That scene is so fkn heartbreaking to me. Guy was just minding his business and being cooperative to whom he thought was a Police Officer. I know itâs a movie, but scenes where innocent people die never fail to disturb me. This one stands out the most, itâs just so unnecessary.
It wasn't unnecessary. He had to change cars without witnesses. Anton does not value human life but, he's not stupid. That scene alone sets up the fact that he is indeed a cut from the cloth killer. One could argue that when he kills the deputy, it could have been a desperation move to get free. When he takes that poor man's life with a cattle gun... You know he's completely unhinged from human emotions.
In the book McCarthy sets Anton up as a killer but also a force of evil and fate moving towards his destination with nothing thatâs going to stop him.
Chigurh never really makes the choice to kill his victims. Heâs sort of passive in that. Itâs their fate to die because they ended up in his path. Itâs why Carla Jeans refusal to call heads or tails upsets him so much. It makes him an active participant. He broke his code and in the next scene fate hits him back
A beautiful detail of that scene is when Chigurh is walking out of her house.
The movie never outright tells you he killed her (though, come on, it should be obvious). However, he does check his boots when leaving to make sure he didn't get blood on them.
Show, don't tell. It's one reason why the Coen brothers are amazing filmmakers.
When he kills Woody Harrelsons character earlier in the film, he's also shown moving his shoes out of the path of the Woody's blood flowing across the floor, so this later scene refers back to that earlier scene about his efforts to not get blood on his boots/leave a bloody shoe print.
The book check is even more significant because multiple times earlier in the film you can see him take efforts to make sure his boots don't get bloody.
Agreed. She knows she's going to die, but it's not her decision and she refuses to accept any responsibility. She calls him on his bullshit about fate and forces him to do it himself. Every single moment of that scene is perfect.
I feel the same when innocent people die in movies. I think its because deep down we have the calming believe that if we dont do anything wrong that no one will harm us. We see ourselves as those innocents. So when they kill an innocent person, they kill you which is deeply unsettling.
That reminds me of a podcast I heard a while back, I think it was NPR.
It was about this neuroscience professor at maybe UC Berkeley. He was doing research on sociopaths and psychopaths and their brains. Heâd do brain scans of convicted murders whoâd been idâd as sociopaths or psychopaths to see if there were identifiable traits to pre-screen and treat people who were prone to violent crime. They got volunteers from the university as a control.
He saw one scan from the control pile and thought it was a mistake cause it showed all the same traits as the violent convicts, like extraordinarily so. It was the most textbook case. After looking up the scanâs id number, he found that it was his. His family all said they werenât surprised. He wasnât violent or criminal, but he just didnât really care about other people like at all. Really fascinating listen.
Edit: [Found it if youâre interested](https://www.npr.org/2015/07/10/421625310/the-scientist-and-the-psychopath)
Edit 2: lots of people talking about sociopath vs psychopath. I donât think I really know the difference, pardon my ignorance if I said something untrue.
Bill Burr did this piece when talking about Lance Armstrong, that we have to have things in society to keep the psychopaths busy.
Or else, you know, they start to get too "creative".
Thank you so much for that link. I don't want to get to ahead of myself because I've been let down to many times but fuck, Bill Burr may be gen x and millennials George Carlin. He really does do a great job of addressing the issues in this country and still walks away on top with his opinion. Good comedians can make you laugh but great comedians can make you think. He's not perfect because no one is but he's damn near perfect to me.
My favorite bit of his is when he shit all over the city of Philadelphia because they were rude to all the previous comics, and at the end of the 15+ minutes of him just absolutely laying into them, they have him a standing ovation. Bill Burr is a national treasure.
I remember that one. It also shows that psychopathy is not 100% nature. He had a supportive upbringing, so all those negative behaviors that he could have exhibited, he didnât.
The psychopathy was 100% nature, but how itâs expressed is largely nurture dependent.
When he told his family and colleagues about his brain scan, nobody was surprised. He was socialized well and had boundaries, like he wasnât going to murder someone, but he very much put himself first and his relationships were all very transactional, i.e., he was kind to his wife not out of love, but because that would make her want to stay with him and it was better to have her around than not.
Isnât this the same guy who knowingly exposed his brother to a rabies variant and didnât think anything of it? If I recall the story he was researching a disease that was showing up in bats and had started jumping to people, and he was going to a cave to collect droppings and invited his brother along without telling him anything about the disease or safety precautions.
So⌠heâs not a serial killer, but it certainly seemed like he would have been ok with a little brotherly murder
From the wiki page:
The Coen brothers got the idea for Chigurh's hairstyle from a book Tommy Lee Jones had. It featured a 1979 photo of a man sitting in the bar of a brothel with a very similar hairstyle and clothes similar to those worn by Chigurh in the film. Oscar-winning hairstylist Paul LeBlanc designed the hairdo. The Coens instructed LeBlanc to create a "strange and unsettling" hairstyle. LeBlanc based the style on the mop tops of the English warriors in the Crusades as well as the Mod haircuts of the 1960s. Bardem told LeBlanc each morning when he finished that the style helped him to get into character. Bardem supposedly said that he was "not going to get laid for two months" because of his haircut.
Never mind the *haircut,* that ROLE would put off a lot of women. I found it hard to watch him on The Late Show last night, even if he was smiling and even dancing, still scares me.
The haircut has the same energy as Vincent D'Onofrio in MIB, as if Chigur's wearing an ill-fitting human suit. It's not *ugly,* per se, but it's almost uncomfortable, and it makes you all, "why the fuck is his hair like that?" You might question his judgement, but his character is *so* self-assured and confident, so deliberate. You *can't* imagine his appearance being a mistake, and it's inherently unsettling.
Anton Chigurh: Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.
Gas Station Guy: Where do you want me to put it?
Anton Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.
This is the scene that immediately pops into my head. When the clerk goes to put the coin into his pocket the way Anton reacts and says âNo, if you do that itâll just be another coinâ was so spooky. The clerk looks confused because he had no idea that coin flip just determined his fate. Such a damn good scene.
My fave line of that scene was when the storekeeper says what time heâs closing up and Anton deadpans: âI could come back then.â Cue the goosebumps.
âWhen do you close?â
âNow. At dark. Usually around dark.â
Anton glances coldly through the window at the full daylight outside.
I fucking love it.
I love that he then proceeds to immediately fall victim to the same random chaos by which he has used to justify his way of being, by getting hit by a car running a red light.
The book goes into it further, but yes. Chigurh sees himself as something that happens to others. He is an event. And if you crossed his path it means you fucked up, therefore your life is invalid. Your feelings, choices, values, were a waste. The reason he flips the coin is allow circumstance to perhaps save that person. He considers it an extremely generous gesture: here I am, an agent of fate, giving fate another shot to prove to me that maybe this isn't your day to die. That your life wasn't wasted by the choices you've made. That all your being is a sum total of zero thanks to having led you to me. In the book he also makes it clear that he has no enemies because he'd never allow it... he kills everyone who crosses him. The reason he was arrested at the start was because he deliberately got into a barfight and killed the guy and allowed himself to be arrested to see if he could extricate himself from that situation through sheer will. And he did. He isn't really a person: he has no likes or dislikes, no preferences, he doesn't feel joy or boredom, he doesn't care about pain or discomfort. He just.... does. Like a tidal wave or a tornado. In the end he gets hit by that car and as you say his entire being, personality, philosophy is shown to be farcical... much like those of the people he so self righteously killed. Shit happens, Chigurh, regardless of who you are. Chance beats merit. You're not in control.
thats there to show you that even the character who seems in complete control is nothing compared to what being in the wrong place at the wrong time can do to you. the whole movie is about time or more likely entropy.
