Over the past couple of weeks, the Reel Spirituality folks have posted the first two parts of a three part series I’ve written on Coen Brothers films and biblical wisdom literature.
The first was on True Grit and Proverbs, the second on A Serious Man and Job. Today’s installment is on the Qoheleth-haunted landscape of No Country for Old Men.
No Country for Old Men operates within the world of vanity, an absent God, nothing new under the sun, and unaccountable actions that we discover in Qoheleth.
The film, like the Cormac McCarthy book it is based on, tells the story of Sherriff Ed Tom Bell hunting Anton Chigurh who is, in turn, hunting Llewelyn Moss, a character we first meet when he is, yes, hunting. But… (read the rest at Reel Spirituality)
Great series, Daniel, I really enjoyed these posts. The fictional tale about man not even being certain to triumph even in his conflict with the beasts also brings to mind the constant creational allusions of wisdom in the OT. Humanity, meant to have dominion over the “beasts” in Gen. 1, nontheless often finds this order frustrated because of the chaos of sin and death (Ecclesiastes, Daniel 7), and either our fate is the same as the beasts, or the beast even rule over us in the conflict (perhaps a few allusions to this at the end of Job, too). Even the most basic components and intentions of creation are daily frustrated in our experience of the world.