The Coen Brothers strike again

Rating: 10/10 (16 December 2013)

Joel and Ethan Coen know how to tell a story -- sometimes its meaning is obscure, sometimes it's in your face, but it's always fascinating.
In the obscure category is "No Country for Old Men," from 2007, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson, and Barry Corbin.
What I'm going to write next will mystify many. In a funny way, this film reminded me of Psycho. Here's why - in Psycho, we're led to believe that it's a story about a woman who steals money from her employer. Then she stops at the Bates Motel, and the story changes.
Same deal here. This starts off as a story of a man who steals money he finds at a drug deal gone wrong, and we believe we're watching him trying to escape the man chasing him. Turns out the movie isn't really about that.
In Texas in 1980, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) discovers the scene of a drug deal gone terribly wrong - the ground is peppered with dead bodies. Also laying around unattended is 2 million dollars, which Moss takes.
As a result, a man named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is after him. Chigurh kills just about anybody who crosses his path. Moss is on the run, and Chigurh is close behind every step of the way.
The sheriff, Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), has become discouraged by the evil in the world and his helplessness in the face of it. Nevertheless, he tries to beat Chigurh to Moss, all the while realizing the job has just about burned him out. It is, in fact, no country for old men.
The film is symbolic of evil in human form (Chigurh) coming up against a decent man (Moss) and how it brings about his ruin. Moss' ego and arrogance make him think he can overcome Chigurh's pure evil. His innate goodness compels him to return with water for the one dying drug dealer at the scene, putting Chigurh on his trail when he finds his truck. Temptation, as in the Garden of Eden, can lead to ruin.
All the men involved in the story -- Chigurh, Moss, Bell, and an old man whom Bell visits, Ellis - are all fatalists. Moral weakness allows the gods to wreak havoc. Llewellyn brings his fate on himself, and the fate can't be stopped. And so much that happens seems to happen by chance, as the result of a coin toss -- for someone like Bell, looking for meaning, there is no meaning to be found.
The Coen Brothers take the western genre and turn it on its boots - we don't witness some of the deaths, and we don't witness the classic good versus evil fight. With Sheriff Bell's retirement, it seems that we are to conclude that evil wins. But the Coen Brothers leave us with hope, as long as we don't depend on mankind for it. Like Bell's dream about his father going ahead and starting a fire for him, the hope is outside of ourselves and our world. As we've seen in court cases, there is no getting of justice in this world. At the end of his dream, Bell says, "I woke up," as we all must.
A remarkable film by remarkable filmmakers, demanding multiple viewings.