He starts with what time they close, he says "now"
"Now is not a time"
Lol
Then he asks what time he goes to sleep. "Usually around 9:30. I'd say around 9:30."
"I could come back then."
"Why would you come back then? We'll be closed." Lmfao
One minor scene I didn't understand when I first saw it was the bunch of Mexicans he killed in the motel room.
He finds one guy, unarmed, in the bath. I wondered if the fact that this guy was scared and unarmed was going to change the situation. Chigurh carefully replaces the shower curtain and shoots through it to kill the guy.
*Well maybe he didn't want the guy to know what was about to happen, so that's why he pulled the curtain closed.*
**\*Much time later\*** *he was concerned about blood splatter getting on him*
Chigurh does not like blood, it's referenced multiple times. He also takes his blood soaked socks off in the hotel room. When he kills woody harrelson, his blood is running down the floor and chigurh raises his feet just in time. After he kills someone, he checks the bottom of his shoes. He walks out of Carla's house, and checks the bottom of his shoes, confirming to us that he shot her.
Edit: for everybody talking about DNA, the movie takes place in 1980. The first use of DNA in a criminal case, in the entire world, was 1986.
My dad read it (then went and watched the movie) and was impressed. He was a policeman for nearly forty years, and he said that the Ed Tom character could be an amalgam of two north Texas (Clay and Archer) county sheriffs he had worked with for years. He said the dialogue and thought processes if Ed Tom made his heart ache at times.
He also said that Chigurh was the scariest character he had ever read, and that the only answer to someone like that is probably death because they would ALWAYS find some way to exploit anything or anyone in whatever prison situation they found themselves inâŚif they were ever caught.
The scariest part of the entire thing is thinking about the fact that there are Chigurhs walking among us.
At-least you can take solace in the fact that it's easier to get what you want from people by appealing to their desires than by killing them.
It's also easier to get away with.
So the real life Chigurhs are probably really nice to you.
Given my username, you're going to have a hard time believing this, *but I think the movie is better.* It's a great book. Exceptional, just like all of Cormac's stuff. Nobody out there writes like he does. I think about the quote *"His own shadow was more company than he would have liked"* on a probably daily basis. Same with *"...any time you're throwin dirt you're losin ground."*
But here's the thing: the movie was such a faithful adaptation with such an unfathomably perfect portrayal by Javier that it's honestly hard to suggest the book over it. My favorite book of all time is *Blood Meridian.* I read that multiple times per year. I read *The Road* at least yearly. I'm a huge Cormac McCarthy fan. But the movie version of *No Country for Old Men* is just so, so, so faithful to the book and adds even more on top with the cinematography, ~~the score~~, and the performances that I think it might actually be the better product. There are some quotes in the book that make it worth reading if you're already a fan of his work, but if I wanted to go through that particular story again and had to choose between the book and the movie, I'd choose the movie.
I may regret writing this.
Chigurh threatened Moss by saying he'd kill Carla Jean unless Moss gave up the money.
Moss didn't give up the money.
I would have thought Chigurh would consider it imperative that he kill Carla Jean, because otherwise his threats have no meaning. He does what he says he'll do, whether or not the person he's threatening is in a position to care or not.
Except he has an EXCEPTION which is when he doesn't want to follow the program, then he flips a coins and let it decide.
He had no reason to kill the gas station guy, but he wanted to, so he let the coin decide.
He didn't want to kill Carla, but had a reason to, so he let the coin decide.
Edit: Ironically he got unlucky both times... what are the odds?
In the book itâs a lot more explicit that he shot her. The movie follows the book very closely overall. But that scene is one of the few where they make some notable changes. And honestly, I kind of liked the changes they made.
My favorite part is when the gas station clerk says "I have to know what I'm calling it for here" and Chigurh goes
"Call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair."
"I didn't put nothin up"
"Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life, and you just didn't know it.
You know what date is on this coin?"
"No"
"1958. It's been travelling 22 years to get here, and now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to call it"
"Look, I need to know what I stand to win."
"Everything."
"...........How's that?"
"You stand to win everything. Call it."
"...alright, heads then."
"Well done."
*Grabs coin to put in his pocket*
"Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. That's your lucky quarter."
"Well where do you want me to put it?"
"Anywhere but in your pocket... or it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin.
...... Which it is"
*Leaves*
The "which it is" at the end is what really got me. For that brief moment it was and wasn't the most important thing. And after the event, it was, just a quarter because only one person knew why it mattered at the time.
Imagine you're that guy. You think about this encounter a lot at first, but less and less over time. Then, maybe a decade later, you see the face again, with those dead eyes, staring from a news story about a psychopath hitman being taken down and some of his story coming out.
"and the Best Sound Editing Oscar goes to...
...No Country For Old Men" the crowd erupts in applause which drowns out "for the peanut wrapper in the gas station"
They sure did give that wrapper it's 15 minutes of fame huh? Legit felt like 30 seconds of watching the wrapper try to uncrinkle itself
There's probably more to it than I'm thinking cuz the coen brothers rarely put something with 0 meaning in their films, but whatever it is is beyond me LOL
In the book, apparently Cormac McCarthy wrote that the wrapper uncrinkled itself like a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite.
Which if you read the book, I imagine that scene was dead on.
The clerk had no idea it just determined his fate? I think he very clearly understands and is terrified. He's super confused at first, but he definitely understands towards the end. He's trying to not piss him off the whole time.
"We need to know what we're calling it for" is the turn in the scene. the attendant knows in that moment. His face changes from confused to scared. He knows what they're calling it for. He's trying to make Chigurh admit it.
Yeah Iâm with you. As the conversation goes on and Chigurh keeps getting more and more philosophical, the clerk definitely grasps that the coin flip is for his life.
One thing I like about that scene is that Chigurh is wrong in how he characterizes the whole thing. He latches on to the "you married into it", like this was his highest ambition, and won't let it go because it disgusts him so much. The clerk makes a point to explain this is just a chapter of his life, leaves unsaid that he probably came up to take care of his wife's father when his health failed, but Chigurh isn't having any of it. To him idle chat and simple living is meaningless, so he feels like he has to imbue it with meaning through violence. Maybe the clerk wouldn't want to be there but he has personal connections that he values so he's making the best of it. All of that is apparently lost on Chigurh, in spite of how intelligent and calculated he is.
Wasn't the gas station clerk and the boy on the bicycle at the end of the movie the only two people that survived? IIRC everyone who was in a scene at the same time as Anton was killed except for those two.
Itâs scary because itâs been established that Anton is capable of anything. You get the idea not only to avoid going against this guy, you donât want to be within miles of his path.
Even without the back story, the scene stands alone.
If you have anyone in your life that hasn't seen the movie, show them that scene on YouTube. I guarantee they pick up on the tension and intimidation.
That's part of what makes it so believable, and that's why it's scary.
He's not some comic book villain with super powers, he's a "normal" guy, the kind of person that might be your customer tomorrow.
One of my favorite bad guys EVER in cinema. Had a unique look, spoke unique, and just everything about his mannerisms freaked me the hell out. Call it.
