@iamtheiconoclast3

4 years ago

I think there's another subtle aspect to the moral that most people missed in this film. Up until Moss' showdown with Chigurh, the villain is seen as almost immortal and essentially unstoppable. Moss is able to wound him and offer him his first true challenge, which feels emotionally appropriate because Moss is the protagonist. Then, when Moss is killed, Chigurh goes back to being unstoppable and terrifying again. Chigurh is a personification of evil itself, which none of us can survive without the aid of heroes or at least heroism; in Moss' absence, evil is free to move about and operate unimpeded and unchallenged. At the end of the film, when Chigurh is severely injured in a startling car accident and limps away with his bones sticking out, his future is now uncertain, and he is shown in a shocking turn to be much more vulnerable than we had thought. We are left to realize that the image of unconfrontable evil in our minds was always an illusion and an exaggeration; that even the most terrifying villain is ultimately powerless against the forces of entropy which rule the universe. He may be stronger or more fearsome than we are, but to a careless moment at a stop sign, he's just another accident victim. At the very moment of the film when the sheriff is explaining his choice to resign, certain that he cannot contend with the changing times, the thing he feared the most is shown broken and defeated. So to me, the real moral of the film is that nothing - not even the devil himself - is immune to the winds of change. There was never a "good old days"; only ever a relentless march of time, which consumes everything in its path. The sheriff, at this point, ceases to become a character, and joins the viewer in offering interpretations of the film we have just seen. And in failing to understand the fragility of all things - even evil - the sheriff's interpretation of the film, and indeed his whole assessment of his world, is shown to be tragically incorrect.

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