Although most of The Devil All the Time's interwoven plot points have been wrapped up
by the end of the film, viewers may still leave with some questions about what they
just watched, including what it's all supposed to mean. Here are some of the things we're
still thinking about after watching The Devil All the Time.
The first person to speak in The Devil All the Time is someone who is never seen or named.
He sets the stage for the film and quickly explains the meaning of the title.
"He came every morning and evening to talk to God. It seemed to his son that his father
fought the devil all the time."
This narrator continues to chime in throughout the rest of the film, tying the seemingly
disparate stories together and commenting on the characters' motivations, doubts, and
innermost thoughts.
As a matter of fact, the narrator is the book's author, Donald Ray Pollock. In his director's
statement that accompanied screeners of the film, Antonio Campos explained,
"I wanted to use a narrator to tell the story and build a world in which we gave a voice
to the 'Creator.'"
In a film that strongly centers themes of faith and religion, "Creator" can have two
meanings: first, as the book's author, the literal creator of the story; and second,
as an omnipotent God character, who comments on the story through an all-knowing yet detached
lens. Pollock's inclusion as the narrator feels almost like a meta-commentary on the
faith of the characters, showing that someone is indeed listening to their desperate prayers
and that it's actually the same individual who put them in their harrowing circumstances
to begin with.
Protagonist Arvin Russell is orphaned at a young age when his mother is abruptly felled
by cancer, and his father kills himself immediately after her funeral. Before his father dies,
he takes Arvin with him to watch him attack the men who had earlier threatened to attack
his wife. Arvin takes this brutal lesson in revenge to heart, and carries it with him
for the rest of his life. He beats up the school bullies that routinely harass his adopted
sister, Lenora, and then executes Preston Teagardin, the twisted preacher whose abuse
leads to her death.
Killing Teagardin sets off a chain reaction of violence, as Arvin flees the scene of the
crime only to be picked up by serial killers Carl and Sandy. Arvin kills the couple in
self-defense, but is pursued by Sandy's brother, corrupt sheriff Lee Bodecker, who is determined
to cover up his sister's crimes and safeguard his reputation. Arvin winds up killing Bodecker
as well, and ultimately hitches a new ride to Cincinnati.
As he rides away, he considers one day going back home and making amends with his grandmother,
starting a family of his own, or enlisting to fight in the Vietnam War. We don't know
which of these paths Arvin ultimately takes, or if he'll be able to break the cycle of
violence that's followed him his whole life.
At the end of The Devil All the Time, Lee Bodecker's determination to hunt down and
kill Arvin doesn't feel motivated by brotherly grief over the killing of his sister, but
by fear. What is Bodecker so afraid of? Well, pretty much everything.
Bodecker has been chasing money and power since the first time we met him, and spending
his time as sheriff taking bribes and cutting deals. In the final act of the film, Bodecker
is running for re-election, and is terrified that the skeletons in his closet could come
spilling out.
At first, Bodecker is just afraid that his political opponent will discover that he's
been taking bribes and greasing the wheels for local corrupt business owners, or that
he's been looking the other way while his sister engages in illegal sex work. Before
Arvin ever crosses his path, he's already committed two murders to try to cover up his
tracks. But the deaths of Sandy and Carl lead Bodecker to uncover their secret stash of
photographs of their victims.
Rather than do his duty and report what he's found, Bodecker destroys the evidence, terrified
that if Sandy's activities come to light, it will cost him the election and all the
money and power that comes with it. Arvin remains the one loose end, a witness to Sandy
and Carl's crimes. Even though Arvin has no intention of sticking around, Bodecker is
determined to make sure he can never reveal what he knows about Sandy. Unfortunately for
him, Arvin is quicker on the draw, and Bodecker's paranoia and lust for power winds up being
his downfall.
We get a lot of clues throughout The Devil All the Time that Sandy is considering leaving
her husband and abandoning their life of murder and secrecy. She gets as far as loading up
her car and preparing to drive off, but has second thoughts and returns home. Later, right
before she's killed, she even considers killing Carl and driving off with Arvin. But it turns
out that Carl had grown distrustful of Sandy, going so far as to replace the bullets in
her gun with blanks, which is how Arvin's life is spared and Sandy's is lost.
But would Sandy actually have left, had she remained alive? We'll never know, but several
signs point to no. First, of course, is the fact that she didn't leave when she had the
chance. Of course, that doesn't mean she never would have gone through with it. But the fact
that she never takes any of the opportunities presented to her seem to indicate that while
she liked the idea of leaving, she wasn't necessarily determined to actually do it.
