The meaning of the ending to no country for old men

[RougeUnderoos]

I just watched the half-hour scene where he talks about the dreams and it only lasted two and a half minutes.

[Yeah_Baby]

Wow, okay. I can understand why people think Watchmen is garbage. But wanting No Country for Old Men to end?

[VANFLAMESFAN]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I just watched the half-hour scene where he talks about the dreams and it only lasted two and a half minutes.

As i was reading the people bitchin about the length of the ending. I was thinking to myself, "was it really that long??"

I thought it was a great ending to a fantastic movie.

[4X4]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I just watched the half-hour scene where he talks about the dreams and it only lasted two and a half minutes.

Am I really that crazy? I certainly didn't time it, but after the car accident and the kid, it seemed like half an hour before the movie was done.

I guess I'm just ADD or something. It was too long. I knew he was having some kind of old man feelings all movie. The end part was (again, IMO) too damn long.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by 4X4

Am I really that crazy? I certainly didn't time it, but after the car accident and the kid, it seemed like half an hour before the movie was done.

I guess I'm just ADD or something. It was too long. I knew he was having some kind of old man feelings all movie. The end part was (again, IMO) too damn long.

I don't see how it was too long when you consider what the movie is about. Then again during Transformers 2 during the end battle stuff in Egypt and Shia meeting the Primes I was looking at my watch....

[ResAlien]

Originally Posted by Locke

I see it as an admission that evil will always win because evil men have nothing to lose.

Dark Helmet: So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.

[kermitology]

Originally Posted by VANFLAMESFAN

As i was reading the people bitchin about the length of the ending. I was thinking to myself, "was it really that long??"

I thought it was a great ending to a fantastic movie.

Wait, wait, wait.. you like something I liked? I'm confused!

The universe suddenly doesn't make sense!

[yads]

I'm blown away that people thought this movie was boring. The movie was non stop tension for me.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by yads

I'm blown away that people thought this movie was boring. The movie was non stop tension for me.

One of very few movies where I walked out of the theatre with a smile on my face. Great story, cinematography was outstanding, amazing characters, what else do you need?

[Burninator]

Originally Posted by jammies

The telling of the dreams is maybe 10 minutes, not half an hour. I thought it was not only important, but essential - in McCarthy's books, he almost always has a kind of coda in which he makes oblique reference to the book that has come before it in a way which illuminates and redraws its theme, and leaving this out of the movie would have made a poor reinterpretation. I thought it was brilliantly done, myself, just like the rest of the movie - obviously many people disagree, which I think is rooted in the style of the film, which is short on action and dialogue compared to the modern norm.

This ending I got. The Road's ending, not so much.

[pope04]

Originally Posted by habernac

One of very few movies where I walked out of the theatre with a smile on my face. Great story, cinematography was outstanding, amazing characters, what else do you need?

Some folks need the gratuitous T&A.

[J pold]

Great film, I tend to agree with Vulcan's intrepritation of the ending.

I've found that the people who tend to not enjoy this movie, are also the same people who thought Transformers 2 was good.

[Radio]

The movie, for me, seemed to be about chaos and chance, or the appearance there of. Chigur has a job to do, he does that job methodically and doesn't seem to believe in "chance". Yet from Jones' perspective everything is chaos, there seems to be no real rhyme or reason to what's going on and in the end chalks it up to chance...some things you just can't figure out so to speak.

As for the dreams..in the first one his dad gave him something..a gift..a value/moral..but he matter of factly "lost it". He can't even really remember what it was the he gave him...

The second dream, IMO, is about death and being re-united with his father in the after life. He starts out afraid of death cause he's alone in the wilderness. But his father, the younger man, comes from behind and goes on ahead to prepare for his arrival. His father is quiet and just rides ahead..unafraid.. Which is what most people envision their father as...strong..silent...unafraid. Which comforts him and helps him come to terms with the fact that we all die sometime.

Just my 2 cents...thought it was a fantastic movie.

[VANFLAMESFAN]

Originally Posted by J pold

Great film, I tend to agree with Vulcan's intrepritation of the ending.

I've found that the people who tend to not enjoy this movie, are also the same people who thought Transformers 2 was good.

What if I liked No Country AND Transformers 2??

[octothorp]

Here's the actual lines.

Loretta Bell: How'd you sleep?
Ed Tom Bell: I don't know. Had dreams.
Loretta Bell: Well you got time for 'em now. Anythin' interesting?
Ed Tom Bell: They always is to the party concerned.
Loretta Bell: Ed Tom, I'll be polite.
Ed Tom Bell: Alright then. Two of 'em. Both had my father in 'em . It's peculiar. I'm older now then he ever was by twenty years. So in a sense he's the younger man. Anyway, first one I don't remember too well but it was about meeting him in town somewhere, he's gonna give me some money. I think I lost it. The second one, it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.

Like other people have said, I think a lot of it is that particularly for a good man trying to be heroic, you get worn down, and get to a breaking point. Contrast that with the preceding scene with Chigur in the car crash; this is a man who has no breaking point - who is just an irresistible force.
It's also significant that his father is the younger man in the dream: he died young, and so he'll always be a young man, and that's why he's going ahead first. He's more prepared for whatever the darkness holds. He never got to the point where he was useless. Unlike his father, Bell is becoming more like Ellis (the old retired lawman living out in a shack with a lot of cats).

As far as the ending feeling drawn out, I wonder if people get it confused with the scene were he goes to see Ellis. Even though I liked the scene a lot, I would expect people to grumble about how long and slow it seemed.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by Burninator

This ending I got. The Road's ending, not so much.

*spoilers*

I think the ending of "The Road" was simply supposed to reinforce the mood of irretrievable loss. A world which went on for eons without humans has been destroyed, and despite the seemingly hopeful adoption of the boy at the end after his father dies, there is no real hope.

I think I must have read that last 80 words or so over a half dozen times due to the vast emotional power of that last paragraph; it's humbling that anyone could have the vision to evoke such a reaction and distill it down into so few sentences.

[Yeah_Baby]

Originally Posted by VANFLAMESFAN

What if I liked No Country AND Transformers 2??

Then you're Micheal Bay and figure that Transformers 2 is your opus.

[Daradon]

Just have to say, I liked the insight some people have written here. I did like the movie, but I found the end a little long and silly. Now it makes a lot more sense to me. Usually I'm very good at being able to infer the message in situations and scenes like these, but one can't get them all I guess, and perhaps when I was watching the movie, I was just to tired to think about it too hard.

Now I might give it another watch to see if it changes my opinion from 'good movie' to 'great movie'.

Personally I thought the acting was outstanding, and the feel of the movie very authentic and immersing, but the story itself a little slow and uneventful.