No Country for Old Men - A Moral World/Amoral World - Part 2/3: Llewelyn Moss

This second part of 'A Moral World/Amoral World' devotes itself to the character Llewelyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin. Moss is my personal favourite character in the film and is, to those interested, one of my all-time favourite characters of cinema too. The reasons for this are primarily due to the creation of the character's morality and Moss' conflict between his priorities and his desires.

Moss abides by a rule that differs from that of Ed Tom or, as discussed last week, Chigurh. Where these two operate in accordance to external forces - faith for Ed Tom and the chaos of fate for Chigurh - Moss shuns himself away from said external forces and is governed by his own internal forces and drives. Moss acts in accordance to what he wants, therefore resembling a figure of freedom, or at least the illusion of freedom. His actions, thoughts, morality all stem from the notion that he bears autonomy, and such a thought is necessary for him if he is to have this happy ending of maintaining the money and finishing his "special project" in single-handedly getting rid of Chigurh; this seen in both him turning down Wells' offer of help and his refusal to make a deal with a man who Wells earlier claims you "can't make a deal with".

Let me propose a question: Is what Llewelyn Moss doing right? We are first introduced to Moss as a hunter, aiming at a deer that is injured yet gets away - this we later realise is smart foreshadowing by the Coens in Chigurh's meeting with Moss. Is his aim skewed due to the pressure of the situation or some other internal drive that makes him hesitant to kill i.e. morality? Moss' line of "you hold still" is a repeat from the scene that precedes it, however where Chigurh says it with a firmness, Moss' delivery seems more as a plea, as if this act of killing the deer can in some way satisfy his desire and complete him, if you will. We soon then see Moss come across the scene of the drug deal gone wrong. Snooping around the place, he opens the door of a car to see a survivor of the shoot out. A hispanic man, who repeatedly mutters "agua"/water. Moss coldly replies back: I ain't got no 'agua'. The reason I mention this is because later we see Moss in bed, wide awake, simply say 'alright' and get up out of bed. Despite having this money, something within him still lingers where he wants to 'right' a 'wrong' and use this freedom of his to go back to the scene and give water to this man - a move that he is fully aware will not only jeopardise his chances of keeping the money, but more importantly his life. We can see Moss here as being a moral autonomous agent who does take others into account.

One thing I want to note is also his reaction to the money. Moss comes across the case of $2 million, opens it up, and merely says "yeah" followed by this "mmm" sound which from what I have read was proposed by Brolin to the Coens as he felt it was a necessary noise for Moss to make. This reaction of a "yeah", it feels, is Moss giving in and understanding that he is now part of this. The world has swallowed him whole into its chaos and Moss is aware all he can do is affirm it.

My question still remains, is Llewelyn Moss doing the right thing? And my answer to this question is that Moss is doing what is human to do. If Chigurh is a manifestation of fate's brutal nature, Moss defines what it is to be man. Moss, as we have already seen, does have a moral conscience yet like the temptations of any man, he becomes driven by greed. I am not insinuating that Moss transcends into a character that is excessively greedy and cares only for money, I believe he has good intentions yet attempts to utilise his freedom so much so that he forgets the very world he is living in. It a world of chaos, whereby it does not beckon to anyone. The very title of "No Country for Old Men" employs this idea that the world does not take any prisoners and one must give in to the orderless, structureless, almost nihilistic nature of life if they are to be able to survive. If they fail to recognise the world as this, and instead attach too much power and freedom to themselves as Moss does, or if they attach a divine figure whom will guide them in these times of universal moral lawlessness, "that's vanity". We will come back to this in our final section on Ed Tom.

In Chigurh's confrontation with Carla Jean, he says "your husband had the opportunity to save you, instead he used you to try and save himself" to which Jean responds "not like that", and she is right. It is not like that whatsoever. Moss did not choose himself over Jean, but rather chose both himself and Jean. He until the end maintained the illusion that he is free and that his acquisition of this freedom is enough in this big, bad world to save the ones he loves. The line between morality and immorality is very much blurred as it would be wrong to say Moss is self-interested; he is merely foolish, like all man who believe that they can undo what cannot be done. Moss fails to recognise that the path he used to abide his life by - free will - has been interfered by conditions that are not in his hands - as I have already argued, I do not believe this is an allusion to God, but is just the way the world is. It is not Moss' greed in wanting the money that is fundamentally his downfall, but his greed in his conception of himself, his ego, that is what results in the world putting him in his place.

Barr raises something interesting, he writes:

"I think Llewelyn had to die, symbolically, so we are able to see that there is no future for mankind, if we try to get ahead on our own and not as a unified species."

This feeds into what I am attempting to state about Moss, the notion that one man can single-handedly defeat the powers of the world is nothing more than obtuse. His death embodies this notion that man must maintain a moral conscience and actively work together in order to make the best of a bad situation. Moss does not understand the cruelty of the world and of life, due to being blinded by the money. He sees the money more as a representation that life has 'chosen' him rather than recognising this all a matter of chance, and that the world bears no favouritism.

We as human beings attempt to attach reason to everything, as we fear the notion of something being meaningless; it would demean us and our lives. Barr goes further and writes that this is "why Llewelyn dies in an anti-climatic way, the chaos and ruthlessness that fuels the man chasing him, stripped Llewelyn of what little meaning he had in his life." What Barr recognises is that the film is not a cat-and-mouse film about drugs, money and escape but is speaking on a grander scale of the values we attach to external things, the values we attach internally to ourselves and in turn how to deal with the revelation that such values are not enough. The structure of the world is so merciless, it does not care for the moral.

~ Iman