Anton Chigurh is fate. At least that’s how he thinks of himself.
He isn’t a man with motivation or agency, instead he is a spectre. He is the invisible hand of death; bringing retribution to those that, in his messed up mind, deserve it.
Every single action Chigurh takes has an air of inevitability to it. The men and women he kills couldn’t possibly end up any other way. When he decides a person will die, they die.
This creates a character that is terrifying, but not just because of his concept that seems to threaten the mortality of every single viewer. It’s equally because of the performance behind him.
Javier Bardem (and his weird haircut) shines in this Oscar winning turn. It’s so effective due to his he declares every single word he says. Each line carries a weight that would normally be reserved for emotional outbursts.
What The Coen’s do with Bardem’s gutsy performance is make that inevitability I talked about explicit. It isn’t implied in his actions, instead it is made clear by the way Bardem carefully phonates each word he says.
But what sells the fact that Chigurh is deeply misguided by him almost messianic complex is all in Bardem’s performance. It’s in his eyes.
There’s a madness to the way he looks at the world. Take the famous coin toss scene, where he seems to constantly be staring right past the clerk owner he’s talking to:
But then, the real kicker is after he tells the store owner to “Call it”. For the first time in the scene, he closes his eyes; even letting out a bit of a sigh.
It’s like he’s exhausted. He doesn’t want to be threatening this man’s life, but he has to. It’s an obligation for him according to his deeply disturbed psyche. It doesn’t matter that it tires him, it must be done.
Those sort of ticks are what creates an all time great performance, but just as important is how the Coen’s present him cinematically. I think that’s best exemplified by the moment at the end when he meets Llewyn Moss’ wife.
This is done in one shot. The camera watches as the wife opens the door to find Chigurh sitting there. Silent. Bathed in darkness.
The Coen’s are intentionally attempting to bring the horror trope of the jump scare to mind. It’s shot like you’re expected to scream when you see Chigurh appear, but instead the reaction is more akin to the wind being sucked out of you.
Chigurh is portrayed as a monster, but a quiet one. You know that he isn’t going to shoot her immediately, because he wouldn’t derive any fulfillment from that.
A jump scare would imply something bad is going to happen right now. The Coen’s aren’t trying to scare you, they’re trying to inspire the most primal fear of all; that of an inevitable death. When we see him sitting there, we know the wife’s time is up.
It’s these sort of moments that turn Chigurh from just one of cinema’s most fascinating characters to one of its most frightening. Every aspect, from the script to the direction to Bardem’s virtuosic performance, make this unstoppable monster lifelike.
And one of the best characters in film.
Thanks for Reading
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