What was the point of the car crash?

I think it's a bit of dark irony. Poetic justice can be funny.

You get the feeling that being in an accident is related to the philosophical mumbo-jumbo he uses to justify his actions. He implies he's aligned with natural forces.

That's his cool story, bro. It gives meaning to his existence. Otherwise he's just another psychopathic killer, but so what. There's plenty of them around. Put another way, don't mix him in with the others, or he'll become just another psycho killer. Which he is. And who would want that?

Before the accident, he'd gone out of his way to murder Carla Jean because he claimed he had no choice since he'd given his word to her husband. He also tells her he got there the same way the coin did. I.e. it's not down to something he willed, because he's just caught up in the flow of things.

It's the natural way, you see. He's just playing a part in what was meant to be. Notice how according to him the natural way, the way it was meant to be, just happens to always put him on top. But then, oopsie, he gets creamed in a car accident.

That too, must have been meant to be. Don't just write it off as an ordinary accident, because it's your lucky day, Mr. Meant To Be. Don't mix it in with the others or it will become just a random accident. Which it is. Dang!

The accident is, shall we say, a disruption. A destabilizing event. We can enjoy the joke of his belief being t-boned. He wouldn't get it, though. He can't afford to go there because it would mean giving up his cool story. I guess I'd say that he doesn't have a sense of humor when it comes to that. You notice how he got irritated when Carla Jean wouldn't play his game.

He wanders off and fades out because he's also a representative character. His kind of philosophy is a permanent affliction in human affairs. So it's fitting.


"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson

In the book, the accident takes place well after Moss's death. Anton leaves a pistol in the car and it's linked to the killing of Carla Jean. Sheriff Bell comes to the town to investigate but has no leads and leaves dejected. Maybe that's when he goes to his uncle's house.

Before that crash, I was suspecting that Anton didn't really exist as a real person, but was a metaphor for the evil that was talking over. When that accident occurred and he barely reacted to a compound fracture of his arm, I was sure of it.

"Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules. "
-Walter Sobchak

My personal belief is the car crash does him in. He suvived and escaped all we witnessed in this movie and undoubtedly prior. The compound fracture which he will try to treat himself gives him blood poisoning and he dies after killing all those people for the $.

Anton represents plenty. Death comes in all shapes and forms. You can see him at the store, on the side of the road, in your bedroom... Or going down a quiet road in Texas somewhere.

I think it's meant to ask more questions than it answers and it's one of my favorite parts of the film, simply because he walks away. We can say that he's finally met his ironic match. You can't see what's coming. That's Vanity. It leads into Ed Toms dream talk. With the dissolve from scene to scene, Anton walking in the distance. Always in the back of Ed Toms mind.

Although I won't go so far to say that there isn't anything important in the scene, I personally don't see a lot of purpose behind it and think it is obscure by choice.

I believe it's a bit of a writer's trick that the Coen brothers use to give the audience something odd at the end to encourage you to think about it after you've seen it.

It's a trend I've noticed with their other films, which often end on some bizarre, seemingly random and unrelated event happening. Examples include the water dripping from the pipe in Blood Simple, the bird falling in the ocean in Barton Fink, and the UFO in The Man Who Wasn't There. (I would have given a spoiler warning, but I think those scenes are too obscure to spoil anything)

The downside to this technique is that it can lead to the audience spending more time trying to decode meaning from the text than the authors did in encoding it, which I feel is a failure of the author to properly communicate their message.

I thought there was irony in the scene, because the scene before that Anton give Carla Jean a chance to live or die based off of a coin. And just like the flip of a coin, pure chance happened to catch up with him. But in the end, it's not fate like he tries to say. It's the way Carla Jean said it's up to him and there's no power in the coin. So even though he has a freak accident, karma and fate and all that doesn't exist.

The crash also set up the interaction with the kids riding bikes, where Anton asks for the kids shirt and tells them to say they didn’t see him there. Anton then gives one kid a $100 dollar bill, which immediately causes conflict between the two friends, as the other kid says “you know half of that is mine” and then they begin to argue with each other. I think that could be interpreted as showing how dishonest money can cause jealousy/greed/conflict between people. Just as how nearly, if not all, of the violence and evil done throughout the movie was caused because different groups of people and individuals all wanted the suitcase full of money. I’m also pretty sure that the $100 bill that Anton gives the kid has blood on it, which could be viewed as imagery alluding to the idea that money, specifically ill gotten money, corrupts and causes damage/violence/conflict. Two friends riding bikes together happily + a bloody $100 from Anton to lie = The friends arguing and fighting (which leads to who knows what between them). Just as Moss hunting + finding suitcase of money at a drug deal gone wrong massacre = the destruction of him, his wife, and a bunch of other people with varying degrees of connection to the money.