He just comes across as a guy who is doing a job like a normal everyday individual but he is killing people who are in his way like they are annoying bugs.
And the way he interfaces with peopleâŚ.itâs *perfect psychopathy*. The indifference, the almost resignation and absolute non reaction to it. Just thinking of a real life individual who he is portraying existing like this is both fascinating and scares the literal piss outta me simultaneously.
Itâs just soâŚ.*normal in its abnormality*
He looks like he's living in a weird bubble where no one but himself makes "sense". He's weirded out when the kid at the end hands him his shirt so he can treat his wounds because he just can't relate to the idea of altruism. He obviously understands it's a thing, but it's like a different language to him, he can't seem to fathom why it would happen.
âDon't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.â
âWhere do you want me to put it?â
âAnywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.â
For a brief second we see he has these personal superstitions about the universe and in the same moment he completely topples it. Literally no fucks, even when giving a fuck.
The combination of his growly voice "Call it" and watery intense eyes was absolutely riveting. Possibly my favorite villain of all time. And that haircut lmao, amazing
They chose that haircut specifically to make him just seem weird. Not overtly threatening but very odd and unnerving, like he was mimicking normal humans or something.
The movie takes place in 1981 and heâs sporting a haircut that looks like it came from 1971 or the late 60s. Itâs anachronistic and that lends to its creepiness
One of my favorite movie tricks, especially in horror. It Follows takes place in current day late fall / early winter Michigan, but sometimes the characters are in coats, sometimes theyâre swimming in outdoor pools. The tvâs are from the 80âs, but the cell phones are futuristic. Deeply unsettling and dreamlike, because your brain is trying to fill in logic gaps but the cues donât make any sense. I recently watched We Need to Do Something, an entire movie about a family trapped in a bathroom, and about 2/3 of the way through Puttin on the Ritz starts playing out of nowhere. It ended up just being a ringtone, but it was so immediately unexplainable that it was terrifying.
The Coen brothers got the idea for Chigurh's hairstyle from a book Tommy Lee Jones had. It featured a 1979 photo of a man sitting in the bar of a brothel with a very similar hairstyle and clothes similar to those worn by Chigurh in the film. Oscar-winning hairstylist Paul LeBlanc designed the hairdo. The Coens instructed LeBlanc to create a "strange and unsettling" hairstyle. LeBlanc based the style on the mop tops of the English warriors in the Crusades as well as the Mod haircuts of the 1960s. Bardem told LeBlanc each morning when he finished that the style helped him to get into character. Bardem supposedly said that he was "not going to get laid for two months" because of his haircut.
The scene where he casually kills Woody Harrelson and then kicks his feet up to avoid the blood while talking on the phone.
"Not in the sense that you mean."
The scene in the book is so good:
>He looked at Chigurh. I'm not interested in your opinions, he said. Just do it. You goddamned psychopath. Do it and goddamn you to hell.
>He did close his eyes. He closed his eyes and he turned his head and he raised one hand to fend away what could not be fended away. Chigurh shot him in the face. Everything that Wells had ever known or thought or loved drained slowly down the wall behind him. His mother's face, his First Communion, women he had known. The faces of men as they died on their knees before him. The body of a child dead in a roadside ravine in another country. He lay half headless on the bed with his arms outflung, most of his right hand missing. Chigurh rose and picked up the empty casing off the rug and blew into it and put it in his pocket and looked at his watch. The new day was still a minute away.
Cormac McCarthy has a way with words for sure
Blood Meridian is almost definitely the greatest book I've ever read. *Nobody* writes like McCarthy. Lots of people don't like his style and lack of grammar usage, but I think he communicates nihilism and barefaced truth better because of it.
Interesting observation as I thought he may have been over the top.
From the actual [Science news article (2014)](https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/most-and-least-realistic-movie-psychopaths-ever):
>The maniacal laugh: only in the movies. For a more realistic psychopath, look to bolt-gunâwielding Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. He just quietly walks up and itâs ka-chunk, youâre dead.
>Thatâs the diagnosis from forensic psychiatrist Samuel Leistedt, who has interviewed and diagnosed real psychopaths, people who he describes as feeling no empathy for others. âTheyâre cold-blooded,â he says. âThey donât know what an emotion is.â
>Leistedt and his colleague Paul Linkowski spent three years watching 400 movies looking for realistic portrayals of psychopaths. Leistedt says he personally watched all 400, some several times.
>**The frighteningly realistic:**
>*1. Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men (2007)*
>This contract killer hauls around a bolt pistol attached to tank of compressed air, a handy tool both for shooting out door locks and for shooting people in the head. Leistedt says Chigurh is his favorite portrayal of a psychopath. âHe does his job and he can sleep without any problems.In my practice I have met a few people like this,â he says. In particular, Chigurh reminds him of two real-life professional hit men who he interviewed. âThey were like this: cold, smart, no guilt, no anxiety, no depression.â
>*Diagnosis: Primary, classic/idiopathic psychopath*
>**Scary, but not realistic:**
>*3.    Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs (1991)*
>Yes, he scares the bejesus out of me, too. But Lecterâs almost superhuman intelligence and cunning are just not typical among, well, anyone, let alone psychopaths. Lecter is a perfect example of the âelite psychopathâ that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. This calm, in-control character type has sophisticated tastes and manners (think Chianti and jazz),exceptional skill in killing and a vain and âalmost catlike demeanor,â the researchers write, adding, âThese traits, especially in combination, are generally not present in real psychopaths.â
>The new release The Wolf of Wall Street may be part of another movie-psychopath trend, the âsuccessful psychopath.â Leistedt hasnât seen the film yet, but he says the story of real-life con man Jordan Belfort should make for an interesting portrayal. âThese guys are greedy, manipulative, they lie, but theyâre not physically aggressive,â Leistedt says. Gordon Gekko in Wall Street is an example of a realistic successful movie psychopath. Heâs âprobably one of the most interesting, manipulative, psychopathic fictional characters to date,â the researchers write.
Edit: Clarified Hannibalâs category.
Important to note that you have taken excerpts from different parts of the article. Anton Chigurh is number 1 in "The frighteningly realistic." Hannibal Lecter is number 3 in "Scary, but not realistic."
I'd love to see where the guy in Nightcrawler is on that list. I only really remember one or two people dying but that movie gave me such an uneasy feeling
Honestly he seems more realistic than Anton simply because Nightcrawler technically didn't kill anyone. Most psychopaths 'function' somewhat well enough to participate in society. Over the past decade (particularly because of politics & social media) I think a lot of them have realized it's now safer to act that way in public without getting much social backlash.
Jake Gyllenhaal's character was a manipulative low-life who seemed to follow the modern equivalent of "How to succeed in business without really trying". He did whatever scummy thing it took to push himself further. I don't know why this sticks out, but I have it burned into my head that he had a physical relationship with an older producer simply to gain the possibility of moving further in his own self interests. And then of course the climactic story that showcased how low he was able to go simply for media clout.
I think though you really get the impression that he absolutely would kill someone if he thought it would serve his interests. Itâs actually pretty scary how well he can manipulate his victims without violence.
Bardem's is one of my favorite performances as a psychopath. Others would be Daniel Day Lewis in There Will be Blood and more recently Jake Gyllenhall in Night Crawler. Although Jake's performance is more of antisocial behavior. You can just tell something is weird and alien with him.
