I watched this movie just the other night and I must say that I don’t see how it got so many oscars. I mean the acting was good, the movie was intense with some great fight scenes, but I felt that it lacked cohesion. The message, whatever it was, I missed. The ending was totally disjunctive in my estimation. I don’t mind dark movies, in fact I love them, but usually there is a meaning and a message to the movie that adds a profundity to the movie, even though its dark. However, this movie did not meet that criteria for me.
Interesting, weird, intense and meaningless. I give it two stars.
The movie was existential, wich Chigurh playing the role of Mersault, from Camus’ The Stranger. He is the embodiment of the uncaring universe. Sheriff Bell is searching for meaning in his life, as he says in the opening monolouge. He’s comparing himself to the oldtimers, searching for a way to validate himself. But when this new type of violence crops up in his county, he can’t deal with it. He devotes his time in the movie to going out to confront what he doesn’t understand. He is trying to understand how the universe works, but the ending shows us what Camus and Sartre and all the others have been saying. You can’t find a definitive meaning, you can’t understand completely the way the world works. It works based on chance, and Sheriff Bell’s inability to capture Chigurh or understand him mirrors our own inablilities to find a meaning to our lives, and to have the universe and our future totally under our control.
By: Clayton on September 15, 2008
at 2:49 pm
Not Camus’ Mersault, but his Caligula.
By: alex on February 17, 2009
at 1:30 am
Hey there. I am meandering around the internet tonight and came across this. Since I remember Mata from wayyyyyy back I thought I would weigh in. Also because i LOVE NCFOM.
I thought the ending brought a ton of cohesion to the film. The ending interaction between TLJ and his old uncle type figure pulled in the beginning soliloquy on what life was like for TLJ father. His perception was that his father held justice over a world that already embraced justice. But as TLJ chases Chigur he becomes convinced that the world itself doesn’t understand justice anymore.
The conversation between the two illustrates that evil has always been at work, AND that history has always leaned on men like TLJ and his daddy.
Then the ending of a dream of his daddy hi-lights the tension of TLJ wanting to embrace the ideal his daddy upheld and what he was wanting to walk away from. But in the end his father waited for him as they both stood on the side of justice.
I loved the movie because it was so minimalistic while still so visceral. But I am way biased about it. In my top 3 all-time.
By: Tim Kuhl on July 14, 2009
at 4:32 am