Norman 1
Matthew Norman
HS103A
Walters/Williams
Due: 16/3/12
Existentialism in Cinema: Sartre, Camus, and The Coen Brothers
The famous folk singer and poet Bob Dylan once said, “A man is a success if he gets up
in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” Dylan's
sentiment at first glance may seem shallow if not completely empty; he seems to be suggesting a
purely hedonistic way of life. Others suggest that Dylan is merely telling us to love our jobs; to
do what we love and love what we do. However, as I began further delving into Dylan's quote
and its application, I came to believe that he is suggesting something more deeply affecting and
possibly disturbing in his quote. If it is possible to live life in such an unguided, abnormal (by
society's standards) way, can there be such a thing as a universal meaning to life? If I can do
what I want and live a successful life, can anyone tell me that I am living life wrong? This simple
quote began a major line of questioning in my mind, one that never completely leaves and one to
which I am always changing my answer. Since these questions are always in my mind, I often
analyze movies through this existentialist lens. Accordingly, my interpretations of many movies
tend to lean towards such a existentialist view. Of all of the films that I have watched, those with
the most definite sense of existentialism and those that have influenced my own artistic style are
those of the Coen Brothers.
With the philosophy of existentialism and the current critical state of film-philosophy in
mind, I intend to prove that not only can film succeed as philosophy but that specifically Joel and
Norman 2
Ethan Coen's films do. By examining the Coens' work, both technically and narratively, and
comparing it to the fiction and essay work of Camus and Sartre, I can examine the validity of
film as a philosophic medium. Like any form of art, film can examine the inner workings of
humanity and our dealings with the universe arounds us; my analysis strives to prove that the
examinations are valid philosophical expressions.
Before I can begin discussing the presence of existentialism in literature, I first need to
define the term. Existentialism is a philosophy that began gaining prevalence in post-World War
II Europe. The bleakness of this era in European history surely influenced the rise of the ideas of
existentialism. English Showalter Jr. of Yale University traces the historic roots of existentialism
to a response to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi's campaign of destruction: “neither art nor religion nor
philosophy had proved any deterrent to barbarism, violence and all-out war. The individual could
find no comfort outside himself or herself” (Showalter 6). The despair many felt after World War
II led to a general questioning of the common answers to purpose and meaning of existence.
Many philosophers are connected to the early days of existentialism and the answers the
philosophy created; among the notable names are Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Martin
Heidegger.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy considers Sartre to be the father of
existentialism, and his essay Being and Nothingness as well as the lecture “Existentialism is a
Humanism” to be leading documents in setting and defining the philosophy. In his lecture, Sartre
boils existentialism down to existence coming before essence. He juxtaposes humanity with a
paper-knife; the purpose of the paper-knife is known before it is created. However, as an atheist,
Sartre asserts that “if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before
Norman 3
its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it”
(“Existentialism is a Humanism”). Sartre adds that he is referring to humans. Sartre states that
without a god, a higher being, there is nothing giving a predestined purpose to humanity.
Humanity is only what humanity wants to be. Every person must choose for himself what he
believes the essence of humanity is. However, each person's choice reflects upon and defines
humanity as a whole. By choosing to act a certain way, each person is specifically telling every
other person how they should live their lives as well. From the realization of a profound
responsibility comes anxiety or angst, the fear that choosing the wrong path for the self means
failing humanity as a whole.
Another large part of Sartre's description of existentialism is the idea of abandonment.
Essentially the idea of abandonment means that there is no god of any sort. However in the
existentialist's mind, the lack of a god has further reaching consequences than in other groups'
thoughts. In Sartre's time, atheists tried to design a secular morality in which certain actions were
given higher moral value than others. However, existentialists found that assigning moral value
still implies that there is a power above humanity declaring what is right and what is wrong. If
there is no god, humans have to take that lack of a superhuman force to its logical conclusion,
meaning people are free to do whatever they want. In the lecture, Sartre explained, “Everything
is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find
anything to depend upon either within or outside himself” (“Existentialism is Humanism”). The
disconcerting result of this realization is that there is no excuse for any given person's actions.
Therefore, man is free but not necessarily in a positive way; Sartre describes it in the lecture as a
condemnation of humanity into freedom. Humans are born, condemned in Sartre's words, into
Norman 4
life without choice but are free to do as they wish from that point on.
The third major part of existentialism Sartre addresses in “Existentialism is Humanism”
is despair. Existential despair relates back to the idea that there is no superhuman force in the
universe. Sartre defines despair in the following sense: “we limit ourselves to a reliance upon
that which is within our wills, or within the sum of the probabilities which render our action
feasible” (“Existentialism is Humanism”). Despair in the existential sense is not a state of
depression or negative feelings; it merely means that people should only worry about that which
they have direct control. Since there is no supreme power, there is no way to change what the
person cannot control. Following this line of reasoning, eventually one would live life without
hope for divine intervention of any sort. The hopelessness leads to the use of the word despair.