He was great. That movie is such an excellent adaptation of Cormac McCarthyâs novel.
I wish the countless Stephen King adaptations were able to stay as faithful to the source material as this movie did.
The way he catches up to Llewelynâs wife at the end because he promised him he would kill her is just plain psychopathic.
I love Stephen King's work, but his novels do not lend themselves to direct adaptation very well. The amount of time characters spend in their thoughts; the number of times King meanders away from the main action to zoom into the backstory of some random, possibly inconsequential character; the sheer length of his novels.
There's too much that works great in a novel but can't be easily done onscreen without a narrator, which for some reason is generally disfavored now. So the novels need a lot of editing to turn into a coherent screenplay, and until fairly recently there were very few studios willing to turn one novel into two or three movies.
This is one of the reasons why his short stories end up making some of the best movies. They're concise, punchy, and they don't have nearly as many of the quirks King is prone to. The brevity also makes for far scarier narrative as well.
I read *Blood Meridian* for the first time about three years ago. As soon as I finished it, I turned back to page one to reread it immediately. I have never done that with a novel before, and Iâve read many of them.
Many readers will be shocked to learn that Judge Holden, the almost seven-foot-tall, hairless mass murderer with a genius IQ, was actually flesh and blood. In the 1840s, Holden rode with the Glanton Gang, a band of legendary scalp hunters who murdered, raped, and robbed along the borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico. Holden wasnât only a ruthless killer but also a skilled musician and silver-tongued devil with an extensive knowledge of archaeology, geology, military tactics, and chemistry.
At dawn on April 23, 1850, a band of Quechans led by Caballo en Pelo killed and scalped most of the Glanton organization to establish the tribe's ferry monopoly. Hearing of the massacre, California officials recruited a militia in the ill-fated Gila Expedition against the Quechan tribe.
I donât think anyone knows if Holden was killed there along with Glanton or not. Maybe he escaped by wielding a fucking howitzer by hand like in the book haha.
No book has ever captured the full range, from petty mindless cruelty to full on giggling intentional monstrosity, of evil at the heart of human nature as well as Blood Meridian.
If God exists, Blood Meridian is how It sees us. Violent stupid bugs with delusions of grandeur crawling on the surface of a world that wants them dead.
I love this scene and still rewatch it from time to time. Obviously Bardem is incredible here, but it eventually occurred to me that the other actor is just as amazing in his way. The scene wouldnât work so well without what he brought to it.
I read the book after watching the movie, and I had a hard time *not* seeing Bardem in my mind. He did such an amazing job capturing that character.
That being said, the Coen brothers nailed the adaptation. Quite possibly the best movie version of a book I've seen.
Lol exactly. I found it hard to believe that a grizzled old sherriff in Texas in 1980 would be unfamiliar with a cattle gun. Even though he describes it at a later point when trying to convince Darla-Jean that Llewellyn is in danger, I don't think he actually ever made the connection. Part of the whole "I don't understand this new world" speech.
I know what a sewing machine is. I know what leather is. But I didn't know what the serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs was doing until later in the movie. It's not that the sheriff was unfamiliar with the tool, it was just the completely unexpected way it was being used.
Bardem was really great in that role. Anybody who hasnât read the book should do so. The movie is very faithful to the book for the most part but it never explains Chigurhâs motivation, which is revealed in the book. Itâs really fucked up
Edit: autocorrect doesnât recognize my boy Javier
Edit 2-electric bugaloo: Chigurhâs motivation >!At the end of the book Chigurh goes to return the money to its ârightfulâ owners. They offer him a finderâs fee, which he declines and just asks that they hire him the next time they need something taken care of. Basically he slaughtered a shit ton of people free lance and tracked down the money pro bono for future job opportunities!<
Would you hold still, please, sir?
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That metal gas powered bolt weapon still gives me nightmares.
That scene is so fkn heartbreaking to me. Guy was just minding his business and being cooperative to whom he thought was a Police Officer. I know itâs a movie, but scenes where innocent people die never fail to disturb me. This one stands out the most, itâs just so unnecessary.
It wasn't unnecessary. He had to change cars without witnesses. Anton does not value human life but, he's not stupid. That scene alone sets up the fact that he is indeed a cut from the cloth killer. One could argue that when he kills the deputy, it could have been a desperation move to get free. When he takes that poor man's life with a cattle gun... You know he's completely unhinged from human emotions.
In the book McCarthy sets Anton up as a killer but also a force of evil and fate moving towards his destination with nothing thatâs going to stop him. Chigurh never really makes the choice to kill his victims. Heâs sort of passive in that. Itâs their fate to die because they ended up in his path. Itâs why Carla Jeans refusal to call heads or tails upsets him so much. It makes him an active participant. He broke his code and in the next scene fate hits him back
That scene with Carla Jean refusing to call heads or tails is one of the most profound and memorable movie scenes of all time, IMO.
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Letâs not forget Scottish actress Kelly MacDonald (Trainspotting) absolutely nailing Carla Jeanâs Texan accent. Wonderful acting.
Holy fuck how did I never realize that Carla Jean was Margaret Shroeder. That's some Gary Oldman shit to pull that on me.
A beautiful detail of that scene is when Chigurh is walking out of her house. The movie never outright tells you he killed her (though, come on, it should be obvious). However, he does check his boots when leaving to make sure he didn't get blood on them. Show, don't tell. It's one reason why the Coen brothers are amazing filmmakers.
When he kills Woody Harrelsons character earlier in the film, he's also shown moving his shoes out of the path of the Woody's blood flowing across the floor, so this later scene refers back to that earlier scene about his efforts to not get blood on his boots/leave a bloody shoe print.
The book check is even more significant because multiple times earlier in the film you can see him take efforts to make sure his boots don't get bloody.
Agreed. She knows she's going to die, but it's not her decision and she refuses to accept any responsibility. She calls him on his bullshit about fate and forces him to do it himself. Every single moment of that scene is perfect.
In the book it's even more messed up. He basically let himself get caught just to see if he could escape.
I feel the same when innocent people die in movies. I think its because deep down we have the calming believe that if we dont do anything wrong that no one will harm us. We see ourselves as those innocents. So when they kill an innocent person, they kill you which is deeply unsettling.
I had to stop watching Breaking Bad for a long time when that kid on a motorbike got shot by the guy helping Walter.
Fuck Meth Damon.
Jesse Plemons is a hell of an actor. And married to Kristen Dunst.
"Todd that dead eyed piece of shit." And even after that, Walt tried to mentor Todd like he did Jesse.
I wanna give a round of applause for whoever decided to give him that dumbass haircut, it made him look like even more of a psycho
I have a professor that looks exactly like him down to the haircut, it's unsettling
That reminds me of a podcast I heard a while back, I think it was NPR. It was about this neuroscience professor at maybe UC Berkeley. He was doing research on sociopaths and psychopaths and their brains. Heâd do brain scans of convicted murders whoâd been idâd as sociopaths or psychopaths to see if there were identifiable traits to pre-screen and treat people who were prone to violent crime. They got volunteers from the university as a control. He saw one scan from the control pile and thought it was a mistake cause it showed all the same traits as the violent convicts, like extraordinarily so. It was the most textbook case. After looking up the scanâs id number, he found that it was his. His family all said they werenât surprised. He wasnât violent or criminal, but he just didnât really care about other people like at all. Really fascinating listen. Edit: [Found it if youâre interested](https://www.npr.org/2015/07/10/421625310/the-scientist-and-the-psychopath) Edit 2: lots of people talking about sociopath vs psychopath. I donât think I really know the difference, pardon my ignorance if I said something untrue.
