he's scared to, or because he feels that if Chigurh is there, he's inside the bathroom most likely. (Or left through the bathroom window.)

So Bell investigates the bathroom first. Chigurh's not there, and the window is locked.

Meanwhile, Chigurh slips out through the door while Bell's back is turned.

The scene and movie proceed.

I don't think Chigurh has to kill Bell, or would kill him out of spite or inconvenience, because Bell isn't currently interfering with Chigurh's pursuit of the money. Chigurh's beef was with Moss (and Carla Jean by association).

I also think that the key scene comes earlier in the movie, when Chigurh kills the Stephen Root character. The other character there asks "Are you going to kill me?" and Chigurh responds "Do you see me?" The accountant of course, off-screen, says he never "saw" Chigurh, and so gets to live. (I believe.) (Also, the idea of "seeing" comes from a commenter over at The House Next Door, but I couldn't remember which one.)

As perverse as he is, Chigurh does have a code of some sort. (well, possibly.) Chigurh's job is to get the money, which involves killing Moss, and then Carla Jean because of the promise to kill her he made to Moss. When his ability to do the money-retrieval job is called into question, by Root and Wells, then his honor has been impugned and so they must die also.

But Bell is never part of Chigurh's canvas.

[mike d]

What I got from the sequence was that Ed Tom was almost being suicidal in cruising around the motel room the way he does. By sitting on the bed, facing away from the only dark corner of the room, he is almost giving himself up to whatever he feels is coming to him, because he's so exhausted, defeated, and in a lot of ways hurt by the matter-of-fact way that he's had the reality of evil thrust upon him over the last few days.

Chigurh, a man of "principle," as said with a sincere but snarky bend by Carson Wells earlier in the film, won't show himself unless he needs to. And he's still in the back corner of that room, in my mind, staring right at the back of Ed Tom's head. And truthfully, as death proof as Chigurh is, he might be under the impression that there are more officers brandishing their weapons outside, silently waiting. (Actually, as I type this, it seems unlikely, but I want to cover this base because it crossed my mind.)

[mike d]

Wow, tuck, as I was taking about 20 minutes to gather my post and make sure my thoughts were clearly expressed, you managed to say pretty much exactly what I was going to say with much more panache and precision. Bravo, I agree whole-heartedly with that assessment.

[Matt Miller]

I think the adjoining rooms theory is untenable, and here's why: adjacent rooms are mirror images of each other. In the room Ed Tom enters, the door swings right. In the room next door, wouldn't the door swing left (towards the shared wall)? Chigurh's clearly backed up against a wall so that the door is on his left. If he was in the room next to the one Ed Tom enters, the door would be on his right.

That makes sense in my head...did I convey it well enough to get my point across?

[agrayspace]

All very nice theories indeed. But I have come to a conclusion. And I wouldn't have come to it without all youd brilliant ideas. But it was the shot by shot that really did.

+ Chigurh is not in the room. He was at one time but is not once Bell returns.

+ The whole scene is about Bell and his battle between fear and duty.

+ He stands there staring at the keyhole.

+ The shots of Chigurh are in his imagination. The fact that the only light on Chigurh's face is from the keyhole connect the image with how Bell would imagine the killer waiting for him.

+ Bell pauses cause he know this is his "coin toss"

+ He goes in anyway. His body language signals he's given up and is prepared to die.

+ When Chigurh is discovered to not be there, Bell is relieved and retires at that moment. This is indeed No Country for Old Men.

+ The shot of the vent confirms that Chigurh was once there and that Bell narrowly escaped death.

I don't buy that Chirugh wouldn't kill Bell if he was there. If he was there he would have shot Bell in a hearbeat.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. It's simple, it doesn't rely on magic and makes the scene all about Bell's decision. Which is precisely what the hole end is all about.

Bell Decides to retire. The consequence is that Carla dies, and Chigurh gets away and he has to live with that.

Thanks for everyones amazing thoughts.

[Tom]

This question was asked directly of the Coen's at the Press Conference for the film at Lincoln Center. Their answer was that Anton is behind the door in the room with Ed Tom. So, that solved it for me, but I think this sequence is VERY confusing for viewers.

[Tru Livaudais]

I hate to muddle things further but in the Creative Screenwriting magazine "No Country for Old Men" podcast, the Coens said it was deliberately ambiguous whether Chigurh was in the room or not...so either they changed their minds or are being coy.

Also, no one who has cited other parts of the book have mentioned the scene in the novel in which Ed Tom tells Ellis his secret about the medal Ed Tom earned in Vietnam. Ed Tom basically feels like he was a coward then and has proven to be a failure again, in his later life, as a result of not being able to address or stop the evil in the world. To me, the very act of stepping through that door was so difficult for Ed Tom that it served as the catalyst for him to retire. He was, quite literally, defeated. Along with Mr. Emerson's interpretation, I feel that Chigurh was NOT in the room. Whatever views you have about Chigurh's value system, it was made evident that his overriding rule is to not get caught. He would never flip a coin "in his head" to determine Ed Tom's fate, because the physicality of the coin needs to be there to make it more "fair." Chigurh, if he was really in that room, would have killed Ed Tom.

[don lewis]

Some thoughts on you guys's thoughts...

How can Ed Tom "imagine" what Chigurh looks like if he's never seen him? Again, the Coens know their stuff cinematically and that would be a cinematic bumble. When you show what someone's imagining, you see what they see in their imagination. Bell never saw Chigurh so he can't "really" imagine him behind the door.

Like Tom, when I saw the film, Josh Brolin was there and someone asked if Chigurh was beind the door and he too said it was meant to be ambiguous.