Although not addressed in “Existentialism is Humanism,” alienation and the absurd play
a major role in existentialism as well. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Steven
Cromwell first defines alienation. Although humans impose a meaning onto the world through
our actions, the world still exists outside of us. Since the universe exists without us, Cromwell
writes that “it retains its otherness and thus can come forth as utterly alien” (Cromwell). This
creates a tension called unheimlich, literally outside of or not of the house, which is usually
translated as uncanny; in a universe that completely exists outside of our control, we cannot feel
at home. An uncanny home combines with the lack of a higher power and an objective morality;
at this point, the existentialist thinker begins to feel like he is outside of humanity and the
universe, alienated and alone. Connected with alienation is a second definition of anxiety; in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stephen Cromwell describes his reaction to the idea of the
other definition of anxiety: “I grasp myself as threatened or as vulnerable; but unlike fear,
Norman 5
anxiety has no direct object, there is nothing in the world that is threatening” (Cromwell). This
second definition of anxiety comes from a feeling of alienation. This anxiety arises from a
feeling that nothing can be done to change anything; powerlessness leads to vulnerability and, as
Cromwell stated, he is anxious because he is vulnerable to the universe.
The idea of the absurd arises from a disconnect similar to that of alienation and is tightly
combined with the idea of existence before essence that Sartre posed. Cromwell states that the
non-existentialist mind can look at any given object and state a general purpose, even if that
purpose is as vague as being for someone else. However, to the existentialist mind, objects start
to lose intrinsic meaning. It is at this point that the objects become absurd, having no meaning.
As Cromwell explains, once what something is goes away “all that remains of them is the blank
recognition that they are” (Cromwell). The absurdity of objects can then be extrapolated into the
absurdity of everything. If a specific object's purpose and meaning can slip away, nothing is
preventing everything's purpose to disappear as well. Reason and logic have power but no fully
set base. Ultimately, Cromwell states, “Values are not intrinsic to being, and at some point
reasons give out” (Cromwell). Values and reasons are necessary to making sense of the universe,
if they do not exist, then the universe can only be viewed as absurd.
Briefly setting aside existentialism, I now need to discuss how philosophy is seen in film
and literature as well as the purpose of the author in literature as well as film. Philosophy has
been a part of fiction work for a long time. According to Showalter, Camus is more well known
for his fiction, such as The Stranger than his philosophical writings: “His genius was not to have
provided a philosophical analysis of the absurd, but to have created a fictional image of it”
(Showalter 5). Camus' focus on fiction instead of straight discourse is just a small part of a long
Norman 6
tradition of philosophical fiction. However, many critics are still wary of acknowledging that
film carries philosophical significance. As Thomas Wartenberg shows in his essay “On the
Possibility of Cinematic Philosophy,” there are a few examples of philosophy explicitly stated in
films such as a reading of Plato in Bernardo Bertolucci's Italian film Il Conformista or readings
of Robert Solomon and Louis Mackey in Richard Linklater's Waking Life as well as in
documentaries (Wartenberg 10). However, regarding fictional movies with implied philosophies,
critics are still debating film's usefulness. Wartenberg splits the critics into four categories:
extreme anti-cinematic philosophy, the belief that film can only have the basest, most cursory use
in philosophizing; extreme pro-cinematic philosophy, the belief that film can add and create as
much philosophy as written and oral work; and then moderate anti-cinematic philosophy and
moderate pro-cinematic philosophy, which differ in their degrees to which they believe that film
is limited in philosophy. In the essay “Serious Men: The Films of the Coen Brothers as Ethics,”
Julian Baggini states that legitimate philosophic works “have to be assumed to be intentional
attempts to create a coherent and truthful account of the phenomena under discussion” (Baggini
207). He then goes on to imply that films are not philosophical because filmmakers do not worry
about cohesion and eliminating contradictions; audiences also accept contradictions as
intentional. He also says that the artist's intent is non-existent and therefore, if there is any
philosophy at all, it is the movie's.
Baggini and other extreme anti-cinematic philosophy disciples counter perhaps the
biggest movement in film history: the development of the auteur theory. Early Hollywood
cinema was driven by producers and studios; movies were solely an entertainment, a sideshow.
