...to grasp the fruity import of No Country for Old Men:
I take this story as first and foremost a statement on the fact that we live increasingly in a post-modern culture, in which values are no longer rooted in objective standards. Such a world is certainly "No Country for Old Men" — that is, it is alienating to those who still hold to the "old" objectively-based value system; because in a truly post-modern world-scenario (as is depicted in the film), the very concepts of "good" and "evil" have lost all meaning. ... ...as we abandon a rational, moralistic view of life, we lose all sense of purpose and meaning in the process, and evil wins by default. Now THAT is a meaningful ending!ELSEWHERE: John Podhoretz on No Country For Old Men:
[Chigurh] is very frightening, even though he has a Prince Valiant haircut. He stops at a gas station and threatens the owner by flipping a coin and demanding the man call heads-or-tails for his life. It is a powerful and portentous scene, but like most of No Country for Old Men, it seems set in some amalgam of The Twilight Zone and Waiting for Godot. The Twilight Zone aspect gives the scene an unsettling kick; the Godot evocation offers pretentious viewers the illusion that they are watching something meaningful. .Sheriff Bell is trying to figure out what is happening, but he is a small-town lawman and not equal to the task of dealing with Chigurh. But given the supernatural prowess McCarthy and the Coens have bestowed on Chigurh, it would take a combination of Sherlock Holmes, Porfiry Petrovich, and Professor Van Helsing to keep up. Chigurh is just a Hannibal Lecter knockoff who seems to have taken a Calvinist community-college course in providence and predestination.Given the injustice to Yeats of associating his great poem "Sailing to Byzantium" with this tawdry swill, I wish the Coens had used a more suitable title, like, say, The Texas Highbrow Massacre.
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