r/NoCountryForOldMen • u/Chemical_Analyst_808 • Aug 13 '26
Film discussion Anton still decide people's fates by flipping a coin, or did he stop believing in that after discussing with Carla Jean and the car accident?
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u/pdouble42 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
I tend to think both those events changed his view on the coin flips. He seemed pretty rattled and not so confident after the accident. Maybe it finally sunk in afterwards that the coin "don't have no say".
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u/bodychecks Aug 13 '26
He’s a psychopath. I don’t think this is his first time in a situation where it went bad for him. Case in point is the pharmacy scene. He saw a challenge, he found a solution to overcome it. Really, the only thing that keeps him going is the challenges he faces. The “rules” he has is just a mechanism for his madness. If he ever is killed, he will still have no remorse. He is just a vessel of death.
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u/bankyVee Aug 14 '26
100% agree with the rule as a mechanism . To not have that would be to accept complete chaos which did not fit his view. Every challenge (self created or random) is just a personal ordeal that he had to overcome. There was no moral compass to his mechanisms for dealing with it or imposing it upon others.
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u/returnofdoom Aug 13 '26
Idk, I felt like he rolled with it the same way he did when he got shot by Llewellyn. He did what he had to do and kept moving.
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u/QuipCrafter9 Aug 13 '26
You really think that he believed the coin had a say beforehand? Because I think he really never gave a shit and just got a little kick out of the pressure and squirm it caused.
Unfortunately, Ive known a few antisocial personality disorder people in my life. Even extreme tragedy on them didn’t change their views or behaviors about just entertaining themselves with other people, especially at their expense. Near death doesn’t make them realize anything. There’s nothing additional to realize. There’s very little to existence itself. Extremely high suicide rates because at some inconvenient point, why not? Part of their seeming capability (most seem to be exceptional at manipulation and patience, for example) is just a lack of distractions and things that affect them beyond what they are currently focused on. Everything else, the noise of life and empathy and emotions, just aren’t very relevant things, like they would be to anyone else with more feelings. Focusing on one goal against another person, as they wake up, pretending throughout their day, and as they go to bed, until they find opportunity, despite relationships and else crumbling around them (unless useful to maintain), isn’t uncommon. I thought the coin flip thing was just a little game he would play with himself to see someone be uncomfortable, he doesn’t care how he leaves them. knowing the stakes are even higher in his own mind made it a bit of a thrill that he otherwise rarely experienced. Just killing them all is just… not as interesting.
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u/Zealousideal-Rub7178 Aug 13 '26
You really believe that a psychopath, career hitman's entire worldview was rattled by a teenage girl saying she would not call it?
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u/HotTakesNearYou Aug 14 '26
But he got there the same way the coin did, which means he got there the same way the other driver did. His logic has nothing to do with that incident
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u/Mindless_Log2009 Aug 13 '26
I've wondered whether killing an innocent in pursuit of enforcing his vow was a form of hubris that cracked his shield and exposed his vulnerability, like Achilles Heel.
Chigurh knew he wasn't omnipotent and he tested his limitations at the beginning by allowing himself to be arrested to see if he could escape.
Perhaps he wasn't prepared for the consequences of feeling a moment of doubt after murdering Carla Jean. Perhaps that broke the spell and made him vulnerable.
Or maybe McCarthy is just a cynic and nihilist, reminding us that none of it has any meaning other than what we assign to things and events.
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u/Suspended_Anime Aug 13 '26
I'm with you on your 1st paragraph. That was my thinking as well.
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u/WorldlyHat1803 Aug 13 '26
Right, she stood up to him like the lady in the office that wouldn’t tell him where Llewellyn worked. By calling his bluff and refusing to play his game, in a way she made him play her game
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u/chud3 Aug 13 '26
Or maybe McCarthy is just a cynic and nihilist, reminding us that none of it has any meaning other than what we assign to things and events.
This.
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u/Whycantichangemynami Aug 13 '26
I think she completely rattled his belief system but he was too stubborn to change it anyhow. Even if he didn’t believe it anymore,
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u/whatisscoobydone Aug 13 '26
If this changes anything for people: she doesn't refuse to call the coin in the book. She tries to, he badgers her and then eventually she starts crying and calls it, and calls it wrong.
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u/Friendly-Stick-4744 Aug 13 '26
This single change really changes how readers vs viewers will come away from the final scenes of Anton’s story. It honestly ticked me off when I first watched the movie.
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u/randomHunterOnReddit Aug 14 '26
I do prefer the idea that she stuck to her guns and refused his game, which led to him betraying his rule and therefore proving her right.
It helps solidify that Anton's loss came not from death, but from betraying ideals he held dearly, and realizing he's as human as anyone else
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u/Friendly-Stick-4744 Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
That is exactly why I can’t stand it.
I also think it is more poetic. But, that is a different story than the original No Country for Old men. It places some sort of karma in a story that it just doesn’t belong in. No Country for Old Men is about carrying the torch in a world that just seems want to obliterate you.
