No Country for Old Men

[Bodhesatva]

Other than "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," No Country is the best film I've seen this year.

It's fairly straightforward, really -- it's a story about the irrational, unspeakable evil inherent to society. The key scenes take place near the end of the film, and largely rotate around Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). The first key scene takes place between Jones and his fellow officer, right after the main character, Lewelyn, is killed. They discuss the slow degradation of the world -- they talk about green hair and bones through noses -- and talk about the "rising tide" of decay. As they walk out a door, they discuss the Anton Sagur, the killer; they describe him as insane: a ghost, so irrational and violent that he walks right back in to murder scenes and kills a retired army vet (The officer say something like: "How do you defend against that? Implying that the forces of justice can't cope with his violence and insanity). The next key scene takes place between Tommy Lee Jones and his father's former deputy, another old man. Tommy Lee Jones states that he feels "overmatched," a statement emphasizing his sense of being overwhelmed by the awful, horribly cruelty that Anton (Javier Bardem) displays throughout the film, and is generally represented by the awful violence this drug-deal-gone-wrong has generated.

The other old man tells another story of awful, senseless violence, from the early 1900s -- this story tells us that the Anton Sagurs -- the cruel, senseless violence -- is not unique to our times, and is an omnipresent plague on society (the deputy warns Jones not to think he's living in particular times. "That's vanity," he says, if one believes as such. ALL times are violent and insane, not just our own). Instead of being a story about how civilization is slowly decaying, it becomes a story about the general violence and cruelty inherent, always.

The title reflects this: "No Country For Old Men" implies that the cruelty of the world leaves no place for gentler, older folk. They are, as Jones says, overmatched.

Does that help? Any specific questions I can address? If you ask about a specific scene, I can explain how it relates to the central themes. And ALL the scenes do relate, by the way, as this film has almost no extraneous material. Every line is relevant.