No Country For Old Men Explained: The Rule of Fire

let me ask you something if the rule you followed budget of this of what use was the rule no country for old men is my favorite movie of all time not only that but if there was one project that i would have to say is the reason i began to feel the need to tell stories it would be this movie to put that in perspective for you whenever i started this youtube channel i started it because there were five videos i really wanted to make the first of which was the black parade video which link

in the description and the second was this and as for the other three you're just gonna have to wait for those sorry in my opinion this movie achieves what cinema should strive to be the ability to tell a thematic storyline hidden beneath an already well-structured narrative storyline is something rarely seen and even more rarely appreciated so we're going to run through the story i'm going to give a very brief explanation of what happens in the plot but this is your only warning i'm going to spoil the whole thing and if you have not seen this

movie and if you do not get anything else out of this video please watch no country for old men two things i want to get out of the way really quick the first of which being i have an editor now and while i don't believe they'll be editing this video they will be editing upcoming projects um so i'm going to leave all of her information in the description below if you want to check her out or follow her or whatever she'll probably be doing the next video so if you want to go ahead and show

some support like i said in the description the other one being um i passed 100 000 which is a milestone i thought i would never see in any regard and to see it happen this fast and to just see like how fast this community's grown and the fact that i can make videos like this now that i care about i have a whole video coming out to say thank you but i want to say here right now thank you it really does mean the most um i'm overwhelmed and it's all thanks to you all so

sincerely from the bottom of my heart thank you for watching our movie opens with the narration over western scenery of how good the world was and times gone by i'm going to cover all the meaning and symbolism after i give the brief recap so for now we're just going through the basic plots in case it's been a while since you've seen the movie we're first introduced to our lead villain anton shiger and watch as he kills a sheriff's deputy and then a driver in order to steal his car we then meet our protagonist of the

story lou ellen who while he is hunting comes across the aftermath of a cartel shootout while there he finds a briefcase containing 2 million dollars however while he was at the scene of the event he came across a man who is dying and requested water luellen feeling guilty over the situation returns that night to give the man water and is almost killed by the cartel in the process we then see our villain again anton enter a gas station and threaded the man behind the counter with the result of a coin flip luellen realizing the danger

that he's in urges his wife to leave town we then come to anton who is now tracking down luellen for stealing the money and the first scene of the character sheriff bell who begins tracking down our killer anton this becomes sort of the core struggle throughout the movie luellen is trying to get away from anton and the sheriff is trying to catch up to whatever anton is doing llewellyn then hides in a motel which anton chases him to and barely misses luellen as he makes his escape we are then introduced to a federal agent named

carson wells who is tasked with tracking down anton he then see anton track lewin down to a second hotel in which it seems that the two tie each suffering serious injuries from the altercation lewellen escapes across the south border into mexico in which he meets carson carson explains the nature of anton and how llewelyn's struggle to fight him is pretty much pointless the sheriff in the meantime goes to see louellan's wife to try to convince her to tell him where llewellyn is at anton then finds carson the agent who was sent to kill him before

killing carson and then threatening llewellyn that if he does not turn himself over to anton anton's going to kill his wife not only that but he promises to kill lewellen's wife if lewellen does not give up we then see lou ellen's wife and mother are followed by members of the cartel and in a brief scene a lot of people miss carla's mom tells the cartel members where llewellyn is supposed to be and then in the next scene very abruptly llewellyn is killed by members of the cartel as the sheriff arrives moments after this seems rather

sudden and anti-climactic but like i mentioned we'll get to that the sheriff after telling luellen's wife gathers himself and tries to make sense of the situation he returns to the hotel where lewellen was killed and finds nothing he then goes to see his old friend ellis who informs us that the sheriff has retired antoine then keeping the promise that he made to luellan goes to llewellyn's wife to kill her after leaving her house anton is struck by a car and we then get the final scene of the movie which is the sheriff explaining to his

