Determinism & No Country For Old Men

A World Beyond Control: Ageing, Anarchy, and No Country for Old Men

When No Country for Old Men was released in 2007, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen and adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, I admired it as a tense, visually striking thriller infused with Western elements. It was a gripping genre piece that left me contemplating its bleak worldview. Nearly two decades later, now with grey in my hair and a deeper awareness of the world’s fractures, the film resonates on a profoundly different level. Its philosophical underpinnings feel less abstract and more like a mirror. I scroll through social media and the news and see a stream of senseless acts: violent offenders receiving light sentences (if at all), and people brazenly flouting basic civility. In Australia, a man who trespassed with intent to steal a car, who had a knife, stabbed and murdered a homeowner, and only received a five-year sentence for murdering that man who was a husband, and a father to a young child. In the UK, an attempted child rapist was treated more leniently than protesters outraged by the verdict. The UK is sending people to gaol for years due to tweets they have published, yet not sending pedophiles and rapists. In the US we’ve seen the assassination of Charlie Kirk, two attempted assassinations of president Trump, and a young female refugee from Ukraine who was brutally murdered, stabbed in the neck three times by a black man who had 14 prior arrests, who said to the black passengers on the train as her blood dripped from his hand, “I got that white girl.” Across the three continents these countries are on, crime often seems to pay; manners have eroded; selfishness has flourished; and trust in people and governments have withered since the COVID panic. These shifts echo the film’s core meditation on determinism, morality, and chaos. With my age, the film has transformed from an unsettling story into an unsettling truth.

At the heart of the film is the philosophical tension between fate and free will, embodied through its characters and reinforced through its film form. Anton Chigurh, the film’s chilling antagonist, operates according to an inscrutable moral code. His reliance on the coin toss to decide his victims’ fates externalises moral responsibility, positioning him as a grim embodiment of fate itself. His violence is methodical, detached, and inevitable - an inhuman force rather than a human choice. Sheriff Ed Tom Bell stands at the other end of this spectrum. His quiet monologues reveal his growing helplessness in the face of a new kind of violence, one that cannot be explained through familiar moral frameworks. The deterministic chain of events - beginning with Llewelyn Moss’s fateful decision to take the drug money - unfolds with mechanical precision, rendering personal choice almost irrelevant. This mirrors the contemporary sense that outcomes in our justice systems are dictated less by reasoned moral judgment and more by arbitrary or decayed structures.

The moral decay that Bell laments is mirrored in contemporary society. The film’s title, No Country for Old Men, captures Bell’s alienation from a world in which old moral orders no longer apply. He observes a spiral into darkness that transcends individual wrongdoing; it’s structural, even metaphysical. Similarly, modern audiences witness an erosion of shared values, where civility gives way to selfishness, and justice often appears inverted - punishing those who protest more harshly than those who commit the original harms. The film doesn’t simply present this decay; it invites audiences to grapple with the discomfort of witnessing systems collapse, a discomfort that intensifies as one ages and realises such decay is not a temporary blip but a broader trend.

Chigurh’s calm, polite manner highlights the banality of evil, a theme that destabilises traditional cinematic depictions of villains. His actions are not fiery or passionate but cold, procedural - more like entropy than malice. This portrayal aligns with determinism: evil as an inevitable process rather than a conscious choice. In an era where atrocities are livestreamed or scrolled past daily, this banality feels disturbingly prescient.

The Coen brothers’ use of film codes and conventions reinforces these philosophical ideas. Roger Deakins’s cinematography uses wide, desolate landscapes and natural light to evoke timelessness and inevitability. Characters are often framed in doorways, symbolising thresholds - moral, existential, and narrative. These moments mark irreversible transitions, visually reinforcing the film’s deterministic undercurrents. The coin, a recurring motif, becomes the ultimate emblem of arbitrary fate disguised as chance. Meanwhile, the film’s sound design is almost ascetic: the absence of a musical score forces the viewer to focus on silence, wind, and footsteps. Violence erupts without orchestral warning, making it abrupt and clinical. The Coens subvert genre expectations of the Western and thriller by denying catharsis: Moss dies off-screen, the anticipated showdown never happens, and Bell retires in quiet resignation. This refusal of conventional narrative resolution symbolises the breakdown of human mastery over the world.

As I’ve grown older, Bell’s closing monologue has shifted from cryptic to devastating. His dream of his father carrying fire through the cold darkness is a yearning for moral guidance, for meaning beyond the reach of law or control. It’s a wistful acknowledgment that perhaps the old world - the one with clear moral signposts - no longer exists. The film does not offer solutions; instead, it leaves viewers with the unsettling task of finding meaning in a world where fate and chaos dominate.

Ultimately, No Country for Old Men is not just a crime thriller or neo-Western; it’s a sparse, haunting meditation on determinism, morality, and the fragility of human order. Its themes have deepened in resonance as I’ve aged and witnessed increasing moral erosion and systemic absurdities. Through its narrative and filmic craft, the film dismantles the illusion of control and forces audiences to confront uncomfortable truths: that evil can be banal, justice can falter, and fate often overwhelms will. It does not ask how to stop this chaos but how to live with the knowledge that we cannot - a question that grows sharper and more urgent with time.