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I have been telling people who haven't seen the movie yet, or who were confused by it, to think of it as a cinematic poem about death. Little did I know that the title comes from Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium," which someone mentions in the podcast. Looking at the poem now, I'm struck by the similarity in sentiment between the third stanza and Sheriff Bell's "I thought that when I got old God would come into my life," or at least the yearning implicit in his words.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

This also reminds me of the fire Bell's father was going to build him, in his retelling of the dreams, as though his father, and the other lawmen who came before him, were Bell's own sages.

How in the hell did you not just reach through the phone and strangle that dope Harry Knowles? For that matter, he's still around?? And for that matter, people still care about what he thinks?

Nicholas: Thanks for the reference. If they are his sages, I wonder if he is now, at the end of the film, ready to listen to what they are aparently telling him about the constancy of the way of the world.

Jim: I'm trying to get this thing to download to my iPod and I haven't figured it out yet, so I've only heard the first five minutes or so. I can't wait to dig in to the rest of it. Nice to finally hear your voice!

This film has just opened in Dublin, Ireland.... but this to me is what it is about...

It is death from old age, an acceptance of the dying of the light, that Sheriff Ed Tom makes reference to in his final speech. He is not talking about Chigurh. He has acknowledged that as a man who has pledged his entire life to the upkeep of law and order, he does not have what it takes to fight this 'newer' tide of evil. He has been cowed into retirement. This is mentioned at the start of the film when he says: “I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand.”
The film deliberately confronts our expectations about good and evil in films. We expect an ending where the good guy apprehends the bad guy. Instead, the bad guy walks out of the picture, and the good guy retires, ready to die. This makes us deeply uneasy. We have allowed ourselves a little to enjoy Chigurh, but we do also expect him to be caught. The Coens' ending as a form perfectly adheres to the story's key theme: that good and evil are not like the movies; that in real life, fate more often has a greater chance to play, and that crime, in real life, often does pay.
The role of fate is important. Chigurh has his arm badly damaged in a chance car accident (he won't use this arm again). Earlier when Ed Tom had talked to Carla Jean, he told her a story about the abattoir worker who accidentally lost the use of his arm while trying to shoot livestock. “Even in the contest between man and steer, the issue is not certain,” he says to her. And the film works it this way too. Fate has a greater role in Chigurh's comeuppance, not law and order. (Why would Chigurh come after Ed Tom when he has never met the man?). It is a perfect blend of pessimism about the changing times and Ed Tom's acceptance of his fate as a man.