wife the dreams he had of his father so that's our basic rundown but what does all of this mean if you've already seen this movie i don't have to tell you how well the plot and tension of some scenes work in the grand scheme of things on the surface we get this very intense thriller of what seems to be a psychopath chasing down our standard good guy or cowboy of the story however unlike most of those stories where our good guy gets the girl gets the money and winds up on top he's skilled in what

is seemingly a random act of violence one of the points this movie is trying to get across is the inherent evil of the world see this movie was adapted and directed by the coen brothers the coen brothers are often cited as being very misanthropic or in other words they hate people and in their movies they get across the point the people are awful however if you take the time to pay attention to what their themes are their movies normally send around the idea of goods shining through in an evil world even if their statement of

this is more on the no sometimes than it is in others i don't consider to be even halfway earned misanthrope i don't hate my fella man even when he's tiresome and surly and tries to cheat at poker i figure that's just a human material but as mentioned before with the death of our main character it seems as if the entire story is unfair however when getting across the point that this world is evil and that evil things are completely objective and happens to the just and unjust that's kind of the point this entire movie is

full of references to the world being awful and this idea that we just need to return to the way things used to be from the plot being propelled by a random shootout that happened between cartel members the sheriff's continuous stories of horrible people doing horrible things here last week they found this couple out in california they rent out rooms to old people kill them bury them in the yard cash the social security checks and even lines like this you know if you'd have told me 20 years ago i'd see children walking the streets of our

texas towns with green hair bones in their noses i just flat out wouldn't believe you signs and wonders it feels like our villain is much more than just a serial killer with a shotgun the real evil these characters are fighting is the world at large or the world that they are forced to exist in each of our three characters has a different way of confronting this enemy luellen fights it antoine becomes it and the sheriff fears it a very interesting point that i got when watching this movie is that this idea of characters being driven

by their instinct doesn't just stop at our main characters as a matter of fact there is this constant theme of greed that continuously pops up with side characters that we meet not only is the plot itself propelled by two million dollars in a briefcase but money continues to hold an interesting place in the story in the side plots for example whenever carson is confronted by anton he sets there and tries to negotiate for his life with cash make it worth your while take you to an atm there's 14 grand in it and everybody just walks

away an atm whenever llewellyn pays a kid for his jacket to get across the mexican border the next kid he asks for a beer bottle tries to get more money out of him oh look at that beer too how much brian give him the beer even at the end of the movie after anton gives a hundred dollars to a kid for a shirt and to tell the cops that he wasn't there as anton walks away we can hear the kids fighting over who gets to keep the money no part of that's mine you still got

your damn shirt ain't even what it was for well maybe but i'm still out of shirt the movie follows this entire idea that everyone's drunk on something and everyone has a goal or motive that they're pushing for while most of them follow greed our three characters are the exception the line i opened this review with if the rule you followed had led you to this of what use is the rule is the theme we see reinforced with each of our main trio let's look at each of them and the rules they follow starting with our

first llewellyn who follows the rule of man llewellyn for all intents and purposes is the good guy of the story not only is he our protagonist on first glance but he has all the characteristics of a saturday morning hero he's very loving and honorable to his wife how do you know he's not on his way to odessa why would he go to odessa kill your wife maybe he's the one who needs to be worried and exudes a sense of cowboy charisma that makes the audience want to be on his side what am i supposed to

tell mama why don't you try standing in the door and hollering mama mom llewellyn i'm gonna pack your things not only that he's smart and he's smart in the satisfying way that whenever you watch a movie a character does something and you set there going oh yeah i've i could have done that let me write that down in case i'm ever in this specific situation what's interesting is he begins the story in a very relatable place like if you found two million dollars in the middle of the desert next to a dead person of course

you take it especially if no one's around to see you do it and while this follows the law of greed that applies to most people as i mentioned a second ago we immediately see llewellyn's character turn from selfish into selfless as he risked his life just to take a dime man a drink of water what's interesting is this kind of works as a microcosm for what lou ellen's journey throughout the story would later be we see llewellyn do a selfish act and receive little to no repercussion for it however whenever he tries to be selfless

