An End to No Country for Old Men... SPOILER ALERT BELOW... Finish the movie, then read this if you can't handle spoiler alerts

In class today, we watched the last of No Country to Old Men. When we finished it, we discussed the ending in groups. Then we discussed our revisions to our 3 sentences that we had to write on 3 scenes we had could identify examples of types of mis-en-scene in. For the last 10 minutes of class, we finished our revisions.

We left off at the scene when Llewelyn Moss walked by the pool. When he walked past, a woman stopped him and expressed interest in him. She attempted to lure him with the beer she had in her room. Llewelyn however, respectfully said no and mentioned to him that he was married. After their talk, the scene fades into a black screen and goes quiet. That short time where the screen goes black represents a time gap. The next scene, we see this black truck pulling out of the motel he was at and two guys hoping in the trunk while the truck was in motion. It was such a short shot and the shot was taken so far away it was hard to make out who it really was.  The character who witnessed this was the sheriff. He then pulled into the motel and found the women at the pool dead in the pool. He then finds someone wounded in the parking lot screaming in pain. Then he walks in a room to find the Llewelyn shot dead on the floor in the doorway with the other residents watching and hiding in their rooms in fear.

After the crime scene has been inspected and cleaned up, the sheriff pays his respects. Then he goes back to the crime scene at night when nobody was there and walked around the crime scene. During this scene we were under the impression that Chigurh was waiting for him there and ready to kill him. The tension in the scene of the Sheriff and Chigurh was going back and forth between shots foreshadowed a deadly danger. However, Chigurh was not at the crime scene. Quite honestly, we don't for sure know where he was in that scene. 

Later on, we see the funeral of Llwelyn's wife's mother and for some reason, we do not witness Llwelyn's funeral. After the funeral, we see his wife go home to find Chigurh at her house and in her room with a weapon. She stands there and then tells him that she doesn't have any idea where is money is. Right then and there, Chigurh decides whether or not he will kill her. She talks to him calmly and tries to convince him that she didn't do anything that affected Chigurh to deserve to die right then and there. Chigurh flipped a coin and told her to choose. She would not choose. Then we skip ahead to seeing Chigurh walking out of this little suburban house. We notice he checks his shoes and that it is silent. We immediately wonder if he is checking for blood on his shoes to tell us if he really did kill her or not. We will never really know. 

We then see him calmly drive away in his car in silence. He is driving through a peaceful suburban neighborhood in broad daylight. He then goes through a green light and is hit by the side of another car. Chigurh is badly injured and has an open bone fracture in his arm. Two boys who were bike riding behind the car at the time of the crash asked to help Chigurh. He then asked to buy the boys shirt off of one of them. The boy was at first kind and didn't want to accept Chigurh's money, but then he accepts it and stays with the accident agreeing to be discreet about Chigurh in the accident. Chigurh gets away and that is the last time we see or hear from him for the rest of the movie. 

The last scene, we see the Sheriff at home with his wife having coffee. His wife then asks him in concern why he has not been sleeping. He then tells her what is bothering him. He tells the story of this dream he has been, he can't escape this person who is after him and how he can never defeat him. He talks of his age and how it affects him in his work. He then tells his wife, that he is too powerful and he will never be able to catch him. When his monologue is over of this dream and realization, the movie ends with so many questions of what happened next and what happened in those few gaps in the timeline of the movie that were listed above. The audience was hit with the reality that stories like this happen all the time and sometimes the hero dies and doesn't live till the end, or the bad guy gets away, or that there isn't always happy endings in every story. 



After processing the shock of the ending (which I couldn't stand), we were reminded that our test on mis- en- scene is tomorrow so please come prepared either tomorrow or Monday. Study hard and have a great night!

Bailey Plotts