Hype can spoil a perfectly good movie. It took months and one desperate Friday evening in a local video store (you just know when you’ve been in the store for way too long), to finally, reluctantly pick up a copy of No Country for Old Men. Watching it I was relieved. The Coen Brothers did not disappoint. I was especially taken with the film’s closing scene and found its ‘ambiguity’ to be the perfect ending to a very good film.
I was well prepared to notice this last scene. Friends commented on how disappointed they were with it. It mostly went something like this: “…the movie was great, but the ending was incomprehensible and it spoiled it for me. Why did they have to end it like this?…”
Good thing they did! I may have higher then normal tolerance to ambiguity in films. David Lynch’s Mullholand Dr. as an example, was fantastic for this reason alone. The Coens’ (what’s wrong with Cohens’?) and I assume, the author, Cormac McCarthy, ended the film with a perfectly logical ending.
Anton Chigurh, well acted by Javier Bardem, staggers away from an accident scene, not before he puts to shame our recoil from his abnormality. Two kids who happen to be on the scene, argue over splitting his blood money. His obvious monstrosity is a am extension to our mundane human foibles.
This final scene is in fact the movie’s punch line cloaked in ambiguity. The look on Chigure’s face is both a mild surprise and stoic acceptance. He himself was a random event that ends (or saves, with a flip of a coin) the lives of his victims. And so is the “accident” scene. It just happens wouldn’t you know. Thoroughly enjoyable movie with the perfect ending. Was all the violence necessary? This question justifies a separate post.
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