At 12/14/07 11:41 AM, JackPhantasm wrote:
Tommy Lee Jones has a dream. This dream is the entirity of the movie, except at the end, where he wakes up, he's already retired. So obvoiuslly a retired man is going to dream about not being retired and have nightmares about crazy killers with cow guns.
I don't care how old this thread is, but I have to clear a few things up:
IT WASN'T A DREAM.
It's called an indeterminate ending. The reader / viewer is up to interpret how it ended. TLJ's character is just making an allusion to the theme of the entire film with his dream. He mentions being ready to follow his father into death and meet with him. (symbolically, of course.)
The entire movie is filled with symbolism, among other literary elements (after all, if you've read the book, the movie pretty much is word for word from it.) The most obvious being Chigurh (or whatever),
He's dressed in black, kills randomly, and has no apparent moral compass whatsoever. He represents death.
Why is this significant? TLJ's character kind of smacks us over the head with it: He does not want actively pursue death, or Chigur. (Chigur is often refered to as being impossible to kill, and compared to the bubonic plague. TLJ avoids him despite being a police officer.) Thus, TLJ's character does not accept death until the very end, after he retires and realizes his own mortality.
I could go into so much other crazy ass detail about allegories and symbolism, but that would take forever.
And my take on things:
The wife of Llewelyn is killed. The reason is because Chigurh promised Llewelyn he would unless Llewelyn was willing to give up his own life and the money, which Chigurh gets at the end anyways. Also, on the way out of the house, Chigurh checks his boots for blood, as he does a few other times in the movie.
The scene where the sheriff returns to the crime scene is rather troubling to me. My interpretation is that the sheriff either hallucinated his worst fear of confronting Chigurh, which seems more likely, or that Chigurh escapes through the bathroom window (Hence TLJ checking the lock).
There was no climactic fight scene because:
1. It's too cliche and would not have fit very well in the movie.
2. The veiwer doesn't develop sympathy for the main character at all, he's bitter, stern, and unemotional throughout. A dramatic fight scene at the end would have been pretentious.
And I've only seen the movie one time :\