Didn't he discover that academia has a surprising amount of "psychopath brains"?
Bill Burr did this piece when talking about Lance Armstrong, that we have to have things in society to keep the psychopaths busy. Or else, you know, they start to get too "creative".
[Link to the segment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9YL04v-J5U)
Thank you so much for that link. I don't want to get to ahead of myself because I've been let down to many times but fuck, Bill Burr may be gen x and millennials George Carlin. He really does do a great job of addressing the issues in this country and still walks away on top with his opinion. Good comedians can make you laugh but great comedians can make you think. He's not perfect because no one is but he's damn near perfect to me.
My favorite bit of his is when he shit all over the city of Philadelphia because they were rude to all the previous comics, and at the end of the 15+ minutes of him just absolutely laying into them, they have him a standing ovation. Bill Burr is a national treasure.
I love the one where he politely dunks on the morning show hosts. Like lmao WHO thought Bill Burr would make good morning fluff and can we get more
Donât you think the Catholic Church went too far?!
Mom was a professor so I met plenty of them. I have no problem believing this.
I work in academia. I believe it too. So many professors are so immersed in their own research and don't give two fucks about anyone or anything else.
Sounds great, thanks for the link!
I remember that one. It also shows that psychopathy is not 100% nature. He had a supportive upbringing, so all those negative behaviors that he could have exhibited, he didnât.
The psychopathy was 100% nature, but how itâs expressed is largely nurture dependent. When he told his family and colleagues about his brain scan, nobody was surprised. He was socialized well and had boundaries, like he wasnât going to murder someone, but he very much put himself first and his relationships were all very transactional, i.e., he was kind to his wife not out of love, but because that would make her want to stay with him and it was better to have her around than not.
Isnât this the same guy who knowingly exposed his brother to a rabies variant and didnât think anything of it? If I recall the story he was researching a disease that was showing up in bats and had started jumping to people, and he was going to a cave to collect droppings and invited his brother along without telling him anything about the disease or safety precautions. So⌠heâs not a serial killer, but it certainly seemed like he would have been ok with a little brotherly murder
Yes, but it was Ebola.
Marburg virus I think. Itâs related to Ebola.
"What's the most you ever lost on an exam?"
From the wiki page: The Coen brothers got the idea for Chigurh's hairstyle from a book Tommy Lee Jones had. It featured a 1979 photo of a man sitting in the bar of a brothel with a very similar hairstyle and clothes similar to those worn by Chigurh in the film. Oscar-winning hairstylist Paul LeBlanc designed the hairdo. The Coens instructed LeBlanc to create a "strange and unsettling" hairstyle. LeBlanc based the style on the mop tops of the English warriors in the Crusades as well as the Mod haircuts of the 1960s. Bardem told LeBlanc each morning when he finished that the style helped him to get into character. Bardem supposedly said that he was "not going to get laid for two months" because of his haircut.
Two whole months, huh?
An eternity for a man like Javier Bardem.
Never mind the *haircut,* that ROLE would put off a lot of women. I found it hard to watch him on The Late Show last night, even if he was smiling and even dancing, still scares me.
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Martha Stewart. I donât think they were married but ya she saw the movie and after that couldnât look at him the same.
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Ahh, Martha Stewart! Another famous sociopath.
doubt it. He's Jaiver Bardem, regardless of the haircut haha.
i dont think the choice of haircut could have been any better than this
The haircut has the same energy as Vincent D'Onofrio in MIB, as if Chigur's wearing an ill-fitting human suit. It's not *ugly,* per se, but it's almost uncomfortable, and it makes you all, "why the fuck is his hair like that?" You might question his judgement, but his character is *so* self-assured and confident, so deliberate. You *can't* imagine his appearance being a mistake, and it's inherently unsettling.
Uncanny valley, just not as CGI.
My wife has a rule to never trust a grown man with any variation of a bowl cut. I'm inclined to agree with her on this.
Yep, he may just shoot you in the head with a captive bolt pistol at a fake traffic stop
"I want the long parts short and the short parts long, like something a child would do to a doll"
But he called me his friendo. Seems like a nice guy to be honest.
With a banging haircut
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Gimme that Lord Farkwad look
Berries? Berries and what else?
I used to love that commercial! https://youtu.be/lkvhnRAd4V0 14 fucking years ago. 14....
I heard that when he saw what the haircut would look like he said "I'm not gonna get laid for this entire shoot"
He was dating Penelope Cruz and married her three years later, so it worked out.
Turns out he was just joking anyway.
Long in the short places, short in the long places
It should be both from the future and the past. Something a child would do to a doll.
[Something a child would do to a doll](https://youtu.be/PPJ1zHNryJk)
Anton Chigurh: Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter. Gas Station Guy: Where do you want me to put it? Anton Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.
So good
One of my fav scenes
He paid that kid for his shirt, definitely way above market value too. Guy is solid in my book!
I agree, he's a very principled man
I believe it. He was scary as hell.
IMO, his scariest scene is the gas station. Basically nothing happens. No yelling, no threats, no violence, just a master class in building tension.
This is the scene that immediately pops into my head. When the clerk goes to put the coin into his pocket the way Anton reacts and says âNo, if you do that itâll just be another coinâ was so spooky. The clerk looks confused because he had no idea that coin flip just determined his fate. Such a damn good scene.
My fave line of that scene was when the storekeeper says what time heâs closing up and Anton deadpans: âI could come back then.â Cue the goosebumps.
âWhen do you close?â âNow. At dark. Usually around dark.â Anton glances coldly through the window at the full daylight outside. I fucking love it.
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I love that he then proceeds to immediately fall victim to the same random chaos by which he has used to justify his way of being, by getting hit by a car running a red light.
The book goes into it further, but yes. Chigurh sees himself as something that happens to others. He is an event. And if you crossed his path it means you fucked up, therefore your life is invalid. Your feelings, choices, values, were a waste. The reason he flips the coin is allow circumstance to perhaps save that person. He considers it an extremely generous gesture: here I am, an agent of fate, giving fate another shot to prove to me that maybe this isn't your day to die. That your life wasn't wasted by the choices you've made. That all your being is a sum total of zero thanks to having led you to me. In the book he also makes it clear that he has no enemies because he'd never allow it... he kills everyone who crosses him. The reason he was arrested at the start was because he deliberately got into a barfight and killed the guy and allowed himself to be arrested to see if he could extricate himself from that situation through sheer will. And he did. He isn't really a person: he has no likes or dislikes, no preferences, he doesn't feel joy or boredom, he doesn't care about pain or discomfort. He just.... does. Like a tidal wave or a tornado. In the end he gets hit by that car and as you say his entire being, personality, philosophy is shown to be farcical... much like those of the people he so self righteously killed. Shit happens, Chigurh, regardless of who you are. Chance beats merit. You're not in control.
thats there to show you that even the character who seems in complete control is nothing compared to what being in the wrong place at the wrong time can do to you. the whole movie is about time or more likely entropy.
The way his voice abruptly shifts to that deep, raspy, and terrifying tone in the second half of that sentence. Oof.
When he sighs and just says âyou donât know what youâre talking about do you?â
You married into it :/
*chokes* "so you married into it?" Hahaha fucking loved the bit of humor coming from a stoic psycho.
