I debated Yang for some time now on what this story is about and who the killer represents. There are no satisfactory answers. Does the story represent the messy war in Iraq? Does the killer represent the trained mercenary solders? The story is just a simple chase. There must be some deeper meanings. One outrageous theory: The killer is God, the Old Testament God of course. The angry, unforgiving, not-afraid-to-kill-the-innocent-people Old Testament God. Most people got killed in this movie are sinners. Certainly the main character, the Vietnam vet, was. He may seem to be a sympathetic character, the good guy. But he left a dying person in the desert and pick up a suitcase of money. He did return but it was a half day later. The dying man was dead. Is he really the good guy? So why not the Old Testament God. He is powerful, killing everybody along the pass, almost without discrimination. He did let you live, sometimes, but always on his term. He can be slowed down once in a while. People act cute when he was slowed down. And he cannot be stopped. So, is he God?
Monday, March 17, 2008
'No Country for Old Men' Theory One: Is the Killer God?
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2 comments:
I don’t think he’s God because he has no superhuman qualities. He can’t do magic, and besides methodical killing and letting people be, he cannot do anything else. He is in a way interesting, which can’t be said about God. He keeps a grim contract with his victims (throw a coin to decide their fates) that reminds me of the executive branch of the US government.
The government keeps a contract with the wealthy privileged, also the underprivileged and disfranchised. It’s a machine run by bureaucracy—good luck if you step into the path of the machine. You can be sacrificed to advance the executive’s career. Wen Ho Lee was jailed because the democrats needed credibility to appear “tough.” How noble is that? Who cares if honest lives are at stake? That is, they don’t care until they are caught lying! So Clinton apologized, how generous of him.
“You don’t have to do this,” the victims always say. I bet every U.S. president has heard this a thousand times during their years in the office.
He is God - he is the God who is somewhat damaged by the age of reason (the movie ends with this "everlasting" quality although very damaged), he is the modernist version of God, he kills indiscriminately, the good, and the bad - he is like the cancer in the innocent teenager, the success, and happiness, and long life of the mafia father, the chances (flip of the coin) we see in the deaths and lives and successes and failures of the good, the ordinary and the bad.
He is mysterious and moves stealthily in the night - he is beyond the comprehension of the wisest - and kills those out to discover him (the jealous god) - he is the subject of philosophies deep into the night by those who eshew possessions and he includes the postmodernist god of other cultures (eg the American Indian dream of the shaman).
Americans are not portrayed in the world as typically very bright but this is a shining beacon of awareness.
Friedrich Nietzsche described
God as dead, but he still pulls in the crowds and the dollars in the US, and earnest appeals to his existance are required for political success.
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