I can’t remember the last time I was as scared for a character as I was during the scene between the gas station owner and Chigurh. I so wanted to warn him because he had no idea what he was facing. “Friendo, run away!!!”

I love that Carla Jean refused to call the coin. That she died on her own terms and rightly put the onus back onto Chigurh. As she said, “The coin don’t have no say. It’s just you.” Someone once asked me why I thought he had killed Carla Jean after all. It’s because he checked his shoes for blood on the porch.

Some people were frustrated that there was no stand-off between Sheriff Bell and Anton Chigurh, but the words that literally came into my head when the credits began was “Of course.”. And no, I didn’t see “The Sopranos” finale.

Several people have said that the movie should have ended with Chigurh
 walking away from the car crash. While I can see their point, for me, I love Sheriff Bell describing his dreams at the end. They really spoke to his feelings of loss and helplessness and being “over-matched”, as he said to Ellis earlier. But also a sense that everyone has a place to go in the end. There is a measure of comfort in that.

Something about the stillness of his fear and the calmness of his horror made it feel like it ran so deep and so true and that it was for all of us, on our behalf. In that stark bare bones landscape it is just Chigurh, this timeless unstoppable force of Nature against all of humanity. Against what makes us human.

It reminded me a bit of the ending for “Fargo” when Marge Gunderson is driving with Grimsrud in the back of the patrol car and she says:

“So that was Mrs. Lundegaard on the floor in there? And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood chipper. And those three people in Brainerd.

And for what? For a little bit of money. There’s more to life than a little money, you know. Don’t you know that?

And here y’are. And it’s a beautiful day. Well. I just don’t understand it.”

And she looks so sad that anything like this could even exist.

Then she goes home and is happy for, and supportive of, Norm getting his mallard on the three-cent stamp.

That’s the ballast, the world righting itself.