In both the book and the film, the sheriff’s views on human nature hold the key to the story’s meaning. The key passages in McCarthy’s story are a monologue in which the sheriff says that God never came into his life, and a discussion he has with a friend of his father in which he admits the feebleness he feels in the face of the intensity of the criminality he must confront. The friend bluntly tells the sheriff, “You can’t stop what’s comin’”—a cold slap in the face of a man who’s thirsting for meaning and context in which to understand the depths of the evil around him.

Critics have interpreted the book and the film as nihilistic, but the sheriff’s closing description of his dreams offers the slightest glimmer of the possibility of a future hope—if not here, then in the hereafter.

There Will Be Blood (8 nominations)
Tied with No Country for Old Men in number of Oscar nominations, director Paul Thomas Anderson’s story of oilman Daniel Plainview is a companion piece of sorts for the Coen Brothers' film. Both are highly cinematic, well-acted stories of the human capacity for darkness, but in this case, the uncaring and inhuman character isn’t a supporting player like No Country’s Anton Chighur, it’s the film’s central character. Daniel Day-Lewis, in a performance favored to win Best Actor, portrays Plainview as a suave, ruthless businessman who will stop at nothing to get his way.

The film’s central conflict is between Plainview and Eli Sunday, brother of a man who tips Plainview off to the oil waiting to be discovered in his family’s hometown. Eli wants money for the church he’s building, and to further expand his ministry. Plainview needs Eli’s cooperation, but only to get to the oil he seeks. Once he has that, he refuses Eli’s demands for money and accuses the preacher of being a fraud.

The conflict between the two will force each to make a confession about their family and vocational failures, and the final struggle will put an end to their conflict, and to the movie itself. But as with No Country for Old Men, we’re forced to ask what the film is trying to say about human nature and the power, or lack, of faith. Plainview’s motives, and his moral progression, are clear, but what about Eli’s? Is he a fraud? Has God used him despite his mixed motives? Are both characters equally sinister? What does the outcome of their final confrontation mean?

After spending two-and-a-half hours watching this often mesmerizing film, I was no closer to the answer to those questions than I was when the conflict was laid out early in the film. Is the film brilliant? In parts, yes. Does it seem to fall apart in the final third? I thought so. Is the ending making a point about Daniel Plainview that the film hasn’t already made long before then? I doubt it.