However, in the early 1950s, French film critics such as André Bazin and Alexandre Astruc
Norman 7
began writing about the idea of the director as the author of a film. In the early essay “The Birth
of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo,” Astruc declares that film will eventually break free
from the chains of narrative “to become a means of writing just as flexible and subtle as written
language” (Astruc 18). The phrase la caméra-stylo translates literally to camera-pen. Auteur
theory strove to legitimize and empower directors and their films. By making the director's
camera and the writer's pen equally important, Astruc gives directors an intellectual authority on
par with novelists, essayists, and philosophers. Astruc also writes that film can philosophize as
well if not better than the written word: “I will even go so far as to say that contemporary ideas
and philosophies of life are such that only the cinema can do justice to them” (19). The
possibilities of film to illustrate the complexities and multiplicities of contemporary philosophy,
based strongly on the decentralization of knowledge found in modernism and post-modernism,
can be shown much more clearly in film. Film does not rely on the structure of words that
writing is so strongly attached to. Film, when used to the full extent of its capabilities, is not tied
to any structure. Hollywood movies like Memento and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
illustrate a fluid time. Older, avant-garde films, such as “Meshes of the Afternoon” by Maya
Derren and “Un Chien Andalou” by Salvador Dali, demonstrated the possibilities of showing a
narrative completely unhinged from any sense of reality. The possibilities illustrated by these
films show that film is uniquely suited to showing the ideals of decentralized and subjective
truths. Novels are not so suited to this because, even as authors begin deconstructing classical
grammar and structure, they are still tied to defined words. Astruc's writing places him, and by
extrapolation other writers of the auteur theory, in the extreme pro-cinematic philosophy
position. At first, auteur theory almost exclusively influenced the French New Wave la nouvelle
Norman 8
vogue, the stripped down movement prevalent in the 1950s. As the ideas of the New Wave
spread, so did the idea of the director as author. Eventually, the small scale films of the New
Wave created a US independent cinema, out of which many auteur directors rose, including the
Coens.
Artist intent is a large source of contention among scholars. In contrast with Baggini's
assertion that written authors and not filmmakers mean everything they create in each work,
English Showalter holds that artist intent in literature holds very little bearing, “in part because it
is really unknowable” (Showalter 25). He finds that great works of fiction contain many levels of
meaning the artist never intended to exist. He adds that a reader cannot even trust an artist's own
published interpretation of his or her work because the self-explanation serves as “another text,
subject to interpretation – it may be ironic, playful, deceitful, self-deluded, etc.” (Showalter 25).
Showalter argues that the entire argument of a work belongs to the work itself and not to the
artist; a work argues for itself. This view of intent is known as the new critical stance in the
literary community. Everything outside of the work is just explaining a possible interpretation of
the work, whether it is written by a scholar or the original artist. While I agree that the artist's
self-interpretation is not the final say on any work, I do disagree with the new critical stance
somewhat. I think that interpretation may be an important key to understand a work. However,
many artists refuse to write on their own work, whether out of a sense of humility, selfperpetuated mystery, or stubbornness. Therefore, an artist's declared explanation may be used as
one of many analytical tools.
With existentialism and author intent in mind, I will now begin discussing the work of
Camus, focusing on The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus. Full disclosure regarding my
Norman 9
analysis: I do not speak French which presents great difficulties when dealing with French
authors. I am reading from translated texts. English Showalter Jr. mentions the problems of
reading translated texts in the beginning of his analysis The Stranger: Humanity and the Absurd:
“Readers of the English translation are not reading Camus's language but a text based on it, and
this new text to some degree interprets the original” (Showalter 25). I have to trust that the
translator's interpretation of the original is as faithful as it can be. I will be using Matthew Ward's
translation of The Stranger.
Albert Camus' main non-fiction work, an essay titled The Myth of Sisyphus, concerns
itself with suicide and the idea of the absurd. In the very first sentence of The Myth of Sisyphus,
Camus states, “There is but one truly serious philosophical question, and that is suicide” (The
Myth of Sisyphus 3). He starts off the work strongly and clearly; he is writing to discuss whether
life is worth living. In Camus' mind, the entire purpose of philosophy is to answer that question,
a question that boils down to the meaning of life. Camus writes that committing suicide implies
that one recognizes “the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that
daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering” (5). For Camus, the question then becomes
whether the absurd can coexist with a suitable meaning for life.
Camus sets up his definition of the absurd by first giving examples of actions most people
would consider absurd, such as “a man armed only with a sword attack a group of machine guns”
(22). He explains that people find this action absurd because the desire of the swordsman is so
completely different from the obvious expected outcome. Absurdity cannot arise from a single
thing; absurdity comes from the juxtaposition of two things, generally fact and reality. Therefore,
the philosophical absurd “is not in man … nor in the world, but in the presence together” (23).
Norman 10
The absurd that Camus deals with is the difference in what the mind expects to be true and what
reality is. The recognition of absurdity creates a necessity to reconsider the worth of life. Once
someone realizes that there is a separation between himself or herself and an absurd world, the
“divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints,” the person must
reconsider what the purpose of his or her life is (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus 37).
However, it becomes apparent in the essay that Camus himself is not worried about a
grand meaning. He admits that he does not know the meaning, and it is impossible for him to
know it and notes, “What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? … What I touch –
what resists me – that is what I understand” (38). Because of the disconnect inherent in the
absurd, Camus feels divorced from the world around him. The only thing he knows he can
believe in is he physically experiences. Camus' lack of meaning relates back to the idea of
alienation; since people are not part of the larger world, we cannot relate to it. In this vein,
Camus writes, “If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a
meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world” (38). People
do not have a natural meaning because we are not part of the natural world. However, Camus and
the members of the absurd do not believe suicide is the answer even in the face of a lack of a
meaning. In 1943, shortly after The Stranger was published, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a highly
influential analytical and critical essay of The Stranger and Camus titled “Camus' The Outsider.”
