this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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Skimming through the movie, I would say about 1 hour 39 minutes into the movie is the climax. The Sheriff enters the hotel Llewelyn was murdered in, not knowing if Anton is there. In the previous scene the local cop told him that Anton showed up two nights in a row to the scene of the crime, and the Sheriff went in knowing this. Every choice comes with risk. He took his final chance and survived, but not in tact.
When the movie starts, the Sheriff talks admirably of old cop stories, before saying; "I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job, but I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, ok. I'll be part of this world."
By the end, everyone told him times have changed, except Uncle Ellis who says it has always been this way. People die, the world is chaos. Everyone is one coin flip away from death, even Anton who suffers a car accident no fault of his own. People frequently mischaracterize Anton as the manifestation of death, but he's not; he manifestation of chance. I picked up on this on a rewatched when he missed a shot on a still bird.
The Sheriff tells of the dream he had of his father going ahead, to prepare a fire for when he got there, before then waking up. To me, he has awoken to the truth; there is no justice, no happy endings, every has their time, and it's a fools work to worry about it, but he's now a lost man.
Rewatch the movie with this in mind, and I think you'll enjoy it far more.
That's the worst climax ever.
A climax is supposed to be the turning point of the story, where the conflict is resolved.
You're saying the actual story is this old man who's barely in the movie realizing that life sucks. And this point in the story, where literally nothing happens on screen, is the resolution of the conflict of him not exactly realizing that life sucks.
Ugh. That's not complex or deep. It's oblique and pretentious.
The definition of a climax is "the most intense, exciting, or important point of something; a culmination or apex."
That scene is obviously not intense or exciting. It's only the most important part of this hidden plotline that's even more off-screen than Llewelyn's death since it only takes place in the mind of a character who's barely in the movie, who has no agency and no part of the actual events shown on screen.
It's insufferable. The things you're saying (which I was already aware of, to be clear) make the movie worse, not better.
Even if I was super into this extremely boring theme, it doesn't preclude the rest of the movie from containing a well-told story. And even if I went into the movie convinced that the Coens are geniuses and ready to forgive every other thing, voiceover exposition talking about symbolism-laden dreams is always going to be lazy writing.
I won't watch it again. I'm not trying to reevaluate it. I didn't miss anything. I just don't think it's any good.