and do the heroic thing he's almost killed for it whereas when the same thing happens later in the movie when his motivation switches from money to family he is killed for it see llewellyn is our quintessential hero because he's the one fighting the world at large he's fighting back those selfish actions and desires that we see from nearly every other character in the movie even up until the end we see him doing the good guy thing and telling a girl that he can't share a drink with her because he's married i got beers in my

room oh i'm waiting on my wife however as always that righteous act is immediately followed by a demise and as mentioned before his death seems entirely pointless all this build up for a big showdown between him and anton and we don't even get to see him die if llewellyn is our symbol of man and if he is our symbol of someone following the rule of man fighting the world then his death is a warning sign to those that choose to fight the world it's harsh it's uncaring it's brutal and to struggle against it is pointless

one could argue that at that point the only way to beat the laws of nature is to join it which is the exact philosophy we see in our next character anton chaguer the rule of world i have seen people legitimately argue the point that anton sugur is an alien and the reason for it is his complete detachment from the people around him not only in the sense that he kills what would be to us innocent people but in his seeming fascination with the instincts that others follow you don't have to do this people always say

the same thing what do they say they say you don't have to do this an important distinction to make about anton is that while he may be a sociopath he's in no way a crazed killer carson even makes reference to this idea if i was into cutting deals why wouldn't i just deal with this guy sugar oh no you don't understand you can't make a deal with him even if you gave him the money back he'd still kill you just for inconveniencing him he's a peculiar man he might even say he has principles principles that

transcend money or drugs or anything like that he's not like you yeah he's not even like me see one of the reasons that antoine's so scary is because there's no way to reason with him there's no bargaining there's no trick there's no surefire way out it's as if he's completely ruthless yet fair as we see at the gas station he flips a coin to decide the man's life statistically there is no fair way to make a decision than that of a coin flip it's objective unbiased and uncaring much like the nature of anton himself much

like the world itself see as we saw with llewellyn and with stories we hear throughout bad things happen to good people when the world decides who it takes there's no sentimentality to it and there's no subjective decision making it's sudden cruel and harsh or at least that's how most would say it as anton would say it's completely fair when two people are in an accident and one lives and one doesn't it's not the universe harboring cruelty for one or the other it's simply a system of chance or a coin flip anton recognizes that the world

itself will not change and if you can't beat it then the solution is to join it this is the reason anton holds so much disdain for those who seem to follow rules of man well i got to close now i'm leaving that house out back yes i do you lived here all your life this is my wife's father's place originally you married into it it's as if emotion in partial decision making disgust him he has decided to become an agent of the world he inhabits however there is a hypocrisy in the rule of no rules

in deciding to follow the world at large and become a part of the system you inhabit you are becoming the reality that you once considered inevitable it's a bizarre sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that by recognizing that the world is cruel and unforgiving you yourself become cruel and unforgiving and as mentioned before the choice to make no choices is a choice in itself this is even called out by luella's wife carla at the end of the movie no i ain't gonna call it call it the coin don't have no say it's just you and as we

see with the car wreck at the end regardless of what side you're on if you flip the coin enough times you'll eventually lose however there's something else about anton anton is depicted throughout the movie as being the perfect machine not only does he seem to have the right tool for every occasion but it's as if his brain is hardwired to make him invincible like for example i didn't notice until like the ninth time watching this movie that whenever he's walking through this one hotel room checking through all the doors it's not because he's looking for

anyone it's so whenever he raids the hotel room he's actually looking for in the next scene he knows where everyone could be hiding like i said he's perfect a little too perfect not only does he walk through the room i mentioned a second ago and kill everyone without a scratch but scenes such as him blowing up a car in order to steal meds or walking into a federal building in broad daylight killing a chief agent in a suit and then showing up fine in the next scene is completely implausible not only is anton an agent