In the essay, Sartre explained why suicide is not an answer for the absurd: “there is a passion of
the absurd... He wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future,
without hope, without illusion and without resignation either” (“Camus' The Outsider” 29). The
absurd man must embrace all of the confusion and disappointment the world offers.
Norman 11
In The Stranger, Camus tells the tale of a man, Meursault, who does not cry at his
mother's funeral, kills a man for seemingly no reason, and does not protest at his trial. He is
eventually put to death. To put the book into a historical context, Camus began writing it two
years before World War II; therefore, it predates the popularity of existentialism. In fact, Camus
rejected the title of existentialism entirely; in an introduction to a collection of his work, Camus
wrote, “'Sartre is an existentialist, and the only book of ideas I have published, The Myth of
Sisyphus, was directed against those philosophers called existentialists'” (qtd in Showalter 4).
Camus very clearly states he is not an existentialist. Camus agrees with the analysis of the human
condition of the existentialists; however, he disagrees with the conclusions as to how people
should react to the realization of their condition. According to Showalter, existentialists such as
“[Blaise] Pascal, [Søren] Kierkegaard, and [Fyodor] Dostoyevski, for example, analyze the
human condition and find such misery that philosophical choice is reduced to intolerable despair
or Christian faith” (4). Existentialists wrote that one could not live comfortably in the
knowledge of the condition. The only options were complete misery or taking comfort in other
things. Camus rejects this idea; he wanted to find a way to comfortably live in the absurd.
However, as Showalter said, artist intention does not really matter, the meaning of the work
comes from the work itself. Thus, Camus' work has been adopted by existentialists, namely
Sartre.
Throughout The Stranger, Meursault remains completely passive and detached towards
everything that happens to him. During the funeral procession, Meursault comments multiple
times on how hot it is; he comments, “But today, with the sun bearing down, making the whole
landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive” (Camus, The Stranger 15). This is
Norman 12
not the only mention of the heat of the funeral day. While the reader could psychologically
analyze Meursault and conclude that by focusing on the heat, he is distracting himself from any
uncomfortable emotions, the truth is that Camus makes no mention of such distractions in the
novel; therefore, any such conclusion is faulty. Camus creates a passive character in order to
analyze the life of an absurd man. Meursault's approach to life perfectly fits Camus' writing from
The Myth of Sisyphus: “This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is
properly the feeling of absurdity” (The Myth of Sisyphus 5). By creating a character that has such
a clear divorce from his life, Camus' goal was to analyze an absurd character and how an absurd
man could possibly live in a world inhabited by those who do not embrace the absurd. Camus
stated that the main question of philosophy is suicide; the most important thing to look at in The
Stranger then is how it deals with voluntary death, namely the voluntary death of the absurd man
Meursault.
Meursault refuses to actively defend himself either in court or to the chaplain. It is in this
way he commits suicide, not by actually killing himself but by not protecting his own life.
Meursault readily accepts the inevitability of his execution. Because he will eventually die no
matter what, he rationalizes, “Whether it was now or twenty years from now, I would still be the
one dying. … Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter” (The
Stranger 114). Although the distant Meursault never considers actively killing himself, he readily
accepts death. The alternative to accepting death is hoping for a future. However, by hoping, one
destroys the present; instead of living in the present, a person with hope is ignoring it and
obsessing over the future. After Meursault removes all hope for the future from his mind, he is
“free to live in the certainties of the here and now” (Showalter 107). The certainties of the
Norman 13
present Meursault desires are similar to the purely tactile understanding Camus discusses in The
Myth of Sisyphus. Meursault's embrace of the present and acceptance of his execution also relates
to Sartre's idea of existential despair. The idea of despair is that one must accept the things over
which he or she has no control. As an absurd man, Meursault does not see the relationship
between his actions and their consequences; he does not grasp that his coldness regarding the
murder of the Arab has any bearing on the guilty verdict. Therefore, he believes he has no
bearing on whether or not he will be executed. Then, in the spirit of existential despair,
Meursault does not worry about his execution or try to figure a way out of it. He thinks he has no
control over it so he accepts it as a foregone event. Ultimately, Camus argues that, although death
is not to be run to, it is something that should be accepted as inevitable. Suicide is not the answer
to an absurd life.
The murder that leads to the trial is a major turning point in the novel as well as an
important moment for Meursault. On the day of the murder, Meursault spends the day at the
beach with Marie, Raymond, and an older couple. After two encounters with a group of Arabs,
Meursault, with a gun in his pocket, eventually finds himself alone with one of the Arabs.
