Look, I need to know what I stand to win.

Warning: the following post is more commentary than review. So if you haven't seen No Country For Old Men, reading this may mean little and spoil much. The ending will be discussed in detail.

Joel and Ethan Coen's latest outing has all the trademarks we've come to expect from their work: an opening narration, thoughtful dialogue, the pursuit of money, little or no soundtrack, gorgeous camera work, a conclusion rather than an ending, and the foundational philosophy that this world we live in is thoroughly SNAFU...but we could change that, if only we weren't so blind.

It's 1980 in west Texas, and only five years since the Vietnam War irreversibly changed America's psyche. Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a veteran with two tours under his belt and a seemingly new way of looking at the world. When he stumbles upon the massacre of a drug deal gone wrong, he also stumbles upon a suitcase with two million dollars, which he picks up and brings home - and promptly hides under the house, not telling his wife. Having left no traces of himself at the crime scene, it seems Moss will get away clean until, in the middle of the night, he wakes up and remembers that a dying man at the scene had begged him for water, which he didn't have at the time. Knowing that the man is probably already dead, but having the burden of conscience, he fills a jug and drives back out...and, in true Coen fashion, this good act of conscience and kindness sets in motion a course of events that will lead to blood and despair.

At first, I found Moss to be one of the Coen's more incomprehensible characters - I couldn't see his motive for clinging to the money, even when it put his life and his wife in jeopardy. The love of money, and its being the root of all kinds of evil, is a staple theme of Coen films, but such a love, or greed, or desperate need, isn't present in Moss. What is present, as my husband pointed out, are Moss's two tours in 'Nam, a war that was characterized by men not knowing why they were in that jungle, but that they were there, and as such they were going to see it through. That mentality of "seeing it through", whether or not it was in Moss before the war, is certainly in him now, and it is evident in him right from his character's introduction. It is a new reason for someone in a Coen film to follow the money, and it is as effective as it is tragic. Moss's Vietnam connection isn't a big deal in the script itself - it's barely mentioned - but it is an essential theme of his story, as we don't even see him die. His murder is impersonal, off-camera, not even given a confrontation or lead-up, and doesn't even involve Chiurgh - three quarters through the film, it just happens, and then we see his body - but not his dead face.

Rounding out the cast are Javier Bardem as psychopathic serial killer/hitman Anton Chiurgh and Tommy Lee Jones as Sheriff Ed Bell, who feels adrift in a world that seems new and incomprehensible to him. Bardem's Oscar win was well-deserved; Chiurgh is the most terrifying villain in my recent memory. Floating through life with dead eyes (except in four very significant instances, which I'll get to later) and killing men with a weapon used to slaughter cattle, Chiurgh is a man who's convinced himself that there are no decisions, only fate, and this philosophy is what justifies who lives and who dies. Fate is what Chiurgh clings to; as far as he's concerned, it does not fail him. Even at the end of the film, when another driver accidentally T-bones him, he makes no display of anger or violence: it was an accident. It was fate. It's not the driver's fault. He is consistent, and allows nothing and no one to shake that consistency. It is not permitted. Twice we see him insist on a coin toss to decide whether someone lives or dies - the first person wins, and Chiurgh walks out leaving him unharmed. The second refuses to call heads or tails, refuting the killer's insistence that "the coin decides" by saying that "the coin don't have no say. It's just you" - to which Chiurgh replies that he got there the same way the coin did, that is, by chance. Fate. We don't seem him kill this person, but the film suggests that they do not survive the encounter.

This is one of the times where life comes into Chiurgh's eyes, in the form of offense and anger at his worship of fate being challenged. A second time is similar, when a woman refuses to tell him where Moss works because of tenant confidentiality - he is visibly angered at being denied, but does not kill her as fate does not require it. A third time, we see him briefly in pain when he is cleaning buckshot out of his leg; a fourth time, which is really the first as it happens at the start of the film, we see him filled almost with ecstasy as he strangles the deputy to death, because who knows how long it's been since he actually killed a man the way one kills men, in such a personal, human fashion?

Chiurgh is a true psychopath - he is Dexter without the obedience training (and writers screwing with the symptoms of psychopathy to make Dexter more sympathetic by doing things like questioning his actions). Watching the scene where he catches up to Moss in a hotel, stops in front of Moss's door, than moves on only to turn the lights off in the hall...when that light went off, let's just say it was a good thing I'd recently used the washroom. I can't remember the last time I was so scared watching a movie.

