I've enjoying catching up with the 12 pages of posts in this thread. Anyone else new to the movie care to share their thoughts a full year and a half after the thread got started?
I finally watched this movie this past December. I immediately rewound (well as much as you can rewind a DVD!) and watched it again. The only other movie I've ever watched again back-toback was "My Kid Could Paint That". The next day I went out and bought the novel and read it in a week. At the end of the week I bought the DVD and watched it again. So I guess you could say I really loved it. Maybe not loved it so much as just mezmorized by it!
Earlier in this thread there was a short debate about whether or not old men are necessarily more moral. I don't believe the novel or movie make that claim. Certainly it says that old men THINK they're more moral. (I'll readily admit right now that I'll feel that way when I'm 70!) However there is a scene with the TLJ character and his uncle where the uncle talks about a shootout on the front porch of some cattle rustlers way back in the day. So -- I different kind of lawlessness, but lawlessness nonetheless. No doubt a purposeful rant.
What I take as the lesson from the movie - that admittedly I might not have gotten had I not read the novel -- is that , no matter how evil the world is and how powerless you may seem to be to combat it, you have to keep doing your part every day to keep fighting it in your sphere of influence and not be overwhelmed by it. Even though the TLJ character obviously gives up the fight and retreats into his own world.
Talking to people of my Dad's generation that is a constant conflict as you grow older. As you get older you don't feel like you have that band of brothers around you anymore to take up arms against the injustices of the world. And we'll all get to that point - whether your hot button issue is abortion, turn signals or whether or not the Coen Brothers movies have substance - at some point we'll feel alone in that fight and we have to make the choice whether or not to keep on fighting or just retreat into retirement.
That's my overthinking of it