‘Principles that transcend drugs or money or anything like that’: the monstrosity of morality in No Country for Old Men

Abstract

This paper analyzes the film No Country for Old Men (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2007) through the lens of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Rather than deploy psychoanalytic theory to explore the vicissitudes of spectatorship of the film (say: identification), this paper appropriates the concepts of Freud and Lacan (specifically: the Freudian myth of the primal horde murder of the father and the Lacanian theory of the phallus) to illuminate the aporetic structure of the film. I begin with the distinction between nature and culture – or landscape and law – depicted in the opening sequence of the film. I first argue that Llewelyn's original crime – to steal the suitcase full of cash at the site of the heroin deal gone awry – figures him as the outlaw brother of the primal horde who refuses the pact among the brothers that promises to repress the ferocity of their desires in order to make peace for the survivors of the murder of the primal father. This original crime destabilizes the function of the phallus – namely, to coordinate and balance the structure of the social order – and spawns the figure of a dysfunctional phallus – namely, Anton. My main argument is that the sadistic figure of Anton represents a perversion of the law – a dysfunctional deployment of the phallus. This dysfunctional phallus demonstrates a rigid morality inimical to the proper role of the phallus as defender of the ethical sphere of mediation and compromise. The conclusion to the paper asserts that the redemption of the structural father – in the place of the primal father – promises a return to the proper function of the phallus.

Keywords:

• No Country for Old Men
• Coen brothers
• primal horde
• phallic function