Because it is hot, Meursault shoots the Arab, killing him on the first shot, and then shooting him
4 more times.
Nowhere in the book does Meursault ever rationalize the murder. The only explanation
that is offered is that it is hot, he has a headache, and he wants to sit by the spring in the oasis.
Meursault follows the path of least resistance; in this case, that path results in the death of the
Arab. Many critics try to impose a reason onto the murder, whether it be political or
psychological, or they try to create some symbolism out of the murder. However, any
Norman 14
explanation, either logical or literary, for the murder is a faulty conclusion based on the reader's
desire to find a reason, not based on anything in the text. There is simply no reason; Showalter
states, “The point of this crime, however, is that it has no purpose and no excuse” (43). On a
philosophical level, the crime relates to the idea of abandonment. Under existential
abandonment, actions do not need explanation because there is no higher power asking for a
higher power. Therefore, Meursault acting so drastically with no real reason is entirely within
what is allowed in a universe without God. The murder also reinforces Meursault's status as an
absurd man. He is fully divorced from his environment and his future. He does not consider the
ramifications of acting so rashly or the consequences on his life if he murders this man, not
because he is psychotic or inhuman but because he does not think anything has an effect on him
or that he has an effect on anything.
The language used in the section further reinforces the Meursault's passivity. First, as he
first approaches the Arab alone, Meursault notes, “Naturally, I gripped Raymond's gun inside my
jacket” (The Stranger 58). Not being a gun owner, Meursault should not come to this action
naturally. However, it is natural because it is instinctual. Meursault is not actively doing
anything; he is merely acting on impulse. The passivity of language continues to the murder
itself. As Meursault aims at the Arab, “the trigger gave” (59). Meursault is not part of the murder
at all according to the language. The gun fires itself. Because he is entirely unaware of the
consequences of his actions, the absurd man not driven by any God or morality cannot act with
certainty.
The last important part of the murder scene is the setting. The beach is an oppressive,
overwhelming, inhuman place. As Meursault walks back towards the oasis, he describes the
Norman 15
experience: “Every time I felt a blast of its hot breath strike my face, I gritted my teeth, clenched
my fists in my trouser pockets, and strained every nerve in order to overcome the sun and the
thick drunkenness it was spilling over me” (57). The heat, the brightness, and everything else
about the beach is working against Meursault, causing him pain. This beach with no shelter is a
tortuous place. According to Micheline Tisson-Braun in her essay “Silence and the Desert: The
Flickering Vision,” in Camus' early work, he used the desert to create a place where humans can
lose themselves and communicate with the gods. However, in era of The Stranger and his
writings on the absurd, the desert began to mean something more sinister. Regarding the desert
settings in the middle era of Camus' writing, Tisson-Braun asserts, “Man is now a stranger in the
world, deprived of those enigmatic, lost motherlands that were Tipasa, Djemila, Florence [the
deserts of communion with the gods] which 'negated' only his personal consciousness” (TissonBraun 46). In the new desert, man still loses himself but has no god or grander power to which
he can attach. The existential abandonment the purposelessness of the crime creates is reinforced
by the abandonment for which the desert stands. Meursault has trouble focusing or observing
anything in the desert; he has lost his sense of self but still has no guiding force steering him
away from murder.
The Stranger has a perfect example of an absurd man as well as strong examples of
existential abandonment and despair. Even as Camus claims he was never an existentialist, it is
easy to see how existential thinkers like Sartre adopted him as their own.
Now that I have analyzed the major parts of The Stranger, I will move away from
literature into the field of cinematic analysis focusing on the Coens' films. I will compare
elements of my analysis of Camus to elements found in the films to illustrate not only that the
Norman 16
Coens philosophize in their movies but also how their philosophy is both similar and different to
Camus'. Many of the themes Camus wrote on are present in the Coen films; I will show how
these themes translate to the screen.
The Coens themselves make it difficult to study their own work. They refuse to talk about
any master plan, any overarching philosophy, anything unifying their filmography. In an
interview with Charlie Rose following the release of Fargo, Joel Coen specifically states that his
and his brother's goal is to do “just something different than what [they have] done before”
(“Interview with Charlie Rose”). If it were not for the ideas of the auteur theory, a filmmaker that
so entirely refused to admit any philosophy could not be taken seriously. However, since auteur
theory places the filmmaker on the same level as author, the same things Showalter claimed
regarding Camus can easily be extrapolated to the Coens. Since the Coens write and edit their
movies as well, the comparison holds even stronger. Just as Camus can be read as existentialist
while he denies any connection to the movement so can the Coens be read as having a
philosophy even when they deny anything resembling a philosophical edge. Thus, with the
knowledge that the Coens will never be helpful on the topic of their own movies, I will analyze
the movies themselves by looking at recurring events, characters, and locations throughout their
films.
