No Dummy

Tommy Lee Jones is obviously no dummy. An interview on No Country. Is there really any other actor who could play that part?

JONES: No, not all is lost. What I think is the book and the movie, in general, is a contemplation of morality. And the character of Ed Tom feels somewhat overwhelmed by a new character of evil and says so to his wiser and older uncle, and his uncle tells him that that's vanity, that evil doesn't change and that you, Ed Tom, do not live in the center of the universe. You can't be overwhelmed. It's the same old deal.

Then he tells the story about these Indians who ride up to another uncle's house maybe a hundred years ago, kill him on his front porch. And when he recounts the story, if you look at it on the face of it, it seems like a recounting of a scene from a grade-B Western, but somehow you get the feeling that if you were there on that day, you would have seen real evil. And it would have impressed you; it would have been real. And I think that's important to this movie's outlook. No matter how overwhelmed you might feel, it's not about you. ...

And like all considerations of Cormac, the questions are far more important than the answers. The question that arises there is that wonderful dream of riding ahead and reuniting with your father in the warm fire place in the cold, in the dark, hostile country. And if it is a dream, does the dream have any efficacy at all? If you wake up from a dream, what have you woken up from? Have you woken up from reality?
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So these get to be pretty sophisticated questions and I really appreciate the Coen brothers' careful reading of Cormac's moral thinking. Finally we're left with the really good questions, which are better than any simple answers. Did that make any sense?