Matt Page-No Country For Old Men

Since No Country for Old Men has come out on DVD, I’ve seen it twice and am still unsure if I liked it or not. The film is based on a psychotic killer who seems to work for some crime agency, but at the same time works for himself. He goes around a town in Texas looking for a satchel of money that was stolen after a shootout. After seeing the movie twice I am still unsure if I like it, or even if I understand what was going on in the movie. There are really 3 stories going on simultaneously. One man who has taken the money, the killer who is out to find the money, and the sheriff who is searching for the killer. The movie is rich in symbolism, but to be honest I wasn’t really looking for the symbolism, I was tuned in for the killing and action. Throughout the movie there are many parallel’s that I noticed, but were unable to think of what they meant. One of these is the killer comes into the man’s house who took the money when he is not home. He gets the milk out of the fridge, sits on the couch and looks at his reflection in the television, which has a glare on it. The next scene is the sheriff coming into the house after the killer has left and noticing he had just missed him by the sweat on the mile. He sits in the exact same position as the killer and also looks at his reflection in the television. I wasn’t sure if this was simply good crime scene tactics, or if it was implying some other underlying theme in the film. Another parallel I noticed was when the man who takes the money has a run in with the killer and is injured badly. He crosses over into Mexico and gives a group of wandering kids money for their jacket to help cover the bleeding. Toward the end of the film the killer is involved in a car accident and is also injured badly. Two young kids on the bike come over to see if he is okay, and just like the other man, he offers the kids money for their shirts to make a sling for his broken arm. Although these may not seem very convincing parallels, the way these scenes were constructed made it seem like there was supposed to be a tie between these characters. I’m not sure if it was hinting to the fact that all three of these men had some form of evil in them or that in fact all three of these men were the same person. The reason I bring this fact up is because the ending scene is the sheriff talking about a dream he had the night before. He repeats many of the scenes throughout the movie and describes many attributes of this killer and makes it seem as if he had never heard of this man. This being the end of the film really confused me and really made me think what had gone on in the film. I really enjoyed the film, but have yet to make sense of the ending.