But the biggest indicator that she would have stayed is that she actually enjoys what she
and Carl do together. Before Sheriff Bodecker visits her house, we see her looking fondly
at the photos of her and Carl's victims, showing that she's not just going along with the murders
for his sake; she actually gets pleasure from it herself. As tired as she is of Carl, she
doesn't seem to be able to give up the killing, which makes her marriage to him a necessary
evil.
As Arvin hitchhikes away from Knockemstiff at the end of the film, a snippet of an address
by President Johnson plays on the radio, justifying his decision to send more troops to Vietnam.
"We cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power."
While one could dismiss the speech as background chatter, the quote that made its way into
the film feels significant in a variety of ways. After all, Arvin's story began with
another war, with his father returning from World War II haunted by his memories of what
he experienced. Willard's background as a soldier largely informed the way he parented
Arvin, and how he taught him to solve his problems with violence.
Then there's the choice Johnson is making, to commit more troops to fighting the war,
and his declaration that the United States won't be strong-armed into backing down. This
echoes Willard's philosophy about how to deal with aggressors.
"Them boys might be bigger than you, but the next time one of them starts this s---, I
want you to finish it."
It's a belief Arvin carries with him long after his father is gone, which is what drives
him to attack Lenora's bullies and the preacher who abused her. Yet at the end of the film,
as Johnson speaks, Arvin gives a tremendous yawn and begins to drift off and dream of
a better life. Perhaps this symbolizes that he's managed to let go of this violent philosophy
at last, and that it no longer holds power over him.
In his director's statement, Antonio Campos says that one of the things that drew him
to adapt The Devil All the Time is its exploration of generational faith, and the elements of
religion that get passed down from parent to child. The director explains that he was
raised by a devout mother and a disillusioned father, and that rather than having his film
serve as an indictment of faith and religion, he views this story as a way to explore it.
Campos writes,
"Like the characters in the story, I've inherited a little bit of both my parents' extremes,
and over the last several years, I've tried to understand these two extremes within me.
I still struggle with my faith and continue to question it, and as a filmmaker, I use
storytelling to find answers."
That struggle is clear in The Devil All the Time, with many of the film's characters motivated
or manipulated according to their strong religious convictions. It doesn't shy away from the
many ways in which religion can be twisted to cause harm, but it also leaves the door
open for the existence of God and some sort of larger divine plan. Speaking to Esquire,
Campos said,
"[The film] plays with two ideas: one, that things are random because there's the absence
of God throughout the movie, but also the way that everything plays out suggests there
is a bigger force at play. The movie is trying to explore human beings on earth struggling
to connect and see God, showing there is some greater design but they can't see it."
Part of this greater design could be the surprising ways in which the characters' lives intersect.
For example, serial killers Carl and Sandy meet on the same day, and in the very same
diner, where Arvin's parents meet. Carl and Sandy go on to kill Lenora's father, leading
her to live with Arvin's grandmother, which is how Arvin and Lenora wind up as siblings.
Arvin ultimately kills Carl and Sandy after avenging Lenora. None of them ever realize
how their fates all trace back to the same day in the diner, all those years ago.
Running parallel to the themes of faith and religious fanaticism in The Devil All the
Time is the theme of how giving in to violence always begets more violence. According to
Campos,
"[The Devil All the Time is] a generational story about the cyclical pattern of violence
[...] The story is very simply about what we inherit and what we pass on."
This pattern becomes extremely apparent in Arvin, who follows closely in his father's
footsteps in how he deals with threats to his family. Even when Arvin decides to walk
away from his life after killing the preacher, violence follows him, and three more people
are dead by the end of the film people who were all brought into Arvin's orbit due to
violent cycles of their own. It's no coincidence that the narrative of the film is sandwiched
between two wars, both of which left deep scars on history. At the end of the film,
with Arvin dreaming of either starting a new life or enlisting in the war, the film seems
to imply that there may be no escaping this brutal cycle but that it's worth trying anyway.
Overall, The Devil All the Time is a pretty bleak story, with the vast majority of its
characters meeting rather miserable and bloody ends. But against all odds, Arvin manages
to survive and heads off to seek a fresh start, although we'll never know if he's actually
successful.
Of the ending of the film, Campos said,
"Things just have a way of sorting themselves out in Knockemstiff, and even if you don't
get a happy ending, there's still the potential for a better beginning."
This seems to speak directly to Arvin's story, which culminates in a series of unlikely encounters
which appear to nod to divine intervention. Maybe it's the very improbability of Arvin's
ending that speaks to hope for a better future. After all, the odds of Arvin crossing paths
with the same people who met in the same room as his parents and killed his sister's father
don't seem very high, nor do the odds of him surviving that encounter. Perhaps the point
of Arvin's story is to show that sometimes, people can beat the odds and break out of
harmful cycles, no matter how deeply entrenched they are. In that sense, maybe the ending
of the film isn't quite so bleak after all.
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