No Country for Old Men: Sheriff Bell and Chigurh Scene

This is a clip from the film "No Country for Old Men" by the Coen brothers. I do not own the rights to anything featured in this video.

[briansheridan]

It is amazing Tommy Lee Jones never had an encounter with Moss or Anton but yet they connected in some way.

[VideoGameAutopsy]

What I loved about this movie was how the three main actors never share an onscreen scene with each other. They're always just barely missing one another.

[reprogrammingmind]

2:05- 2:10 caution tape shadow on wall above painting.
2:15 - 2:28 Sheriff enters bathroom, turns on light and ceiling fan. Anton exits off camera and walks out and through caution tape.
2:32 - 2:42 Caution tape shadow is gone from wall.
That's all friendo.

[ImSlipped]

As compelling as that caution tape theory is, I honestly think that it may just be a continuity error with the tape. I dont believe Anton was there because that wasnt the point. Ed never did faceoff with him. He was never meant to. The point of the story was that Ed Tom always tried to stay a step behind Anton out of fear. He never wanted to face Anton because he knows he'd be killed. He couldn't admit it to himself until now. The scene of Anton behind the door was like a coin toss, he's either still there or not. Life or death. He was imagining Anton still being there waiting to kill him but he took a chance and walked in. He flipped a coin in a sense. It's the gutsiest thing he did all film and it took a lot out of him to do just that. He already looked horrified at the simple little clues in the motel showing that Anton WAS just recently there. He then realized that he just doesn't have what it takes to do his job anymore. He's too afraid to face anything. His time has passed. The world has always had evil and corruption but he's always had this nostalgic feeling about the how easy it was in the older times. Crime was so simple. In his mind, good always trumped evil, justice always prevailed. But it's a skewed perception that he gets a rude awakening to. The world has always been senselessly cruel, now we just see more of it, since there's far more access to it. He retires as a result of himself not being cut out for it and feeling as if he can't help make anything better.

He has a dream about the simpler, safer times with his father. Always knowing that no matter where he was going or what threats may await, his father would ALWAYS be there waiting for him...then he wakes up, reminded of the harsh reality that his father is gone and is no longer around to comfort him through the struggles in life and there's nothing he can do about it. He doesnt understand how the world can be the way that it is and his father isnt around to help him answer such a question, so he just feels lost. Perhaps the dream is also about him just being reunited with his father in the afterlife. It could be, but nonetheless, his time is coming and Ed just feels completely hopeless. He has no direction. Everything he believed in has been exposed for what they are, fantasy. As he gets older, his time is inevitably coming. He's simply an old man going through and existential crisis, an old man who can no longer keep up with an ever evolving(and devolving) world, and this is no country for old men.

The story is as bleak as can be but it's true and I think it's quite profound. The world is cruel, people are inexplicably cruel, there's no certain order in which things can happen, no "karma" or good luck, sometimes good can prevail and sometimes it doesn't. No matter what you do in life, you can never truly anticipate what's going to happen and you have only so much control over it. You can be the nicest person in the world, deserving of all the greatest things out there but some day, you just might be walking down the street and you're suddenly shot by some random person you've never met, or simply hit by a car. Or you can be a deranged killer with no value for human or animal life, no redeemable qualities at all but you just never get caught. In fact, you manage to get away and live life however you want, despite what you've done(like Anton). As much as we want there to be, there is no order to life. There's always constants but there are far more variables. All we can do is try to care for one another, help anyone and anything we can because it's the right thing to do, avoid the bad people out there and hope that we get rewarded for our good actions throughout life, but sometimes we just won't, but it's still worth doing, regardless. Always try to do the right thing, no matter what.

That's the lesson I've personally taken from this story, but it's nice to see other interpretations of what it all could mean.

[petegahles]

Yeah its basically to symbolize that tommy lee jones is one step behind, he was never really there he already broke in the joint and got his bread

[gladecornelius]

This whole scene really incapsulates the title of the movie. Pay attention to how the sheriff walks through the door and poses like he is about to draw his revolver into the evil of the room in the same fashion of those old cowboys. It's like he is Gary Cooper or John Wayne transported out of an old western film screen and into the reality of the sitaution. He is alone and he realizes in such a short amount of time that not even his revolver could solve anything like the old days. The world has gotten too complicated for this old cowboy. This is the most heartbreaking and profound moment we see for the only decent human being in this whole story.

[morinkhuur]

Chigur learns from his mistakes. After the first time in search of the money in the motel, he learned that it was hidden in the AC vent and Llewellyn got away with it using the adjoining room on the other side of the building.
Role reversal. Chighur was hiding behind the door, of THE OTHER ROOM, after shooting out the lock of that adjoining room. Chighur first went to the crime scene room to look for the money in the vent. Two identical rooms and two individuals in each room. Complements to Roger Deacons and the Coen Brothers to play with our minds.
Great movie.

