A portrait of evil

Rating: 9/10 (18 December 2007)

Strongest examination of evil since "Silence of the Lambs." Almost nihilistic in leaving no promise of redemption - near the end, Sheriff Bell remarks to his uncle that he expected that, as he got older, God would reveal his face to him, "but he never came." Early on, Bell tells his deputy about sending one young man who had killed a girl to the electric chair. But it's obvious that he no longer believes his efforts will stem the tide of evil - he's just going through the motions. He tells the deputy that he didn't know what to make of the boy's crime, and he knows even less what to make of the massacre in the desert, "and I don't want to be riding into something I don't understand." In his last speech he describes the dream where he sees his father riding past him, carrying fire in a horn. He knows his father is going to make a fire for both of them. He followed his father as sheriff, but his father died in the line of duty while still a young man, while he's grown old without making much difference. Almost all the old people in the film are broken - Bell, his uncle, Carla's mom, the owner of the gas station Chigurh toys with ("you married into it").
Evil is portrayed as something that can infect you simply by proximity. The boys on the bicycles are corrupted because of their brief encounter with Chigurh - they agree to lie to the police; one removes his shirt, revealing himself to evil/Chigurh; and as Chigurh walks off, they can be heard arguing about the money. It's implied Chigurh got the money when he killed Llewellyn. The way he removes the hundred-dollar bill and hands it to the boy echoes the way Llewellyn paid the cashiers earlier in the film. Both times the bill is bloodstained.
Llewellyn is not evil in the sense that Chigurh is, but he is not blameless. He tolerates evil and tries to profit from it. He commits each of the seven deadly sins at some point - greed, pride, sloth, anger, envy and lust, definitely; possibly gluttony. Wells, the bounty hunter, tells him Chigurh has principles "of a sort," while Llewellyn and Wells do not. Chigurh tells Carla Jean that Llewellyn betrayed her by protecting his own life while not agreeing to a deal that would save hers. This contradicts what Wells told Llewellyn, that Chigurh would not offer him a deal. He does, but Llewellyn is too dense or prideful to take it. He was able to escape Chigurh once, and in his arrogance thinks that he can again, and Carla Jean pays the price.
Chigurh's motives for his murders, beyond the fact that he is a hired killer (he's only hired to kill one person in the film), seem to be sexual. It's implied when he garrotes the deputy that he is deriving pleasure from it. It is staged as a sexual encounter; his expression when the deed is done is post-coital. At times his conversations with the victims resemble foreplay. Carla Jean, however, refuses to play along and give him his pleasure by calling the coin toss; her murder is thus most like a rape.
I think neither Bell nor Chigurh lives much longer after the story. Chigurh is broken in a way he cannot fix alone (a bone - his structure - has fractured and pushed its way out of him). Bell is existentially broken, powerless to even slow evil down, and his chance to die young, with glory, is long gone. There's nothing left for him but look for his father and join him at the fire. This refers to the exchange between Carla Jean and Llewellyn when he tells her to tell his mother that he loves her, and she says "your mother is dead." "Then I'll tell her myself." The last line is like a jail cell door closing - Bell tells his dream to his wife and expresses one last hope that he will be reunited with his father..."And then I woke up."
Other random observations: The plot is set in motion because Llewellyn, though presumably an experienced hunter familiar with the desert, is away from his vehicle without water (more below). All of the mayhem fails to attract much notice - the gun battles in the desert; Llewellyn and Chigurh's midnight shootout; Llewellyn's stumbling around at the border crossing and tossing the bag over the fence; his later wandering through the streets in a bathrobe; and the auto accident in broad daylight in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Bell alludes to this anomaly early on when tells the story of the couple who were burying people in the backyard, but no one noticed until a naked man escaped and went walking down the street. And what was it with the boots? Much was made of characters putting on or removing them - Chigurh before sneaking up on the motel room, for instance. Llewellyn is specific about the kind of boots he wants, and is later seen wandering around in them while wearing almost nothing else. Blood pours out of Chigurh's boot in the hotel room when he removes it prior to digging out the buckshot in his leg. There's a POV shot of him moving his boot out of the way as Wells' blood creeps into the top of the frame, and he checks the soles of his boots, presumably for blood, after he leaves Carla Jean's mother's house. As in many of the Coen's crime stories, including "Fargo," "Blood Simple," and "Man Who Wasn't There," the scheme goes awry because the protagonist makes one stupid choice - here, Llewellyn tries to expiate his sins by going back to the massacre with water for the dying man, even though he knows the man is almost surely dead and he risks discovery by doing so.