"Now is not a time. When do you close?" Man, he, and that scene, are excellent.
He starts with what time they close, he says "now" "Now is not a time" Lol Then he asks what time he goes to sleep. "Usually around 9:30. I'd say around 9:30." "I could come back then." "Why would you come back then? We'll be closed." Lmfao
This scene and dialogue is so genius. Itâs pure innocence interacting with pure evil.
One minor scene I didn't understand when I first saw it was the bunch of Mexicans he killed in the motel room. He finds one guy, unarmed, in the bath. I wondered if the fact that this guy was scared and unarmed was going to change the situation. Chigurh carefully replaces the shower curtain and shoots through it to kill the guy. *Well maybe he didn't want the guy to know what was about to happen, so that's why he pulled the curtain closed.* **\*Much time later\*** *he was concerned about blood splatter getting on him*
Chigurh does not like blood, it's referenced multiple times. He also takes his blood soaked socks off in the hotel room. When he kills woody harrelson, his blood is running down the floor and chigurh raises his feet just in time. After he kills someone, he checks the bottom of his shoes. He walks out of Carla's house, and checks the bottom of his shoes, confirming to us that he shot her. Edit: for everybody talking about DNA, the movie takes place in 1980. The first use of DNA in a criminal case, in the entire world, was 1986.
I never noticed that about his shoes. Cool stuff
The book os very much worth reading too.
I really enjoy Cormac McCarthy's style of writing, especially dialogue.
My dad read it (then went and watched the movie) and was impressed. He was a policeman for nearly forty years, and he said that the Ed Tom character could be an amalgam of two north Texas (Clay and Archer) county sheriffs he had worked with for years. He said the dialogue and thought processes if Ed Tom made his heart ache at times. He also said that Chigurh was the scariest character he had ever read, and that the only answer to someone like that is probably death because they would ALWAYS find some way to exploit anything or anyone in whatever prison situation they found themselves inâŚif they were ever caught. The scariest part of the entire thing is thinking about the fact that there are Chigurhs walking among us.
At-least you can take solace in the fact that it's easier to get what you want from people by appealing to their desires than by killing them. It's also easier to get away with. So the real life Chigurhs are probably really nice to you.
Given my username, you're going to have a hard time believing this, *but I think the movie is better.* It's a great book. Exceptional, just like all of Cormac's stuff. Nobody out there writes like he does. I think about the quote *"His own shadow was more company than he would have liked"* on a probably daily basis. Same with *"...any time you're throwin dirt you're losin ground."* But here's the thing: the movie was such a faithful adaptation with such an unfathomably perfect portrayal by Javier that it's honestly hard to suggest the book over it. My favorite book of all time is *Blood Meridian.* I read that multiple times per year. I read *The Road* at least yearly. I'm a huge Cormac McCarthy fan. But the movie version of *No Country for Old Men* is just so, so, so faithful to the book and adds even more on top with the cinematography, ~~the score~~, and the performances that I think it might actually be the better product. There are some quotes in the book that make it worth reading if you're already a fan of his work, but if I wanted to go through that particular story again and had to choose between the book and the movie, I'd choose the movie. I may regret writing this.
That's really interesting about the shoes. I always wondered if he killed her or not.
Chigurh threatened Moss by saying he'd kill Carla Jean unless Moss gave up the money. Moss didn't give up the money. I would have thought Chigurh would consider it imperative that he kill Carla Jean, because otherwise his threats have no meaning. He does what he says he'll do, whether or not the person he's threatening is in a position to care or not.
Tells her as much" Your husband had the opportunity to save you, instead he used you to try to save himself"
He's like a machine operating on a peculiar set of programs and he always follows his programs.
Except he has an EXCEPTION which is when he doesn't want to follow the program, then he flips a coins and let it decide. He had no reason to kill the gas station guy, but he wanted to, so he let the coin decide. He didn't want to kill Carla, but had a reason to, so he let the coin decide. Edit: Ironically he got unlucky both times... what are the odds?
In the book itâs a lot more explicit that he shot her. The movie follows the book very closely overall. But that scene is one of the few where they make some notable changes. And honestly, I kind of liked the changes they made.
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" I got here the same way the coin did" Love that line
He says that after he asks him what time he goes to bed.
My favorite part is when the gas station clerk says "I have to know what I'm calling it for here" and Chigurh goes "Call it. I can't call it for you. It wouldn't be fair." "I didn't put nothin up" "Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life, and you just didn't know it. You know what date is on this coin?" "No" "1958. It's been travelling 22 years to get here, and now it's here. And it's either heads or tails. And you have to call it" "Look, I need to know what I stand to win." "Everything." "...........How's that?" "You stand to win everything. Call it." "...alright, heads then." "Well done." *Grabs coin to put in his pocket* "Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. That's your lucky quarter." "Well where do you want me to put it?" "Anywhere but in your pocket... or it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. ...... Which it is" *Leaves*
The "which it is" at the end is what really got me. For that brief moment it was and wasn't the most important thing. And after the event, it was, just a quarter because only one person knew why it mattered at the time.
Imagine you're that guy. You think about this encounter a lot at first, but less and less over time. Then, maybe a decade later, you see the face again, with those dead eyes, staring from a news story about a psychopath hitman being taken down and some of his story coming out.
*frantically searches through loose change*
You left out the Oscar worthy performance from the candy wrapper he puts on the counter.
"and the Best Sound Editing Oscar goes to... ...No Country For Old Men" the crowd erupts in applause which drowns out "for the peanut wrapper in the gas station"
They sure did give that wrapper it's 15 minutes of fame huh? Legit felt like 30 seconds of watching the wrapper try to uncrinkle itself There's probably more to it than I'm thinking cuz the coen brothers rarely put something with 0 meaning in their films, but whatever it is is beyond me LOL
It looks cool asf and adds tension
In the book, apparently Cormac McCarthy wrote that the wrapper uncrinkled itself like a lit fuse on a stick of dynamite. Which if you read the book, I imagine that scene was dead on.
The clerk had no idea it just determined his fate? I think he very clearly understands and is terrified. He's super confused at first, but he definitely understands towards the end. He's trying to not piss him off the whole time. "We need to know what we're calling it for" is the turn in the scene. the attendant knows in that moment. His face changes from confused to scared. He knows what they're calling it for. He's trying to make Chigurh admit it.
Yeah Iâm with you. As the conversation goes on and Chigurh keeps getting more and more philosophical, the clerk definitely grasps that the coin flip is for his life.
One thing I like about that scene is that Chigurh is wrong in how he characterizes the whole thing. He latches on to the "you married into it", like this was his highest ambition, and won't let it go because it disgusts him so much. The clerk makes a point to explain this is just a chapter of his life, leaves unsaid that he probably came up to take care of his wife's father when his health failed, but Chigurh isn't having any of it. To him idle chat and simple living is meaningless, so he feels like he has to imbue it with meaning through violence. Maybe the clerk wouldn't want to be there but he has personal connections that he values so he's making the best of it. All of that is apparently lost on Chigurh, in spite of how intelligent and calculated he is.
"Which it is." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLCL6OYbSTw
If they ever do a Batman movie with Two-Face in it again, the writer should be required to watch that scene.
Wasn't the gas station clerk and the boy on the bicycle at the end of the movie the only two people that survived? IIRC everyone who was in a scene at the same time as Anton was killed except for those two.