The first aspect of their oeuvre is the setting. The Coens usually set their movies in barren
landscapes. Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men and parts of The Big
Lebowski are all set in the desert of Southwestern United States and Fargo takes place in the
equally barren frozen Northern plains. The location automatically places the Coen films in
comparison with Camus' work, the similar settings must convey a similar message, one of
Norman 17
abandonment and isolation. According to Richard Gaughran in the essay “'What Kind of Man
Are You?': The Coen Brothers and Existentialist Role Playing,” characters in the Coen universe
“act freely, but they do so within an uncaring, hostile environment, that is, within the realm of
the absurd” (Gaughran 228). By being barren and either unbearably cold or hot, the landscapes
remind the viewer that the characters are alone; there is no shelter from the storm. The places in
Camus' work where people could experience the gods do not change. They are still just as empty
of man made comforts as they were. However, when there were gods to be experienced, the
emptiness was comforting. Once the gods are dead, though, emptiness is disturbing. There is
nothing for the characters to take comfort in, nothing for them to hold onto. They experience the
divorce characteristic of the absurd condition. They feel separated from their lives.
Similar to their barren landscapes, the Coens use barren soundscapes to create a greater
emptiness. Soundscape here refers to all elements of sound and the atmosphere the combination
creates. The soundscape from No Country for Old Men stands out the most. Apart from a few
scattered, ominous tones throughout the movie, there is no score. The sound is entirely diagetic,
meaning it comes from the world of the film. Moviegoers are not used to such an extreme. It is
incredibly unsettling. There are long stretches of complete or almost complete silence. Similar to
the mood deserts create, the lack of sound makes the listener feel abandoned. There is nothing
for the audience to latch onto. Music or even continuous sound is comforting because it is the
known. Silence is not common. People are uncomfortable with silence. Since the desert setting
allows the viewer no respite, the viewer would want something they know in the soundscape to
comfort them. There is nothing; therefore, the thorough silence reinforces the detachment and
loneliness the desert creates.
Norman 18
Unlike Meursault, absurd characters in the Coen films often try to find a meaning or
identity in the meaninglessness of the perceived world. The character most obsessed with
establishing his identity in and introducing order to an orderless world is Walter Sobchak (John
Goodman) in The Big Lebowski. Walter is a Vietnam War veteran, a veteran of a war known for
being aimless and somewhat chaotic, who has dedicated his life to bowling and Judaism. The
experience in Vietnam clearly disturbed Walter. In an early scene, a member on an opposing
bowling team accidentally slips his foot over the line in a casual game. When Walter calls the
foul on him and the man denies it, Walter exclaims, “This is bowling, not 'Nam, there are rules;”
he then pulls his gun and shouts, “Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one who gives
a shit about the rules?” (The Big Lebowski). The chaos of the modern world troubles Walter.
Whether the emotional problems are caused by his experiences in Vietnam or a deeper, more
personal life event is unknown; the movie does not delve into Walter's back story very deeply.
The audience knows all that it needs. Walter cannot, to use the Dude's word, abide the modern
world.
Because the modern world is too much for Walter, he tries to ground himself in a classical
religion, Judaism. Judaism, like bowling, has a strict set of rules set forth in the Talmud. Also, it
allows Walter to fall back onto something stable and grand. When the Dude (Jeff Bridges)
accuses Walter of living in the past, Walter angrily responds, “Three thousand years of beautiful
tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you're goddamn right I'm living in the past!” (The Big
Lebowski). The stability and tradition of Judaism is comforting in Walter's life. He cannot handle
the chaos of the modern world so he falls back onto the past for happiness. However, the Coens
make sure the audience knows that Walter's Judaism is not real. Neither is he actually of a Jewish
Norman 19
heritage nor was he raised in the Jewish faith. He converted to Judaism when he married his wife
and stayed in the faith even after they got divorced. In the essay “The Human Comedy
Perpetuates Itself: Nihilism and Comedy in Coen Neo-Noir,” Thomas S. Hibbs writes that
Walter's conversion to and embrace of Judaism “serves to underscore the absurdity of attempting
to introduce an ethos into a fragmented contemporary culture” (Hibbs 34). Walter is not a true
Jew by any measure. He is merely using Judaism to avoid confronting his own issues. By
presenting religion as a ridiculous concept for the modern world, the Coens are denouncing
Walter's attempt at making sense of the world through a filter like religion.
