No Country for Jeff

So two events happened in the past two weeks that prompted these reflections:

1). On March 2, I turned 35 years old, the age which many people associate with the beginning of the male mid-life crisis.

2). This past weekend, I splurged with some of my birthday money and went to see the movie No Country for Old Men, which recently took top honors at the Academy Awards and which features riveting performances from Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, and Kelly MacDonald.

If you want to read a first-rate review of this film, go to Eric Park's website and check it out. I won't even attempt to equal his analysis of this incredible flick, but I do wish to comment on the three major characters.

1 - First there's Llewellyn Moss, a young man who unexpectedly happened upon a suitcase filled with money at the scene of a botched drug deal. With no moral framework that would help him to do the right thing (turn the money in to the police), impulsively he decided to keep the money for himself. Throughout the course of the film he reveals his propensity for making stupid, spur-of-the-moment decisions that end up doing more harm than good. He even puts his relationship with his wife second to doing what is necessary to keep the money. Llewellyn represents opportunism at its worst.

2 - Then there's Ed Tom Bell, the old sheriff who represents not only law and order but also a sense of decency and morality that was typical of an older America but seems to be fading. Ed Tom even hints that he once had a high hope in God. And yet that hope has long since disappeared for Ed Tom, who observes a culture around him that has no more use for his moral and ethical ideals. Rather than resisting the trend towards moral decay, I sense that Ed Tom chooses instead to wallow in cynicism and merely wait for retirement and death.

3 - Finally, there's the serial killer Anton Chigurh, who I think will go down in history with Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates as one of the finest villains ever portrayed on film. For Anton, life is senseless and arbitrary, almost a game of chance, and human beings are indistinguishable from cattle if they deter him from his goals. He values nothing beyond his own survival. I'd characterize him by his nihilism. Is he crazy? Evil? Or is he the only person who knows what it takes to survive in a world where there is no objective standard of truth and goodness?

So here I am, 35 years old, looking out at the current culture in which I find myself, and in many respects, these three characters represent the only three options that a secular agenda could offer us. Opportunism, cynicism, and nihilism -- what else is there in a life where God is seen as irrelevant, where truth is reduced to opinion, and where morality is relative?

None of these three options is appealing to me. I pray to God that the moral universe implicit in No Country For Old Men is not the moral universe to which we are headed. There are many signs that it's happening. But there is hope.

Just like there was hope in the movie, embodied in the character of Llewellyn's wife, Carla Jean, beautifully portrayed by Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald (who, in my opinion, should have been nominated for an Oscar). In spite of her husband's opportunism, she shows unconditional love and faithfulness to him. In spite of Sheriff Ed Tom's cynicism, she puts her quiet confidence in his ability to uphold law and order. And when she is face to face with the serial killer Anton's nihilism, she poignantly pleads with him to realize that he is capable of making a better choice.

I pray that in this country of ours, all Christians can have the character and faithfulness of Carla Jean. For those may be the best things we have to offer.