Faith in Film, Week 10

Here is a look at the worksheet for our final class session tonight, which focuses on "No Country for Old Men."

Title: “No Country For Old Men” (2007).

Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, and Javier Bardem

Synopsis: This was the Best Picture winner in 2007, and is one of the best films of the decade. It is a sparse, beautifully told film based on the gripping novel from Cormac McCarthy. It’s a film that works on a couple of levels. First, there is a straightforward narrative of a crime saga gone badly. The Coen Brothers, who wrote the screenplay and directed this film, specialize in that type of dramatic storytelling. In the film, Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) is a normal, hard-working guy who stumbles into something he doesn’t fully understand. While out hunting, he stumbles upon a drug deal gone bad where all the participants are dead. What they’ve left behind is a bag full of money that proves too great a temptation for Moss.

When he takes that bag, he becomes embroiled in a plot that threatens to consume him, featuring a man he doesn’t truly understand. Anton Chigurth (Bardem) is a cold-blooded assassin hired to bring the money back. He hunts Moss relentlessly with a style unlike anything most of us can identify with. Also part of the narrative is Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones) whose chief goal is to get Moss through the incident safely. He, too, has trouble comprehending Chigurth and what men like him mean for the future of the world. He acts as kind of the observer to this grim drama as it unfolds. Each of the three characters also represents a moral question or idea that McCarthy is trying to explore through the story. It is a brilliant blend of fiction that creates a thought-provoking masterpiece beautifully executed by the Coen Brothers.

Questions to Consider:

1. What do you know of the relativity movement?

2. How do you deal with the concept of sin and temptation?

3. How do we reconcile the idea of a loving God with a broken world?