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Originally Posted by jammies
MORE SPOILERS SO DON'T LOOK
I thought the "13" thing was just reinforcement of the irrationality at the heart of the movie; just like the coin it stands for the ultimate chaos/meaninglessness which ends up triumphant at the end of the film.
They really hammer on that theme through the movie, you never know what's really going to happen, which is much like how life really is; for example, you THINK that Llewellyn going back to give the dying drug-runner some water is his fatal mistake, but in fact you find out the money has a tracing device in it, so it didn't matter what he did. The pivotal scene (I thought) is where Carla Jean tries to tell Chirugh that she won't play his game with the coin - she is denying the power of his insanity and forcing him to admit that his talk about "promising her husband" he'd kill her is a cop-out, and so is the coinflip; he of course kills her anyway, because in the end the chaos is inside him (and everyone else) and not directed by the coin, or his given word.
And it's all linked to the speech where the old fat sheriff is telling Sheriff Bell that "if you'd have told me 20 years ago I'd see kids walking around with green hair and bones thru their noses I'd have said you were crazy" - chaos taking over, irrationality (as perceived by the characters, anyway) effortlessly knocking away the underpinnings of everything they thought they knew. That's why at the beginning Sheriff Bell is talking about how "you wouldn't believe it, but some sheriffs never even used to wear guns", and then goes on about arresting the guy who killed a 14 year old girl 'cause he always wanted to kill someone; he is witness through his life, and through the film how Western society has lost its focus and fallen apart into disorder based upon the whim of the individual and the irrelevance of society.
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Great answer. Thanks. I think I'll have to watch the movie again after reading that.
When I first noticed the 13 thing I thought it might mean that "this whole mess is all just a bunch of bad luck" but that was too easy so there had to be more to it.
I just finished a book called "I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski Too" which was written by some rather intense fans of that film. They interviewed a lot of the actors in the movie and they all talked about how the Coen Brothers had things planned out right down to the syllable of the dialog.
There was that one scene in "Old Country" when Tommy Lee Jones said "somebody unloaded on that thing with a shot...gun" and it struck me as kind of funny.