Sheriff Bell (Jones) is a Coen staple, the lawman who can't comprehend motivation for evil. Having held his post since just before the end of the Korean war, following in the footsteps of his dad and granddad, Bell is a man lost in the idea that somehow, the world has changed, that things didn't used to be this bad. That dad and grandpa didn't have to deal with this kind of death and depravity. He is as trapped by his blindness as Moss is trapped by his insistence on "seeing it through", and that blindness feeds a despair that weighs quiet but heavy on his shoulders. He is a man who believes that the current mess of things is new, having started with, essentially, the beatnik and hippie movements - to quote him, "it starts when you begin to overlook bad manners." He is old-fashioned in the most constraining of ways. But he is a good man and a good sheriff.

Much has been made over Bell's final lines of dialogue, which end the film. He has just retired, and is eating breakfast with his wife, and tells her of his dreams the night before. In the first dream, he is meeting his father (many years dead) in town and asks him for some money, which he loses. In the second dream, he's riding horseback with his father through the snow, and his father is ahead of him wrapped in a blanket with his head down and carrying fire in a horn the way people used to do long ago - Bell can see the glow of the flame through the glossy horn. In the dream, Bell knows his father is going on ahead of him to light fire "somewhere out there in all that dark and cold", and knows that whenever he (Bell) catches up, his father will be there waiting for him. And the he wakes up. And the film ends.

As far as this being a bad or confusing ending for a film, that just crazy talk, by which I mean ignorance. For one thing, most Coen brothers films don't end - they conclude. Which I think is a sign of a good storyteller. It's also a familiar trope to anyone familiar with Asian dramas, which tend to start and stop rather than begin and end. Any rate, this ending shouldn't frustrate anyone familiar with their work - I can't think of a single one that really wraps up at the end. They tell stories not in one, two, three acts, but as wholes - the beginning connects to the end connects to the middle and back again...or something like that. This particular ending is just brilliant. A lot of people have also written about how this movie is completely depraved and void of hope. I disagree, and you'll see why below.

But let's talk about those dreams. Earlier on, Bell is visiting with an old friend who retired from the force after being paralyzed by a bullet. He shares his frustrations with the state of the world, and tells his friend that as he got older, he always thought God would come into his life. He waited, but God never came.

How does this connect to the dreams? Maybe in several ways, maybe in none. I can't speak for what the Coens got out of it. But from my worldview, which is that of a Christian, this dialogue and the dream - and the whole of the story itself - are highly connected. Bell speaks of waiting of God - but not of searching for him. He was been waiting to understand, waiting for things to get better - but not making an effort towards those ends, only living with what's around him. My interpretation of the dreams is that they are of God. In the first dream, where Bell's father gives him the money and he immediately loses it, I think of what the New Testament says about God's inheritance. God will give us what we need, he will give us the tools, but we must choose to use them or they will be wasted. Bell has been given a position of authority and physical health, and the time he needs to seek - but has chosen to use it to wait, fruitlessly. He has wasted the time he has been given. But the second dream points to hope - his father has gone ahead to make a warm fire in the middle of the cold and dark. Bell can't see where he was gone, and in the dream wakes up instead of following him, but the promise is there that when he does arrive, the fire will be waiting. If Bell can understand his mistake - losing the money, wasting his inheritance, waiting and not seeking - if he seeks, he will find.

All the accolades this film has received are very well-deserved. The Coens have always been strong filmmakers, and as they age and progress they maintain their quality, but make less mistakes. They especially deserve kudos for making such a coherent story out of Cormack McCarthy's novel of the same name, which I read of a bit of at Chapters, and is complete gobbledygook. It's basically an entire novel, free-written. Ever had to do those creative writing exercises where you just start writing whatever pops into your head? That's No Country for Old Men, the book. Once upon a time that was called "lazy", now it's "art" and "deep"...my point is, the Coens took this tangled mess of feelings and turned it into a masterpiece.

And that's not even saying anything about the cinematography and production design. Wow.

If you've been turned off from this film because you think or have heard that it's hopeless, it's not. It's a complex yet accessible tale of the contrast between mindless action and pensive waiting, and why man cannot live by fate alone.