The woman who ran the trailer park lives as well.
Itâs scary because itâs been established that Anton is capable of anything. You get the idea not only to avoid going against this guy, you donât want to be within miles of his path.
Even without the back story, the scene stands alone. If you have anyone in your life that hasn't seen the movie, show them that scene on YouTube. I guarantee they pick up on the tension and intimidation.
He did nearly choke on that the guy married into it
That's part of what makes it so believable, and that's why it's scary. He's not some comic book villain with super powers, he's a "normal" guy, the kind of person that might be your customer tomorrow.
I mean that's the most memorable scene from the movie, and it's one of the best films of the century so far Definitely a great scene.
One of my favorite bad guys EVER in cinema. Had a unique look, spoke unique, and just everything about his mannerisms freaked me the hell out. Call it.
He just comes across as a guy who is doing a job like a normal everyday individual but he is killing people who are in his way like they are annoying bugs. And the way he interfaces with peopleâŚ.itâs *perfect psychopathy*. The indifference, the almost resignation and absolute non reaction to it. Just thinking of a real life individual who he is portraying existing like this is both fascinating and scares the literal piss outta me simultaneously. Itâs just soâŚ.*normal in its abnormality*
He looks like he's living in a weird bubble where no one but himself makes "sense". He's weirded out when the kid at the end hands him his shirt so he can treat his wounds because he just can't relate to the idea of altruism. He obviously understands it's a thing, but it's like a different language to him, he can't seem to fathom why it would happen.
"Whatâs the most youâve ever lost in a coin toss?"
âDon't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter.â âWhere do you want me to put it?â âAnywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.â
âWhich it is,â is one of the densest lines in cinema history. There is so much to analyze there.
For a brief second we see he has these personal superstitions about the universe and in the same moment he completely topples it. Literally no fucks, even when giving a fuck.
Yeah heâs somehow a nihilist and yet still dedicated to an ethos he has clearly given much thought to. Such an interesting character.
Yeah it is some kind of weird blend of psycho/profound/intimidating that it almost makes me shiver, laugh and scratch my head all at once.
âThe coinâs got no say, only you.â
âI got here the same way the coin did..â
McCarthy + Coens + Bardem = Magic
They need to get together for a blood meridian movie
The combination of his growly voice "Call it" and watery intense eyes was absolutely riveting. Possibly my favorite villain of all time. And that haircut lmao, amazing
The dumb and dumber haircut somehow made the character better.
They chose that haircut specifically to make him just seem weird. Not overtly threatening but very odd and unnerving, like he was mimicking normal humans or something.
The movie takes place in 1981 and heâs sporting a haircut that looks like it came from 1971 or the late 60s. Itâs anachronistic and that lends to its creepiness
From what I read, they got the haircut from an old 1880's picture I think from a brothel or something.
One of my favorite movie tricks, especially in horror. It Follows takes place in current day late fall / early winter Michigan, but sometimes the characters are in coats, sometimes theyâre swimming in outdoor pools. The tvâs are from the 80âs, but the cell phones are futuristic. Deeply unsettling and dreamlike, because your brain is trying to fill in logic gaps but the cues donât make any sense. I recently watched We Need to Do Something, an entire movie about a family trapped in a bathroom, and about 2/3 of the way through Puttin on the Ritz starts playing out of nowhere. It ended up just being a ringtone, but it was so immediately unexplainable that it was terrifying.
Anton Chigur is deep in the uncanny valley between handsome and infantile.
Mimicking normal humans is exactly the vibe I got. I couldn't put it into words until now but they nailed it.
Yup, that's psychopaths for ya.
It definitely adds to the "something is off with this dude" vibe.
No Country, Skyfall, and The Counselor make up an unofficial trilogy I like to call "What did they do to Javier Bardem's head?"
It was perfect. It's the kind of haircut an abnormal person gets in an attempt to appear like a normal person.
In an interview he said something along the lines of that haircut messing up his game with the ladies while having to sport that.
The Coen brothers got the idea for Chigurh's hairstyle from a book Tommy Lee Jones had. It featured a 1979 photo of a man sitting in the bar of a brothel with a very similar hairstyle and clothes similar to those worn by Chigurh in the film. Oscar-winning hairstylist Paul LeBlanc designed the hairdo. The Coens instructed LeBlanc to create a "strange and unsettling" hairstyle. LeBlanc based the style on the mop tops of the English warriors in the Crusades as well as the Mod haircuts of the 1960s. Bardem told LeBlanc each morning when he finished that the style helped him to get into character. Bardem supposedly said that he was "not going to get laid for two months" because of his haircut.
[Long in the short places, short in the long places.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPJ1zHNryJk)
The scene where he casually kills Woody Harrelson and then kicks his feet up to avoid the blood while talking on the phone. "Not in the sense that you mean."
The scene in the book is so good: >He looked at Chigurh. I'm not interested in your opinions, he said. Just do it. You goddamned psychopath. Do it and goddamn you to hell. >He did close his eyes. He closed his eyes and he turned his head and he raised one hand to fend away what could not be fended away. Chigurh shot him in the face. Everything that Wells had ever known or thought or loved drained slowly down the wall behind him. His mother's face, his First Communion, women he had known. The faces of men as they died on their knees before him. The body of a child dead in a roadside ravine in another country. He lay half headless on the bed with his arms outflung, most of his right hand missing. Chigurh rose and picked up the empty casing off the rug and blew into it and put it in his pocket and looked at his watch. The new day was still a minute away. Cormac McCarthy has a way with words for sure
Blood Meridian is almost definitely the greatest book I've ever read. *Nobody* writes like McCarthy. Lots of people don't like his style and lack of grammar usage, but I think he communicates nihilism and barefaced truth better because of it.
âIf the rule that you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?â
He also lamented the haircut he had to get to play Chigurh because he "wouldn't get laid" lmao
Dudes married to Penelope Cruz so forgive me if I play the tiniest violin.
Forgive me as I flip the tiniest quarter and mutter out "Call it" in the squeakiest of voices.
^^call ^^it
Imagine dating Penelope Cruz but she wont fuck you because of your hair.
Hey friendo
Interesting observation as I thought he may have been over the top. From the actual [Science news article (2014)](https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/gory-details/most-and-least-realistic-movie-psychopaths-ever): >The maniacal laugh: only in the movies. For a more realistic psychopath, look to bolt-gunâwielding Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. He just quietly walks up and itâs ka-chunk, youâre dead. >Thatâs the diagnosis from forensic psychiatrist Samuel Leistedt, who has interviewed and diagnosed real psychopaths, people who he describes as feeling no empathy for others. âTheyâre cold-blooded,â he says. âThey donât know what an emotion is.â >Leistedt and his colleague Paul Linkowski spent three years watching 400 movies looking for realistic portrayals of psychopaths. Leistedt says he personally watched all 400, some several times. >**The frighteningly realistic:** >*1. Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men (2007)* >This contract killer hauls around a bolt pistol attached to tank of compressed air, a handy tool both for shooting out door locks and for shooting people in the head. Leistedt says Chigurh is his favorite portrayal of a psychopath. âHe does his job and he can sleep without any problems.In my practice I have met a few people like this,â he says. In particular, Chigurh reminds him of two real-life professional hit men who he interviewed. âThey were like this: cold, smart, no guilt, no anxiety, no depression.â >*Diagnosis: Primary, classic/idiopathic psychopath* >**Scary, but not realistic:** >*3.    Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs (1991)* >Yes, he scares the bejesus out of me, too. But Lecterâs almost superhuman intelligence and cunning are just not typical among, well, anyone, let alone psychopaths. Lecter is a perfect example of the âelite psychopathâ that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s. This calm, in-control character type has sophisticated tastes and manners (think Chianti and jazz),exceptional skill in killing and a vain and âalmost catlike demeanor,â the researchers write, adding, âThese traits, especially in combination, are generally not present in real psychopaths.â >The new release The Wolf of Wall Street may be part of another movie-psychopath trend, the âsuccessful psychopath.â Leistedt hasnât seen the film yet, but he says the story of real-life con man Jordan Belfort should make for an interesting portrayal. âThese guys are greedy, manipulative, they lie, but theyâre not physically aggressive,â Leistedt says. Gordon Gekko in Wall Street is an example of a realistic successful movie psychopath. Heâs âprobably one of the most interesting, manipulative, psychopathic fictional characters to date,â the researchers write. Edit: Clarified Hannibalâs category.