of the world but he is an embodiment of the world himself what i'm saying is anton isn't real do you see me he serves as a stand-in for the world at large his unstoppable unbiased nature makes him the physical embodiment of the world itself he's not evil in the emotional sense he's not passionate he is simply a literal force of nature but you may be asking yourself how does this make any sense we see him get into fights with luellen and we see the actions he commits throughout the story why would someone that doesn't actually

exist be a main character in this movie well to figure that out we have to focus on the actual main character of the story see lewellen's fight ends in the exact same place it started he's a man trying to survive and protect what matters and he's killed for it anton begins the movie as an adjudicator for the world itself and he ends the movie the same way however there is one character who changes throughout the course of the story who the story itself does not exist outside the context of and that character is sheriff bell

not only is the story about him in a metaphorical sense but it is literally his story in the narrative sense i was sheriff of this county when i was 25 years old hard to believe the movie opens and closes on his narration of events even more so it opens with this line the crime you see now it's hard to even take its measure implying all the events that we're seeing throughout this entire thing is his telling of what's happened the common theme that we see sheriff bell mentioned time and time again is a new evil

that is popping up around him and on top of that he continually reminisces about how great the world used to be you can't help but compare yourself against the old timers help but wonder how they'd operated these times even reminiscing that his father never needed to carry a gun this theme keeps popping up that he is not fit or capable of taking on this new world i feel overmatched so think about from this perspective if the story worth seeing is from the sheriff's point of view then what exactly do we know for sure well we

know that there was a shootout involving the cartel we know that the deputy told him that there were bodies found at the hotel and we know that someone keeps killing people in this small town area the sheriff himself never sees anton yes we hear him mentioned by the other sheriff but once again the sheriff never sees him nor is he aware of anton's presence as he's chasing him believing that lewellen's simply being hunted down by the people he took the money from so think about this the sheriff is convinced the world is worse now than

it used to be and it's his job to get the world back would it not then be so much easier to imagine that all of this evil all of this awful stuff you've gotta wade through to save the day is just one man this idea that if you can get the bad guy everything will be okay if this entire story is sheriff bell's interpretation then llewellyn is his saturday morning hero he's charismatic he's suave he wears the cowboy hat he's everything we as a people want to see win what's easier to imagine that a good

guy is being hunted down and killed by the world he inhabits or that it's just one dude this scene never made sense to me the first few times i watched this movie after llewellyn's killed the sheriff goes back to the hotel and whenever he approaches the door we get this shot of anton on the other side it's a very tense moment it seems like the sheriff's about to break open the door and we're going to get a showdown between our last two characters however whenever the sheriff throws open the door anton isn't there the sheriff

hopes that he can be the good guy that he can hunt down all the clues and he can get the bad guy and save the day the world just doesn't work like that we all want there to be a boogeyman on the other side of the door and all we've got to do is be the hero to swoop in and stop him but as we come to find out and as the sheriff found out the boogeyman isn't there there is no one enemy and it's not our job to save the world see that's the sheriff's

problem throughout the movie we keep seeing these alliterations to the idea that he's got to be the one to save the day when loyland calls just tell him i can make him safe he assumes responsibility for the way the world is and thinks it's his job to stop it the sheriff follows the rule of self he has a sort of messiah complex for how the world's supposed to be fixed as he mentions in the movie he was 25 years old when he became sheriff he feels like it's his job to make the world how it

used to be and if he doesn't fix it then it's his fault and he should just throw in the towel and that's exactly what he does after the sheriff figures out that there's no monster behind the closet door he hangs up his hat and in his desperation he goes to an old friend who tells him exactly what someone should have told him a long time ago see the messiah complex doesn't only extend to the sheriff it extends to his belief in god itself i always figured when i got older god would sort of come into

my life somehow he didn't i don't blame him surprising him i have the same opinion of me and he does you don't know what he thinks we then get a monologue which stepping away from this review for a second i can definitively say is the only movie scene that i can say changed my life there have been times myself where i felt the same way the sheriff has that oh woe is me and oh the world's so awful but exactly as ellis makes a point here that ain't the case ellis tells the sheriff a story

