No+Country+for+Old+Men

1. I am generally wary of psycho/sociopaths in movies – seems like most every TV show/movie trots them out. There appears to be about a ratio of 1000:1 for psycho/sociopaths on TV/said persons in real life. That being said, I feel that Chigurh’s character works here – why might that be?

2. The coin flip scene is generally one of the most well-known scenes in the movie – why is that? Chigurh tells the old man that he has been putting it up his whole life – what might that mean?

3. One of the major questions of the movie is trying to figure out how/if the world is getting worse? What do you think the movie argues in this regard? What is your opinion of the matter?

4. What do you make of Carla Jean refusing to make a call on the coin flip? Why does she do that?

5. What does the movie have to say about money? Make sure to mention some examples from the film.

6. At the end of the opening monologue, Sheriff Bell says something about deciding if you want to be a part of this world or not – what might that mean? How does he act that out/not act that out over the course of the film? What might it mean for you?

7. What do you think of Chigurh’s “code”? What do you think of codes (or ways of living) in general? What is the good/bad of having a code?

8. The dream Sheriff Bell recounts at the end, about his father carrying the fire – what does that suggest to you? Do you think the film ends on a hopeful now? Why or why not?

9. What do you think of the film having little to no music? Did you find that effective – any scenes in particular that were helped by not having music? Why don’t more movies do this?

Here is the link to Jim Emerson’s writing about the movie – the entry called “Autopsy of a Scene” is the one that particularly addresses the motel scene at the end. http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/no_country_for_old_men/

Also, the Yeats poem that the book and movie draw their title from is “Sailing to Byzantium” – it is a good poem, and worth looking up.