You know, the Johnny Cash song that book-ends the film. There's some spoken dialog, like "God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son'", or something along those lines.
What is the significance of that song, and how does it relate to the story? My guess is it has to do with how TLJ's character has to kill BDT, and it's kind of similar to how Abraham in the Bible was supposed to kill little Isaac. Or am I reading too much into a simple film?
im not sure if theres any significance in that line but i can tell you that Johnny was speaking the words to a Bob Dylan song called Highway 61 Revisited.
shareIs there a released version of that song available? I know that's "The Man Comes Around", but both versions I have open differently...
shareThose lines about Abraham are not part of "The Man Comes Around." I believe Cash just recorded those lines from "Highway 61 Revisited," and not the whole song. The song that plays during the credits is indeed "The Man Comes Around" but it lacks the opening and closing found on the album version.
shareBDT's character obviously saw LT as a surrogate father, looking after him when his own didn't and LT was forced to kill his "son" at the end, almost as God asked Abraham to do. Watch how LT holds Aaron's head after he dies ~ no enemy does that to his victim.
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I really don't feel like the whole impact of the song and putting Aaron down come to an apex until the letters at the end of the movie come out. I was simply speech-less.
shareYeah, the Johnny Cash narration wasn't particularly profound. It was just a stylish way of presenting the movie's subject; a man commanded by fate to destroy his own progeny. And I agree with the fact that this aspect of the story was really downplayed prior to the ending.
shareI think that downplaying it before the ending was part of the point. In the beginning/middle, Tommy Lee Jone's Character pretends not to have read the letters, he acts as if Benicio Del Torro's character was just some random person he trained. But at the end, after Benicio Del Torro's character dies, and we see that Tommy Lee Jone's character actually kept the letters, and they repeat the Johnny Cash line one more time, it hits you that killing Benicio Del Torro's character was extremely hard for him to do, he was like a son to him. Benicio Del Torro even seems to share some of his values in a warped sense, there are scenes in the movie where both characters express their distaste for unsporting and reckless hunting practices, aka the scene with the wolf trap in the beginning and the scene with Benicio Del Torro's first killings in the woods.
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