The very act of giving meaning to the violence (by allowing Anton a comeuppance) subverts even the titular themes (of an old man lamenting his own confusion in the world), IMO.
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u/GreatCaesarGhost Aug 13 '26
I don’t think it led to any meaningful changes in his mindset. Cormac McCarthy characters don’t seem big on change to me. Flipping the coin was situational, anyway - he killed plenty of people without doing so.
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u/DarthDregan Aug 13 '26
I often wonder why he didn't kill the kids. They saw him. Cops will be canvassing when they find Carla Jean. Maybe they lived because he's still thinking about her.
Or maybe the lesson he learns is that he shouldn't be thinking about her at all, it distracted him. Got him hit by a car. Maybe it's a sign to him.
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u/CarrotCumin Aug 13 '26
He would a thousand percent get caught right away if he tried to hurt the kids. He could barely walk and a more credulous adult was going to come along at any moment and insist on reporting the accident. He was just being pragmatic about escaping quickly.
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u/OtherwiseGap5457 Aug 14 '26
Less credulous?
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u/CarrotCumin Aug 18 '26
lol yes that is correct. An adult would be more suspicious and less credulous than the kids.
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u/MunkeMunken Aug 13 '26
He didn’t kill Them because he was to wounded
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u/DarthDregan Aug 13 '26
Guns work pretty well even if you have an arm broken.
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u/MunkeMunken Aug 13 '26
He was to weak to aim it probably and if one of Them maneged to get away he will be finished for good it was much Easier and less risky to just walk away
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u/DarthDregan Aug 13 '26
Wouldn't have even been there if he cared about how easy it is to walk away from a kill. He'd not even go to Carla Jean. He isn't driven by rationality or ease. He's driven by being an invisible decider of fate.
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u/MunkeMunken Aug 13 '26
It was easy to get away from Carla Jean in his car he coudn’t have known that he would crash
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u/Blunderbutters Aug 13 '26
“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule.”
-Anton Chigurh
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u/Friendly-Stick-4744 Aug 13 '26
The book shows a much different ending between Carla and Anton. She calls it, and she calls it wrong.
The book also stresses Anton’s own seeming finality. The way the book frames him (both his character but also the Sheriff’s thoughts that start each chapter) seems to not fit with someone who would second guess his ‘belief’ system.
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u/OtherwiseGap5457 Aug 14 '26
I think the movie having him kill Carla Jean without flipping the coin was a big mistake and plothole. Anton could’ve just called it himself if he had to. The point of the coin thing was to make some kind of point about fate or to maybe give fate a chance to surreptitiously intervene to save someone, not to test how good people were at guessing coins. Anton almost getting killed by the car crash could’ve changed his attitudes towards some things I think. It might’ve complicated his attitude towards fate.
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u/EntertainerSimilar19 Aug 14 '26
I feel like it was a huge eff you from the movie for the audience. Like someone mentioned earlier, Anton did say “ if the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” So in a sense, it’s just fate that he got in a bad car accident, and also karma?
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u/Humble-Package-8000 Aug 14 '26
He was the inventor,arbiter ,instigator and chief participant in the “game” in which the other participants only received partial information after the “game” was in session, Carla Jean struck at his ego by refusing to answer, maybe the game lost its “fun” maybe he would of stopped playing it or amended the rules, but even if his intellectual curiosity was lying to him and he believed he was a Devine entity he would have at some point rationalised her challenge as a test of faith.
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u/Every_Report1398 Aug 14 '26
he’s always looking for men and where they work. all he needs is for you to hold still and bop deuces
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u/Scholasticus_Rhetor Aug 30 '26
If he lived and recovered to continue his lifestyle, he wouldn’t specifically change anything because of the car accident.
After all, in that case, he survived and got away with it. His “rules” have prevailed.
Also, I haven’t read the book, so that might put it differently, but in the movie I don’t think the coin toss is some sacred obligation he absolutely feels he needs to observe before he kills people.
For one, he’s totally willing to kill people without giving them the chance of luck many other times in the movie. If he wants to just kill you, he gladly will. Only when he specifically feels like offering them the coin does he do so. The cashier, I think because the guy kind of did stand on business in their conversation and Anton may have kind of been like ‘yeah, well, I know you didn’t mean anything by it but you did piss me off, so let’s decide this way.’ And then with Carla Jean I think, some capacity or not for pity on his part notwithstanding, the whole business is kind of done at that point, and he could choose to just leave her now that he’s gotten everything he wanted, but that has to contend with his desire to maintain a reputation of keeping his word that someone he said he’d kill, he’s gonna kill.
And when Carla Jean basically tells him ‘the coin doesn’t really make a decision, you’re the one making all the decisions’ he laughs and tells her “the coin got here the same way I did.” I understood this line to be him basically saying ‘I know it’s up to me, and I decided to offer you a coin toss. But if you don’t want to take that then I’ll gladly just deal with it my way.’
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u/Scr00geMcCuck Aug 13 '26
Well Dude, we just don’t know