No Country for Old Men has received numerous awards and is the favorite to win the Best Picture Academy Award—which is ironic because the ideas in the film actually go against everything Hollywood believes today.
Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, has garnered a multitude of honors since its release last fall, and has been nominated for the Motion Picture Academy Award for Best Picture. It is a highly deserving film, although difficult for many audience members to watch because of its powerful violence and overall downbeat tone.

In this regard No Country for Old Men certainly fits the current mood of Hollywood, and of modern liberals in general today.

AP summarized the situation well in a story aptly headlined “Dark films and politics loom over Academy Awards”:

Oscar watchers say this year’s best film nominees reflect the mood of the 5,800 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The two front running movies for the best film honor are violent, a third nominee tells of corporate and legal greed, a fourth of family betrayal and the fifth teen pregnancy—that’s the funny one.

The story noted that contemporary Hollywood’s mindset is greatly at odds with that of its audience, the American people:

Optimistic “Juno” has been the biggest box office hit among the best picture nominees with more than $125 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales. “No Country” has topped $60 million” and “There will be Blood” more than $30 million. “Atonement” and “Michael Clayton” took in about $46 million each.

The unamimous opinion on No Country for Old Men has been that it fits perfectly with the current Hollywood mindset—and as regards the surface impressions of the film, that is an entirely accurate assessment.

But the meaning of the film actually entirely contradicts the basic philosophy behind not only contemporary Hollywood but in fact modern liberalism as a whole.

The central events of No Country for Old Men all involve characters making the choice to move outside of society and indeed out of civilization altogether.

Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men

The initial scene that sets off all the action takes place in a remote desert in Texas, as a solitary hunter, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), comes across a violent scene that emblemizes the lawlessness that drives the film: a drug deal evidently gone very bad, with the place littered with corpses recently killed—and one still dying.

Moss finds a case full of money, and he takes it—and as soon becomes clear, he intends to keep it for himself.

In doing so, he sets himself outside of society, for of course society cannot protect him from the consequences of his bad act, but in fact is set up to do precisely the opposite.

Moss has thus put himself in an environment that exists outside the boundaries of society, and indeed of civilization itself. Normal rules do not apply, and different characters make up differing moral codes on their own. Most of these codes, as is to be expected, are entirely self-serving and center on the assertion of raw power. It is the world of Friedrich Nietzche’s philosophy made manifest.

Continual disasters and horrors ensue as Moss is swept up into events he cannot hope to control, when a hitman is put on his trail.

Formerly fully attached to civilization, as his name suggests, Moss is now bereft of the rock and the security it once afforded him. The rock—which in the Bible is Petra, the profession of faith in Christ—is now rolling, and it will not gather Moss.

The central dramatic motif of the film is the absence, in this particular world, of the ordering and pacifying forces of civilization, represented by the aged, disillusioned, and ultimately ineffectual Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones).

Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men

The hitman’s habitual way of deciding whether those who inadvertently get in his way shall live or die—the flip of a coin—encapsulates the way characters outside of civilization are at the mercy of fate, of events they cannot hope to control. It is only within society, within civilization, and specifically in this case a Christian civilization, that people can hope to thrive and make the world a better place.

Where this differs from the prevailing attitude in Hollywood is this: one of the main foundations of modern liberalism is a notion based on the thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the idea that human beings are born basically good and are corrupted only by society. In addition, the idea of self-love as being an entirely good thing is a strong part of this philosophy. (The modern passion for self-esteem is but one contemporary manifestation of this idea.)

All of this, of course, is the opposite of the Christian claim that human beings are born sinful and require redemption.

What the Coen brothers’ film shows so vividly is that outside of civilization is chaos, destruction, and horror.

It is civilization, the film makes abundantly clear, that allows human beings to survive with at least a small slice of dignity, peace, and comfort, and with their humanity at least somewhat intact.

This is the exact opposite of Rousseau’s claim, and it brilliantly validates the Christian view of humanity.

It’s a good thing that Hollywood and America’s film critics have failed to realize this about No Country for Old Men. Its message can reach people intact, thanks in great part to the honors heaped upon the film by its unsuspecting enemies.