By rejecting Walter's attempt at crafting an identity, the Coens implicitly encourage the
Dude's approach to life: a completely passive acceptance of everything. The Dude and Meursault
are similar characters in their passivity. Regarding the Dude, Thomas Hibbs writes, “The Dude
accepts the basic absurdity of the cosmos, of life in the most advanced civilization ever to grace
the face of the earth. His way of life affirms the equal significance or insignificance of all human
endeavors” (Hibbs 35). The Dude definitely experiences the absurd throughout the movie. He
gets mistaken for a rich man with his name, his rug urinated on, and caught up in a fake
kidnapping plot. He did nothing to deserve any of what happens to him throughout the movie. He
cannot help but feel disconnected from his life; he has no control over what happens. However,
unlike Walter, the lack of control seems to be completely fine with him. The Dude wants to live
fully embracing the absurd. The Dude's final line in the movie sums up his attitude towards
everything well: “The Dude abides” (The Big Lebowski). No matter what happens to the Dude,
no matter how crazy things get for him, he will always accept it. The Dude is the personification
of existential despair. Nothing is his fault so he will not worry about trying to fix it. The Coens'
Norman 20
goal is to show that abiding is the best way to accept the absurd.
Another major similarity between Camus and the Coens is the use of senseless violence.
The plot of The Stranger revolves around the murder of the Arab. Many Coen films are either
started by or result in senseless violence or nonsensical crimes. In Fargo, Gaear Grimsrud (Peter
Stormare) kills five people in what is supposed to be a bloodless, yet overly complex, fake
hostage situation. When Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) arrests Gaear for the murders,
she laments, “And for what? For a little bit of money. There is more to life than a little money,
y'know. And here you are. And it's a beautiful day. Well... I just don't understand it” (Fargo).
Grimsrud, a German who is very much not from the area, comes to town and starts
indiscriminately murdering people. Gunderson must feel the absurd given this circumstance. She
cannot possibly understand why Grimsrud would murder these people; however, there is nothing
to understand. Grimsrud can murder these people for the same reason that Meursault shoots the
Arab. There is nothing stopping him. Under existential abandonment, there is no god, no higher
being, so everything is allowed. Gunderson wants to live in a world where things happen for a
reason. The barren landscape, the kidnapping plot and Grimsrud should convince Gunderson that
she lives in a chaotic world; however, she just ignores it and moves on with her life.
In No Country for Old Men, Llewlyn Moss (Josh Brolin) steals money from a drug deal
gone wrong and the Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) hunts him down leaving a trail of bodies
behind him. Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) is a small town Texas sheriff who is already too
old for his job and then has to deal with a force he cannot understand. It has a few elements I
have already discussed in the context of other movies, such as a desert location and senseless
murders. These elements have the same effect they do elsewhere. The most interesting thing
Norman 21
unique to No Country for Old Men is Anton Chigurh. Anton Chigurh automatically stands out
physically from the rest of the cast. Whereas most of the characters are dressed in a cowboy style
of tan, beige, and earth tones, Chigurh wears darker colors in a style much less in the classical
cowboy style of clothing. He has a completely abnormal haircut, one that does not particularly
belong to any culture or time period. In the essay “For Every Tatter in Its Mortal Dress: Costume
and Character in No Country for Old Men,” Sonya Topolnisky writes that Chigurh “defies
classification, nationally or ethnically, speaking in an unplaceable accent and walking with a
steady, looming gait” (Topolnisky 113). His accent, his look, his cattle gun, and everything else
about Chigurh sets him apart from his surroundings. Chigurh commits gruesome acts of murder
for seeming no reason. In the novel, he is given more dialogue and some motivation for chasing
down Moss but in the movie he remains silent much of the time. Bell does not understand
Chigurh's motives or actions. Chigurh's physical design serves to deepen this disconnect even
further. He looks different than anyone Bell has encountered before. It is not even the evil Bell
knows. It is something different and scarier. Bell encounters an extreme absurd in Chigurh.
However, unlike the Dude and Meursault, Bell cannot live in the absurd. Since he cannot
understand the motives of a man like Chigurh, Bell feels like there is no place for him in the
modern world. This is where the title of the movie comes into the interpretation; the phrase “no
country for old men” refers to the modern, chaotic world not allowing a place for old men like
Bell to feel safe. He resigns both literally from his job and mentally from life. He does not
commit suicide but rather accepts death as a relief from a world he cannot understand. The movie
ends with a monologue Bell gives about a dream he had. Bell recounts a dream about him and
his father traveling through a snowy mountain range on horseback. His father passes him and “in
Norman 22
the dream [he] knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere
out there in all that dark and cold, and [he] knew that whenever [he] got there he would be there”
(No Country for Old Men script 122). The mountain range represents his current situation and the
fire represents death. Bell feels he cannot live in a world as morally barren as the mountain range
was physically barren. The only escape for Bell is the path that his father before him cleared:
death. However, he shows no signs of resigning himself to suicide; he is still happily married to
his wife. He will live his simple life as a retired sheriff for as long as he can. He just knows that
he will not be comfortable until he dies. This is greatly different from Meursault's realization.
When Meursault finally became aware of his own death, he realized that an awareness of death
was a free pass to live again, both for Maman and himself. Death was empowering for
Meursault. However, once Bell encountered his absurd and became distinctly aware of his need
for death, his reaction was not so empowering. Bell does not live again; he does not start a new
life. Bell merely decides to keep living meekly and pitifully.
