Dramatic Irony
Half the film operates on a level of dramatic irony—that type of literary irony established whenever the audience is in possession of the information that the characters in a story are not. This information gap exists any time that characters like Bell or Llewellyn are acting out of blind ignorance in response to something that the filmmakers have decided to present Anton Chigurh as having done, is doing or plans to do.
“I don’t know what to make of that.”
In the opening narration by Sheriff Bell, he recalls how his arrest and testimony sent a “young boy” to die in the electric chair because after planning to kill for somebody for as long he could remember, one day he finally went through with it and murdered a fourteen-year-old girl, promising that if he ever got out, he’d do it again. The entire summation of what Bell apprehended from what seems to quite clearly have been an unparalleled case in his law enforcement career is quoted in its entirely immediately above. His narration is being given at the end of that career, not the start or even the middle. The end. Such a lesson is perhaps the very last one anyone citizen under his jurisdiction would want to hear. Good thing Sheriff Bell is putting law enforcement behind him. The title’s right: in another ten years or so his will be no country for old men, school kids, churchgoers or music fans.
Stupid Is as Stupid Does
Whether Llewelyn went back to the site of the massacre to give the last dying man that drink of water he asked for or not, things would not have turned out well for him. He was a dead man the moment he took the satchel full of money if he wasn’t going to be smart enough to look through it completely. So undiscovered tracking device or not, going back to the scene of the crime to give a drink of water—or to do anything at all other than simply put the money back where he found it—is the most intensely ironic stupid thing that Llewelyn does. The odds have to be somewhere around 99 to 1 that the man was still going to be able to take that drink of water. And even supposing he could, what would be the point?
Let’s not Talk About the Weather
Anton Chigurh is a relentless killing machine, barely registering a flicker of emotion as he carries out the cruel and unusual executions of countless people he just saw for the first time. What nearly drives him to psychopathic rage, however, is being asked whether it’s been raining in Dallas lately. Actually, this scene is doubly ironic because the answer to the man’s question is almost always going to be no: Dallas only gets about seventy-five rainy days a year.
“What’s in the satchel?”
When Llewelyn comes back home from his hunting trip, he’s carrying a bag his wife has never seen before. So, naturally, she asks what’s in it. His reply is one of those occasions when the literal truth is ironic: “It’s full of money.”
