In 2007, the Coen Brothers made a thriller set in 1980 that somehow captured an American dread that hadn't fully arrived yet. Critic Hugo Emmerzael and academic Dan Hassler-Forest return to *No Country for Old Men* — the coin toss, the deaths that happen offscreen, the sheriff who solves nothing — to ask how a film everybody already loves quietly called the next twenty years.
They get into the film's nihilism, its collapse of the Western hero and detective who restores order, and the strange afterlife of Anton Chigurh: from Criterion icon to right-wing meme. JD Vance has even used Chigurh's monologue in a political speech, while Pete Hegseth apparently mistook *Pulp Fiction* for the Bible.
And what does *No Country for Old Men* have in common with *Euphoria*? What felt like a disturbing vision of a society emptied of values in 2007 can now feel less like a warning than a description of everyday life.
Get tickets to Cine Of The Times: No Country For Old Men @ LAB111
*A LAB111 production. Edited and produced by Elliot Bloom, co-produced by Laura Gommans. Music by Hugo Emmerzael. Artwork by Studio FFF.*
Dan Hassler-ForestGuest
Hugo EmmerzaelHost
Laura GommansHost