There have been many iconic villains.
But as soon as the world met this one
he was unforgettable.
But why?
"- Call it."
- It's not only the obvious details of his character.
It's also what he represents.
Let's peel back the layers of Anton Chigurh
to see how this was done.
"- Will you hold still, please?"
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"No Country for Old Men" is a 2005 novel written by Cormac McCarthy.
The screenplay written by the Coen Brothers is a faithful adaptation of the novel.
So our discussion today is about a character created by McCarthy
performed by Javier Bardem under the direction of the Coens.
"- Do you know where I'm going?
- Why would I care where you're going?"
- In order to assess what makes Chigurh so compelling as a character
let's talk about how they are created through a process called characterization.
Which Robert McKee describes as
'The sum of all observable qualities of a human being
everything knowable through careful scrutiny."
Age.
Education.
Clothes.
Values.
Everything.
But for Chigurh his characterization is intentionally left out of the novel
to keep the viewer on edge.
"- McCarthy keeps the reader really completely off balance
in terms of who that character is.
He describes him physically almost not at all."
- He is rooted in ambiguity.
So let's start with what we can observe about him
starting with character details.
Chigurh's most curious physical feature is his haircut.
"- I need you to step out of the car, sir."
It's an odd choice that hairstylist Paul LeBlanc
modeled after a typical look from the crusades.
"It was a dangerous time, and we wanted to
make Javier timeless and dangerous at first sight."
"- Do you see me?"
Then there is his costume.
Here's costume designer Mary Zerfrez on visualizing Chigurh.
"- He's a fish out of water.
A criminal that was from another part of the country
or another country entirely.
He has a denim jacket but it's not like one that
anybody else would wear.
And he's a little bit more in with the times.
His collar is a little bit bigger.
He's got like one of those groovier belts.
It's not a western belt.
And then I knew that he should have a boot
that was almost like a weapon.
And with a toe and a very slanted heel
and just sort of made you kind of cringe
if you look at them.
And so we actually made them out of alligator
and they're like bumpy and gross and pointy
and they could kill someone."
- One of Anton's signature weapons is a captive bolt stunner.
Typically used to slaughter cattle
the device dehumanizes his victims.
Illustrating a cold disregard for human life.
It's also a silent weapon.
Just like his firearms fitted with silencers.
Together these reveal an efficient and disconcerting killer.
There is also a mystery around his origins.
Chigurh's accent is hard to place
but it certainly isn't the local twang of West Texas.
"- You need to talk to me.
- I don't need to talk to you. - But I think you do."
As Bardem explains,
'I worked really hard to get rid of my Spanish accent.
It doesn't belong to anyone special.
We tried to neutralize the accent as much as we could.'
His name also suggests that he is clearly from somewhere else.
"- His name's Chigurh.
- Sugar? - Chigurh. Anton Chigurh."
"- The first thing I asked Cormac when I met him, 'What name was that?'
And he said it's a name that was intentionally untraceable.
Sort of ethnically or in terms of nationality or any of the rest of it."
- All of these details help put us on edge
because he can't be placed.
He's unfamiliar.
"- I knowed you was crazy when I saw you sitting there."
- Other than his outward appearance,
his actions also contribute to this ambiguity.
For one, Chigurh kills almost everyone he encounters.
Almost.
"- Take that."
- He kills two people in the first 5 minutes.
But then lets the gas station attendant live
based on a coin toss.
"- Call it.
- Call it? - Yes.
- Heads there.
- Well done."
- It's the randomness of who he kills
and who he lets live that keeps us guessing.
"- Where does he work?
- Did you not hear me?
We can't give out no information."
- Every time Chigurh meets a new character
anything can happen and we're locked in suspense.
There's also his relentlessness.
Like the Terminator or Michael Myers
Chigurh is a killing machine.
There is even a subtle sound design choice to reinforce this idea.
Listen carefully as he strangles the Deputy.
You can hear a train passing.
Here's supervising sound editor Skip Lievsay on that choice.
'We had to find a way to give Chigurh his normal theme with sound
instead of using a piece of music.
So we started experimenting with that distant thunder rumble.
And that led to the train motif.'
The train then is an audible symbol for Chigurh
as a direct and unstoppable force.
But there are also elements that make him almost human.
Inside the Llewelyn's trailer,
he sits with a bottle of milk.
Which is an odd choice for this character.
But what's perhaps even more unsettling is that he doesn't drink it.
He just sits with it.
Like an android pretending to be human.
And finally what little dialogue he has in the film only adds to his ambiguity.
He delivers cryptic threats.
"- Look, I need to know what I stand to win.
- Everything.
- How's that? - You stand to win everything.
Call it."
- And speaks in enigmatic phrases.
"- If the rule you followed brought you to this
of what use was the rule?"
- So what does all this add up to?
As intriguing as these details are,
they are only part of the reason why Anton Chigurh is a great character.
He also perfectly represents the theme of "No Country For Old Man".
To explain this, we must first understand
the function of theme in storytelling.
John Truby explains why theme is so important.
'A great story is not simply a sequence of events
or surprises designed to entertain an audience
it is a sequence of actions with moral implications and effects
designed to express a larger theme.
On a plot level, "No Country For Old Men"
is a classic thriller about characters chasing a bag of money.
But on a thematic level, there's a lot more going on.
"- It's about a character confronting a very
arbitrary violent brutal world.
And you to see it in the movie
in order to understand anything.
I think about what the characters are?
What they're about? What they're confronting?
And what they're trying to make sense of?"
- The character in question is Sheriff Bell
whose main function in the story is to express this theme.
He shares these existential concerns about this new form of violence
and the difficulty he has understanding it.
Listen to the opening monologue.
"- The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure.
It's not that I'm afraid of it.
I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job...
But I don't want to push my chips forward...
and go out and meet something I don't understand."
- Bell pines for the past.
For simpler times.
And he feels outmatched and overwhelmed
by this new senseless violence
that he doesn't understand.
"- Money and the drugs...
What's it mean?
What's it leading to?"
- And that's exactly what Chigurh represents.
Senseless and inexplicable violence.
"- He's the one character in the book that actually
departs from a certain sense of realism.
He's both sort of real in the book in an idea."
- A human but also an idea.
The threat the bell perceives is ambiguous
mysterious
unknowable.
Just like Chigurh.
From his hair and choice of weapons to his random killings.
He is the embodiment of this senseless and inexplicable violence.
"- I won't tell you you can save yourself.
Because you can't."
- There are many layers that combine
to make Anton Chigurh such an unforgettable antagonist.
And this is the lesson for writers looking to craft similarly
effective characters. Especially villains.
You can make a villain cruel.
Or weird. Or scary.
But if you can also position them at the center of your story's theme
that's when truly great storytelling is born.
If you're going to write the next Anton Chigurh,
you're going to need the one right tool.
StudioBinder scriptwriting software is just the ticket.
By the way Anton, where are you from?
"- What is necessity of yours where I'm from...
friendoh."
- Never mind. That's all for now.
See you in the next one.
I hope.
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