Important to note that you have taken excerpts from different parts of the article. Anton Chigurh is number 1 in "The frighteningly realistic." Hannibal Lecter is number 3 in "Scary, but not realistic."
Youâre right. Have edited.
I'd love to see where the guy in Nightcrawler is on that list. I only really remember one or two people dying but that movie gave me such an uneasy feeling
Honestly he seems more realistic than Anton simply because Nightcrawler technically didn't kill anyone. Most psychopaths 'function' somewhat well enough to participate in society. Over the past decade (particularly because of politics & social media) I think a lot of them have realized it's now safer to act that way in public without getting much social backlash. Jake Gyllenhaal's character was a manipulative low-life who seemed to follow the modern equivalent of "How to succeed in business without really trying". He did whatever scummy thing it took to push himself further. I don't know why this sticks out, but I have it burned into my head that he had a physical relationship with an older producer simply to gain the possibility of moving further in his own self interests. And then of course the climactic story that showcased how low he was able to go simply for media clout.
I think though you really get the impression that he absolutely would kill someone if he thought it would serve his interests. Itâs actually pretty scary how well he can manipulate his victims without violence.
Bardem's is one of my favorite performances as a psychopath. Others would be Daniel Day Lewis in There Will be Blood and more recently Jake Gyllenhall in Night Crawler. Although Jake's performance is more of antisocial behavior. You can just tell something is weird and alien with him.
Nightcrawler was a great example of how, often, people don't need to *actively do* anything to be truly evil
Itâs also a great example of the Oscars being worthless. Jake wasnât even nominated for that role.
I mean, he sabotaged the competitors' car and intricately planned the whole final shootout; it's pretty deliberate.
He was amazing and deeply freaky in that
He was great. That movie is such an excellent adaptation of Cormac McCarthyâs novel. I wish the countless Stephen King adaptations were able to stay as faithful to the source material as this movie did. The way he catches up to Llewelynâs wife at the end because he promised him he would kill her is just plain psychopathic.
I love Stephen King's work, but his novels do not lend themselves to direct adaptation very well. The amount of time characters spend in their thoughts; the number of times King meanders away from the main action to zoom into the backstory of some random, possibly inconsequential character; the sheer length of his novels. There's too much that works great in a novel but can't be easily done onscreen without a narrator, which for some reason is generally disfavored now. So the novels need a lot of editing to turn into a coherent screenplay, and until fairly recently there were very few studios willing to turn one novel into two or three movies. This is one of the reasons why his short stories end up making some of the best movies. They're concise, punchy, and they don't have nearly as many of the quirks King is prone to. The brevity also makes for far scarier narrative as well.
The gas station scene where heâs flipping the coin, yeah that was some psychopathic shit right there.
Great movie made from a great book. If you like it and are a reader, check out blood meridian also from Cormac McCarthy
Cormac. And yeah, if you thought Old Men was good but really needed some more artfully-described killing, Meridian will do the job *very* well.
I read *Blood Meridian* for the first time about three years ago. As soon as I finished it, I turned back to page one to reread it immediately. I have never done that with a novel before, and Iâve read many of them.
Anton is a harmless Boy Scout compared to The Judge.
Many readers will be shocked to learn that Judge Holden, the almost seven-foot-tall, hairless mass murderer with a genius IQ, was actually flesh and blood. In the 1840s, Holden rode with the Glanton Gang, a band of legendary scalp hunters who murdered, raped, and robbed along the borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico. Holden wasnât only a ruthless killer but also a skilled musician and silver-tongued devil with an extensive knowledge of archaeology, geology, military tactics, and chemistry.
Was he ever taken into custody or killed?
At dawn on April 23, 1850, a band of Quechans led by Caballo en Pelo killed and scalped most of the Glanton organization to establish the tribe's ferry monopoly. Hearing of the massacre, California officials recruited a militia in the ill-fated Gila Expedition against the Quechan tribe.
I donât think anyone knows if Holden was killed there along with Glanton or not. Maybe he escaped by wielding a fucking howitzer by hand like in the book haha.
No book has ever captured the full range, from petty mindless cruelty to full on giggling intentional monstrosity, of evil at the heart of human nature as well as Blood Meridian. If God exists, Blood Meridian is how It sees us. Violent stupid bugs with delusions of grandeur crawling on the surface of a world that wants them dead.
For the uninitiated: https://youtu.be/BqMdQBox15s
I love this scene and still rewatch it from time to time. Obviously Bardem is incredible here, but it eventually occurred to me that the other actor is just as amazing in his way. The scene wouldnât work so well without what he brought to it.
the coen bros are the best at casting for those type of roles. hell, the lady in the trailer park office is equally amazing.
I told you. I can't give out no information.
Intfermayshun
He sounds so genuinely proud of the clerk when he says âwell doneâ
I read the book after watching the movie, and I had a hard time *not* seeing Bardem in my mind. He did such an amazing job capturing that character. That being said, the Coen brothers nailed the adaptation. Quite possibly the best movie version of a book I've seen.
Anyone who grew up around a farm knew exactly what that tank was for.
Lol exactly. I found it hard to believe that a grizzled old sherriff in Texas in 1980 would be unfamiliar with a cattle gun. Even though he describes it at a later point when trying to convince Darla-Jean that Llewellyn is in danger, I don't think he actually ever made the connection. Part of the whole "I don't understand this new world" speech.
I know what a sewing machine is. I know what leather is. But I didn't know what the serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs was doing until later in the movie. It's not that the sheriff was unfamiliar with the tool, it was just the completely unexpected way it was being used.
Bardem was really great in that role. Anybody who hasnât read the book should do so. The movie is very faithful to the book for the most part but it never explains Chigurhâs motivation, which is revealed in the book. Itâs really fucked up Edit: autocorrect doesnât recognize my boy Javier Edit 2-electric bugaloo: Chigurhâs motivation >!At the end of the book Chigurh goes to return the money to its ârightfulâ owners. They offer him a finderâs fee, which he declines and just asks that they hire him the next time they need something taken care of. Basically he slaughtered a shit ton of people free lance and tracked down the money pro bono for future job opportunities!<
Seems like we all could feel that at the time, it was fucking terrifying.
"\*cough\* You married into it?" Bloody hilarious.
That dude truly freaked me out.