No Country For Old Men

Jonathan Rosenbaum has an extraordinarily negative review of the Coen brothers brilliant No Country for Old Men here and this is a key part of it,

I hasten to add there’s more to this grim, ambitious movie than a psychopathic assassin of the highest order whose carnage is gorgeously shot, though I seriously doubt it would be garnering so much enthusiasm without such perks. The intricate plot, set in rural Texas, involves three characters chasing after Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a lovable salt-of-the-earth type who stumbles upon $2 million and a mess of dead bodies in the wake of a blown drug deal in the desert. There’s the narrator, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), a melancholy sheriff nearing retirement who investigates the murders. There’s Chigurh, an associate of the drug dealers who’s bent on recovering the money and totally unconcerned with how many innocent people he wipes out in the process. (Recalling some of the stylish moves that made Pulp Fiction such a hit, he idly tortures some of his victims with arcane mind games before shooting them.) And finally there’s Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), a hired gun who offers some comic relief. This grisly thriller qualifies in some ways as a remake of the Coens’ Fargo, with Bell and Moss jointly taking over the role of Frances McDormand’s pregnant sheriff. Bell is the film’s moral center, the law in the midst of greed and senseless death. Moss, already marked by his relative indifference to the suffering of a dying Mexican in the opening sequence, becomes lovable only during his affectionate banter with his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald). He’s the character we’re supposed to identify with, especially when he’s trying to match wits with the psycho killer.

While it is true that he himself is experiencing a moral crisis that prevents him from seriously engaging with his duty to catch Chigurh and allows him to send his gormless subordinate first into the mobile home that the killer has left only moments before, seeing Sheriff Bell as the moral centre of the film is the central error which leads Rosenbaum astray. While Bell avoids decisions and recoils in ineffectual horror at the situation he is presented with, Moss takes the decision to steal the drug dealers money and, much against his better judgement, to return to the desert with a bottle of water for the wounded and thirsty Mexican that he failed to succour on first encountering him.

And when he is rewarded for his choices, especially the second one, with the attentions of Chigurh, he doesn’t complain or curse himself, he just gets on with solving the problems he is presented with as they arise. It never occurs to him give in.

Moss is not a morally irreproachable character but there is no doubt that he and not Bell is the moral centre of the film. While the Sheriff avoids taking decisions and Chigurh’s psychopathic nature voids his of any moral sense, Moss engages with the world, acts and lives with the consequences.

Norm says the central theme of the film is

an evil abroad and not far off

I think that’s right and I’d add to that “and what we can do when confronted it.” You don’t have to be morally perfect yourself to fight it and if you decide to fight it then there’s no guarantee about the result, but there’s guarantee about the result if you decide not to fight it either. By not turning away though, and doing what you can within the range of possibilities open to you, it’s possible to make some difference.