of a man who was shot dead in his home before his wife had to bury him outside all by herself about 80 years ago long before the age of his dad long before the good times as he would call it alluding to the fact that nothing's really changed and then ellis says this what you got ain't nothing new this country's hard on people you can't stop what's coming they ain't all waiting on you that's vanity that idea that concept that's fanty the feeling that the entire world is falling apart just because it's your fault and

just because you aren't trying hard enough the world has always been a cruel place there's never been a better days ellis is saying that people want to look at the time they're living in and say that it's the worst and no one else has had a struggle quite like theirs but as ellis points out the struggle the world it's always been here to think it's your job to save the world and no matter how righteous your intentions are to call it quits because the world is awful as it always has been that's fanty so what's

this all mean you've got our three characters and it seems as if all of their interpretations were wrong the idea of always being the good guy doesn't work the idea of becoming as evil as the world around you certainly doesn't work and certainly won't save you and you can't expect to save the world yourself so is that it is that the solution is this entire movie just a roundabout way of saying life sucks or is there a way out not through righteousness not through laws and not through self but through the things we've always known

even if we've forgotten them the importance of this final scene cannot be overstated this is the solution to the entire problem that the movie has been posing let's do our best to try to interpret what the sheriff's dreams mean in his first stream he says this all right then two of them both have my father in him it's peculiar i'm older now than he ever was by 20 years so and since he's the younger man anyway the first one i don't remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere he's gonna give

me some money i think i lost it not only is this allusion to the idea of greed that we've seen brought up throughout the entire film but it's this idea that his father left him gifts that he since forgotten or lost it's as if his dad is telling him that even though he lost the knowledge that he gave him long ago he's about to tell him again which leads us to our second dream the second one it was like we was both back in the older times and i was a horseback going through the mountains

of the night going through this pass in the mountains it was cold and there was snow on the ground he rode past me and kept on going never said nothing going by just rolled on past he had his blanket wrapped around him his head down when he rode past i seen he was carrying fire and horn the way people used to do and i i could see the horn from the light inside of it about the color of the moon and in the dream i knew that he was going on ahead he's fixing to make

a fire somewhere out there and all that dark all that coal i knew that whenever i got there he'd be there we hear this story of dark world and one man who carried a torch through it so that when sheriff bell got there that torch would be there that that light in the dark would exist to carry him through this journey see this movie was directed by the coen brothers but it was adapted from a book written by cormac mccarthy corwick mccarthy is my favorite author and he has this trick that he does throughout his

books where the themes or solutions of one film is picked up with as the meaning behind another what i mean by that is things mentioned at the end of one story that sort of wrap the bow on the symbolism that has been building up throughout is then used as a narrative or the structure for the next story he tells it's as if all of his collections are symbolic sequels and prequels of each other so following that logic this movie is the predecessor to the road the road which is my favorite novel of all time follows

the story of a father and son going through a post-apocalypse the theme of struggle against the world is brought up several times through that story as well however every time that the son asks his father if what they're doing is worth it the father tells his son that we are carrying the fire what he means by this is that in such a dark and desolate world there needs to be those who carry the torch now more than ever especially in the story of the road it seems like it'd be a great idea to just give

up and call it quits as the sheriff did in no country for old men but then who would carry the torch this is what i mean by the sheriff is the main character of this movie not only is he the opening and closing narrator but he's the one that receives the character arc throughout this movie it wasn't louellan it wasn't anton it was the sheriff learning that he alone can't save the world and in these final moments even if he doesn't recognize it yet he is given the information of how to really save the world

i mean come on the title is about him no country for old men this idea that a world used to exist that all these old men used to live in where everything was better where everything was okay is a figment of imagination there's never been a country for old men as ellis told him this country's hard on people it always has been this vain idea that everyone around us is wrong and it's our job to fix things doesn't make sense our question problem and solution are all presented through him it's not that we just have