The Coens create an interesting juxtaposition between the Dude and Bell. The Dude
embraces the absurd, rejoices in it even. For the Dude, an existential life is very possible and
very peaceful. The Dude is a Zen master in a world with no meaning. However, Bell cannot
accept the absurd. He would rather die than live in a world with no order and no sense. The
viewer has to question what causes this large gap between characters that may be considered to
the author's voices. Are the Coens changing with age, the older they get, the more logic and
stability they want in their life and world? Is the difference merely because of the source
material? However, if it is, why did they choose to adapt a book that seems completely different
than the philosophy they posed in The Big Lebowski? This question is impossible to answer
Norman 23
without some input from the Coens themselves; such input seems highly unlikely considering
their past regarding interpretation.
The Coens work within the framework of existentialism. They address the issues of
despair, abandonment, the uncanny, and the absurd, all of which are important tenets of
existentialism as posed by Sartre in his lectures and essays. Their work functions in a way very
similar to Camus' both in fundamentals of humanity and occasionally conclusions regarding how
to approach those fundamentals. However, their work does differ slightly, showing that they are
not just retreading the paths of the classic authors. They have their voices, their own message
they wish to send.
Why is existentialism so popular now? This is an important question that the Coens'
success brings up in my mind. In this post-modern era, the structures we once had are falling
apart. Ideas of the legitimacy of science, language, and all other powerful societal glues we once
had keeping us together are falling apart. We are becoming dislocated. Morality is unhinged.
Everything is possible. How are we supposed to function when everything we held sacred is
gone? Existentialism posed problems similar to these in the 1940s. Modern filmmakers like the
Coens are revisiting their ideas in a modern context trying to help answer post-modern problems.
The Coens have done something important with their work. They have created highly
successful, both critically and monetarily, movies that have reached a large audience that
contains a strong philosophical vision. The Coens have fulfilled Astruc's vision of filmmakers as
authors creating philosophical narratives. Their success will hopefully blaze a trail for more
filmmakers, for different filmmakers, with different views and philosophies on life to make
movies of their own. The more pervasive film-philosophy becomes, the richer the conversation
Norman 24
becomes. A richer film-philosophy conversation makes the culture as a whole more intellectually
stimulating and interesting.
Norman 25
Works Cited
Astruc, Alexandre. “The birth of a new avant-garde: La caméra-stylo.” The New Wave: Critical
Landmarks. Ed. Peter Graham. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1968. 17-23. Print.
Baggini, Julian. “Serious Men: The Films of the Coen Brothers as Ethics.” New Takes in FilmPhilosophy. Ed. Havi Carel and Greg Tuck. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 207222. Print.
The Big Lebowski. Dir. Joel and Ethan Coen. Universal Pictures, 1998. DVD.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Trans. Justin O'Brien. New York:
Vintage-Random House, 1955. Print.
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. Trans. Matthew Ward. New York: Vintage-Random House, 1988.
Print.
Coen, Joel and Ethan. Interview with Charlie Rose. Fargo special features. Fargo. Dir. Joel and
Ethan Coen. MGM, 1996. DVD.
Coen, Joel and Ethan. No Country For Old Men. Film Script Draft. November 28, 2005.
Cromwell, Steven. “Existentialism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2010 ed.
2010. Web.
Fargo. Dir. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen. Twentieth Century Fox, 1996. DVD.
Gaughran, Richard. “'What Kind of Man Are You? The Coen Brothers and Existentialist Role
Playing.” Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. Ed. Mark Conrad. Lexington, Kentucky:
Kentucky UP, 2009. 227-243. Print.
Hibbs, Thomas S. “The Human Comedy Perpetuates Itself: Nihilism and Comedy in Coen NeoNoir.” Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. Ed. Mark Conrad. Lexington, Kentucky:
Norman 26
Kentucky UP, 2009. 27-39. Print.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Camus' The Outsider.” Literary and Philosophical Essays. Trans. Annette
Michelson. New York: Collier Books, 1955. 26-44. Print.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Existentialism is a Humanism.” Trans. Philip Mairet. Paris, France. October
28, 1945. Lecture. Web.
Showalter Jr., English. The Stranger: Humanity and the Absurd. Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1989. Print.
Tisson-Braun, Micheline. “Silence and the Desert: The Flickering Vision.” Critical Essays on
Albert Camus. Ed. Bettina L. Knapp. Boston: GK Hall and Co, 1998. 42-55. Print.
Topolnisky, Sonya. “For Every Tatter in Its Mortal Dress: Costume and Character in No Country
for Old Men.” No Country for Old Men: From Novel to Film. Ed. Lynnea Chapman King,
Rick Wallach, and Jim Welsh. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 2009. 110-123.
Print.
Wartenberg, Thomas. “On the Possibility of Cinematic Philosophy.” New Takes in FilmPhilosophy. Ed. Havi Carel and Greg Tuck. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 9-24.
Print.