Despite the devil’s defeat in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men, we are left with the issue of how to operate in a world where, at least for now, the devil has great power. If we must be ready for attack from all sides, what can we do?  We cannot trust the laws and principalities that are supposed to protect us from lawless evil, and that evil is indeed at hand. We’re in a tight spot.

Both Everett and Sheriff Bell believe one of the devil’s lies by the end of their movies—that they are alone with no God to protect them. The consequences of this belief diverge with their genres. Despite seeing an answer to his surprisingly poignant prayers moments ago, Everett falls right back into his atheism, even seeing the flood as a sign of human progress beyond religion. He says,

No, the fact is, they’re flooding this valley so they can hydro-electric up the whole durned state. Yes sir, the South is gonna change. Everything’s gonna be put on electricity and run on a payin’ basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo-jumbo, the superstitions and the backward ways. We’re gonna see a brave new world where they run everyone a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes sir, a veritable age of reason—like the one they had in France—and not a moment too soon.

Bell shows some better sense than Everett; he has seen the worst fruits of the very “progress” in which Everett places his faith. But rather than misplacing his hope, he falls into despair. Unlike Everett, he did not personally experience God’s demonstration of power against the seemingly omnipotent Chigurh, nor did Chigurh’s accident save him. Though he was spared a confrontation with this devil figure, he credits this not to a hedge of protection but to his own cowardice, or at least his incompetence in the face of such evil. He confesses to his uncle, “I always figured when I got older, God would sort of come into my life somehow. And he didn’t. And I don’t blame him. If I was him, I’d have the same opinion of me that he does.”

We can laugh at Everett, shaking our heads at his self-deception. We have seen God save him time and again, seen that despite his vanity and dishonesty, there is a goodness in him that allows us to hope for his redemption. He broke out of jail not because of his lawless nature but because he wanted to restore his broken marriage covenant before it was too late. He risked his own life to save a man who was more a stranger than friend. There’s hope for Everett yet, because despite his belief that he can depend on himself, he is not alone. His family and The Soggy Bottom Boys (two of whom are quick to give the Lord due credit) will be there the next time he crosses paths with the devil.

We cannot laugh at Bell in his despair. We know he is an upstanding man, that even if he never “fought” much evil, he did his best to care for the people he promised to protect. Unlike Everett, though, he is not a young man rejoining society; he is old and in retreat. If there is no God, or at least none whom he can trust to protect his soul from the world’s evil influence, what more can he do?

The Coen Brothers, however, do not leave Bell totally hopeless. As in the book, they end with Bell describing two dreams about his long-deceased father. In the book, Bell is ruminating to himself, not speaking to a particular person. The film, however, does not end with an internal monologue via voiceover. The final scene shows Bell talking to his wife, who urges him to tell her about the dreams. Though he seems embarrassed to share them, he does. He has faith in his marriage covenant, a promise he takes seriously enough that he even tells his secretary not to call his wife saying that he is on his way to another town until he has actually left the building. “Don’t wanna lie without what it’s absolutely necessary,” he says. There is great trust between them, and he is willing to continue trusting her even when the world has given him reason to question everyone.

Then there is the final dream itself. Bell describes riding up a cold mountain with his father and how his father goes ahead of him carrying a fire in a horn: “And, in the dream, I knew he was goin’ on ahead. He was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and cold. And I knew that whenever I got there, he’d be there.” In his subconscious, Bell knows that as he drudges on in a dark, cruel world, there is light waiting up ahead—light and a loved one to bring him comfort. In the bright morning with his wife listening, he is already experiencing some of that.

Throughout the movie, Bell and other old men use language of the end times. “Signs and wonders,” he says earlier when he hears about teenagers with green hair. But this final scene echoes more hopeful words about the last days: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams” (Acts 2:17).

These films’ endings offer us some tangible hope beyond the promise that the devil will not have the final word. Our hope is that we can live in the meantime. To do so, we must look to those who suffer alongside us and do our best to love them in even the simplest ways—taking a family stroll, listening to an old man’s dreams. We won’t come together to make a perfect world; as a fallen body, we’ll surely want to abandon each other at some point. But by resisting the temptation to make covenants with the powerful and instead promise ourselves to our fellow strugglers, by the power of the Spirit spilled out, we might make a life here.