[denniswild]

Brilliant lighting subtle sound, passing cars etc

[sisigpapi]

The tension in this scene was palpable

[boomerang]

Chigurrh was in the room before Tom entered. He left when Tom was in the bathroom. Clue: shadow from crime scene tape has gone.

[trailermashproductions]

1:06 as a kid watching this scene for the first time, I was genuinely scared for Tommy Lee because I thought anton was gonna jump scare blast him with the shotgun but instead he left

[sundizzlebhambizzle-bazzle]

None of the 3 main characters ever meet face to face, Llewelyn and sugur even have an entire shoot out in the dark. Kinda see each other but a lot of it’s blind shooting and jus glimpses.

[NAA]

Notice there are 2 rooms. Anton is in one, Sheriff chooses the other one and is spared.

[seffh]

This scene perfectly gives reason to why the movie has its title. It's no different than us as kids and we're scared the boogeyman is out to grab us in the middle of the night when we try to go to run to bathroom

[zebraneighbor]

The shot of the door swinging open and hitting the wall shows deliberately that Anton was not in that room when Bell entered it, but the blown out lock and the unscrewed vent cover shows that Anton was there at some point. I think Anton went into the room where Moss was killed, smacking out the lock cylinder with his cattle killer thingy to gain entry, and then unscrewed the vent to look for the case of money. But remember earlier in the movie, Moss had paid for an adjacent room so he could grab the case from the other end of the vent because the cartel members were in the room he'd originally gotten. Anton opened the vent, saw the case was too far in to retrieve, went to the next room and grabbed the money from that side. He was hiding behind the door in the second room when Bell entered the first room, and while Bell was inspecting the room, Anton ran out the door with the case, probably in his socks to avoid making noise just like he had done multiple times earlier in the film. He knocked off the yellow tape while running away, and Bell never heard or saw him.

[dmxdxl]

I fucking LOVE Roger Deakins, the way he tells the story with lighting, this movie is still in my top 3 for cinematography ALONE, never mind the rest of the accolades this movie deserves, gotta love it....

[YosetamiSam]

Anton is not in the room, but his presence is real as he is the embodiment of Sheriff Tom's shadow.

Just like Sheriff Tom, we think he's in there and we're terrorized to open that door. But Tom's never seen Anton. However, he attributed who Anton is through his own shadow.

At the scene earlier in the movie where Anton goes to Moss's trailer, and then shortly after Sheriff Tom arrives, they both sit in the same spot with the milk: Anton sees his reflection in the television. Sheriff Tom sees his reflection next to his shadow.

This makes Sheriff Tom's shadow the embodiment of Anton according to his point of view. The evil killer sat where I sat and seen what I'm seeing. "It's left an impression on me, " he says. This connection is also on the metaphorical level where Sheriff Tom is all about the past and afraid of the future. The tactics Anton uses throughout the movie boggle his mind and force him to seek the Lord for help.

The first thing Sheriff Tom sees in this motel room is what he's subconsciously feared, his own shadow. Anton had already been there as the coin and opened air vent reveal he got the money. The point of all this is that Sheriff Tom validated his own fears. The killer had returned to the scene of the crime and won. He sits in the darkness of the motel room for a bit, most likely understanding that he needs to give up as the crime he's witnessed is a sure sign of how things will continue to be.

[PaladinWilhelm]

It may be a coincidence, but at 1:49 Ed Tom's shadow appears to be standing there empty handed. Could be a nod to his opening monologue about the sheriff's of the past sometimes not carrying a gun.

[Movierebel]

I just realized that when he drives up, you can see the lock on the adjacent room also punched out. For the longest time, I thought Chigurh's presence was simply Tom's imagination. But the truth is, he was next door. Learning from the air duct mistake in the previous hotel shootout, he went next door to look in the vent system for the case.

So, when Chigurh is waiting by the door, it's in the adjacent room. I was so fixated on the room Moss was killed in, I didn't even notice that until now. Just like Sheriff Tom was so focused on room 114, he didn't even look at the lock on 112...

[JStell-vg]

To finally dispatch the crime scene tape theory--for those that choose to look back at this scene in its entirety, take a very close look at the moment after Sheriff Bell sits on the bed. When he finally notices the air vent out of the corner of his eye and looks to his left, you can once again see the shadow of the crime scene tape on the far wall of the room above where the TV is located. Pay close attention and you can see that it flutters very slightly with the wind. Therefore--continuity error. In the film, Chigurh was NOT present in the room when Sheriff Bell entered. The shadow of the crime scene tape was there, Sheriff Bell enters the bathroom, there was a minor screw-up in the details when you don't see the shadow of the crime scene tape as he sits down on the bed, and then when he looks to his left and notices the air vent, VOILA! The shadow of the crime scene tape mysteriously returns.

While the Coen Bros. are indeed masters of their craft, there are many moving parts in every cinematic film. As others have rightly pointed out, mistakes are bound to happen. This is simply a matter of a seemingly minor detail that has been blown way out of proportion on account of human error.