No Country For Old Men Close-Up (“Call It, friend-o” Sequence)

This sequence serves to establish Anton’s behaviour as a harbinger of random death, brought about purely by chance. Anton does not wish to kill the gas station clerk, instead leaving his death up to the flip of a coin. In this way, he exemplifies the qualities of death. Uncaring of morals or warrant, but unstoppable and often random, unprovoked.

The ropes placed behind the clerk’s head signify death, alongside Anton’s appearance. He wears dark, simple clothing, with a bizarre haircut that almost emulates a cloak hood, painting him as a grim reaper like figure.

Tension is built throughout the scene through claustrophobic over the shoulder shot reverse shots between the men, which slowly dolly in after Anton’s threats are less veiled. A subtle, non diegetic composed score players at a small interval builds a steering tension in the atmosphere, alongside the more abundant use of silence which raises the suspense towards what we expect to be a climax. However, the lack of one further cements the ideological approach of chance and luck, as the man lives, against our expectations (established by the tension built throughout the scene), showing that death is random, and so may not occur even when expected. Therefore, the outcome of this scene, where a person who did not warrant death survives through sheer luck of the coin landing heads, contrasts later scenes in the film where characters die or are injured by random events, like car crashes, or abrupt shootouts.

Important quotes:

“You stand to win everything, call it.” This line means that if the man calls the coin correctly, he simply gets to continue living, perpetuating the role of chance in death, which may often not happen despite our expectations, and a near death experience, much like this scene, can feel pointless or inconsequential.

“You’ve been putting it up your whole life, you just didn’t know it.” Here, Anton virtually tells the man that all his life he has been travelling toward death. Despite this seemingly backing up a fatalist ideological approach to the film, the coin toss makes the final decision, and its random approval of the mans right to continue living counteracts this quote by Anton that death by his hands is the man’s fate.