A strange film has been pursuing me lately. Relentlessly, really. It began with a good friend placing this movie squarely in his "Top Five." A very big deal, in my experience. I myself am hard pressed, for instance, to commit even to a firm "Top Ten" when it comes to movies...I continually think of another film or a different method of measuring one against another. So to announce, publicly, that a movie is a definite "Top Five" matters. Deeply.
In addition to that, this film won't leave me alone. At my friend's behest I'd gone out and purchased a copy (really, Top Five movies need to be purchased in my experience) and watched it immediately...but the first viewing left me somewhat perplexed and a bit cold. Even as I endeavored to see my friend in the film...to grasp its importance to him...well, I don't know what else to say, its a tough movie! But in recent weeks it seems to be one of those stories that just won't go away. Flipping through the Encore and Starz channels (I don't subscribe to the biggies like HBO and whatnot) it seems that every time I turn on the TV at night, there it is: No Country for Old Men.
This is a difficult, difficult movie. It is strangely compelling (a Coen bro's production, so no wonder) but frighteningly violent. It makes creative choices (such as a key murder played out off the screen) that seem unsatisfactory, while drawing out unlikely and seemingly unimportant scenes beyond any viewer's expectations. It features haphazard but all too realistic violence and even starts with the prolonged strangulation of an unsuspecting police officer - basically breaking any societal conventions right from the beginning.
I'm telling you, this is a tough, tough film. And its likely not for everyone. But it is also deeply, penetratingly true.
Part of the difficulty with this film stems from its main character: Anton Sugar. He's the killer, a psychopath with a strange sense of fairness and of justice...an oddly crafted code of conduct that suits him perfectly because he is, after all, crazy. The film tricks the audience into believing that he is not the focus by presenting other characters whom we hope to see succeed, but make no mistake - this is a movie about the journey of a killer. The journey of death.
The crystallizing moment for me in this film comes in the midst of a bizarre conversation between Anton and a man he's about to kill. In a moment of strangely poignant clarity Anton asks his victim: "If the rules that you followed have brought you to this, of what use are the rules?" Not long after this exchange Anton shoots the man, with far less effort or concern than I might use to swing a swatter at a fly, and then casually talks on the phone while propping his feet on a nearby bed to keep them from getting wet as blood pools on the floor beneath him.
This is a tough film.
So, then, why is it so important?
Important stories aren't important because of what they tell us about the characters in them - they are important because of what they tell us about us. In No Country for Old Men, Anton Sugar's character is death incarnate and in all its glory. He is calculating and unstoppable but also somewhat happenstance and even casual about the murders he commits. He is not Jason or Michael unswerving in his pursuit of his next victim. He meanders after his prey, certain of his eventual, inevitable success. Its chilling. Watching him weave through two hours of film I am reminded of how unfair and ridiculous life really is.
Who can trust in a God who so readily murders us all? Dispassionate. Unattached. Not even angry, really, so much as uninterested. Isn't that the truth? In the dark of night with no one to stop our minds from racing after our own immortality, isn't that the real aloneness that we feel? And when someone comes along trying to describe this "God of Love" in the midst of the truth that I know is coming, or even has come to someone around me, close to me, well...of what use can that really be? Really.
"If the rules that you followed brought you to this, of what use are the rules?" (Anton Sugar)
If my pursuit of life (any life, by any means) only brings me death, what the hell is the use? (me)
"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins...If only for this life we have hope in Christ we are to be pitied above all men." (1 Cor 15:17-19, NIV)
I have never seen a movie that so faithfully portrayed the dark and persistent question that every person wrestles with at some point in their lives: How can any of this matter...when it all comes to nothing in the end? And the film doesn't pretend to hold an answer. If it is true that all is for naught, there is no answer. Even Paul admits that faith for the sake of avoiding this question...faith as a source of false hope...has no merit. In fact it is worse to have false hope than to have no hope at all, according to him.
So then why hope?
In the film, Anton tracks down the wife of a man he has murdered in order to keep a sick promise because of his strange principals. He finds her and confronts her and offers her a way out: the flip of a coin. Choose correctly and the girl lives, incorrectly and she dies. But she refuses to choose. She refuses to rely on luck and demands instead that Anton make his own choice. She refuses to play his game because he doesn't really offer her anything more than any of us have at any moment of our lives: the possibility that we'll unexpectedly, inexplicably die. As though we are constantly flipping a coin and we've had a life-long run of great luck...but we could always get it wrong tomorrow.
She chooses not to play his death game.
But that doesn't save her either.
If choosing not to believe in death could really save us, we'd all play along.
How then is any of this redeemed? Clearly you know my world view. I won't walk you through Romans or try to explain Original Sin and the Fall of Man...I won't re-tell the Christmas Story or quote John 3:16. But I will say this: if death is the big problem standing in the way of faith, if it is unavoidable and unreconcilable in our minds to a loving God, what is the only way a loving God could redeem this issue?
You can only redeem death through death. Not death that is the final word, but resurrection that puts death in its place. Perfect life sacrificed and returned to unravel the lie that grips our hearts. Can you not see the perfect beauty of this? The truth of it?
That is the gospel as revealed through Anton Sugar.
And if I am wrong I am a fool to be pitied.