to be good enough it's not that there's just one man we gotta get and it's not our fault that things are the way they are there is no paradise that we've lost and there is no better days that we forgot how to handle there is no country for old men however as time has proven and as the sheriff's dream has proven there will always be good in the midst of evil see the reason we all have this idea that the world used to be better and the sheriff has this idea that things can go back

to how they used to be is because of the people we've seen come out of those times we see these stoic figures of bravery and courage and figure oh well i just guess everyone used to be like that when as a matter of fact they came from the same travesties that we do and the solution they've tried to teach us that we still have trouble figuring out is that good doesn't just exist to change the world but in spite of it see the world is uncaring brutal and lawless as it always has been but yet

that fire has never gone out the dream also has this characteristic of inevitability as as he watched his dad go on before him he's gonna have to travel the same way and while it's dark and cold at night his dad set the fire for him up ahead the solution to the movie is to be the righteousness to be the fire that cold nights need the only way to make things better is to be better and while you'll never save the world those who have gone before you have lit the path so that you can do

the same for those that will come after then i woke up that was a lot like i talked about the beginning this movie the idea of how well you can put a literal plot with a symbolic plot underneath and even a solution to not only the movie but these grand concepts of humanity itself is one of the biggest things that's inspired me to want to pursue storytelling not just to create and inspire others which is important but to better understand the human condition itself things like this make me realize that that's possible one of the

reasons i'm so thankful to have this platform and to have this channel as successful as it has been is because i hope that with whatever i do i may be able to get a piece of that across to you all or at the very least let you see ways that you can figure it out for yourself i truly believe one of the greatest characteristics of human nature is the stories we tell them what we do with them and i can definitely say it has been this story that has inspired me and hopefully others but regardless

if you think all that's dumb if you don't care about the final solution blah blah whatever uh i sincerely mean it thank you for watching like i said this is one of the videos that made me want to start this channel i've had this idea in my head for years and i always thought if i can just get a medium to get this across to people i'm gonna do it so sorry if this video took a little while to come out but as you can understand from what i'm saying i wanted it to work out

so as always thank you for watching i hope you enjoyed thank you so much to everyone for being a part of this and thank you for 100 000 subscribers that like i said at the beginning i can't comprehend and this is bigger than i ever thought it could be it was after i hit a hundred thousand that i decided that i need to go ahead and do this or else i'll just keep putting it off so thank you for still being here and thank you for listening there's going to be an actual thank you for

100 000 video that's going to come out soon as well as a really big iceberg that i'm really excited about and hopefully you'll enjoy but right now i want to say thank you to all my subscribers you all me the most thank you to my patrons i couldn't do without you guys and a very special thank you to my top tier patrons thank you caleb eddie benjamin tim publia saucy neil classical succubus stephen marcy kevin cody come ranger xavier alvaro damon alex florian firestar joseph dred zeppelin go snorkel gus comb your boy the real cody

j bobs kenny jakey bryson kingler casually duckman warm 85 daddy cosmic trusty patchy mr ando keegan pgd puff diego anna tobin white rabbit donny ego richard mary gold soul furby max mcclellan bailey bartlett emmanuel conejo cinderlight nema nyam i'm so sorry name ollie two cameron lincoln nicholas jeremy thai guy newa flit lily wacky cody cynic sorry fox margaret dennis andy daniel reptile express ex poovey scout with the name john doe sarah ralph zach how this is dimitri anthony the grey man samuel christine will the sandwich sonny tritz trits43 nessie kid v cat honey and bradley

thank you all so much it means the most at some point probably sooner than later honestly i'm going to have to just start scrolling the names because this is going to be like a five minute read but thank you all so much um i i couldn't do it without you guys and it really does mean the most so as mentioned in the beginning of the video the new editor social links will be in the description if you want to talk to her or harass her or whatever patreon sweatshirt and twitter of mine will also be

linked in the description as well as the black parade video that i mentioned at the beginning and new videos will be out soon hopefully sooner than this one came out but thank you all for bearing with me thank you all for waiting as always thank you guys for watching and i will see you in the next one bye