Current Events > The concept of Anton Chigurh and how people don't get it. SPOILERS

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No Country For Old Men SPOILERS

Every time I see the movie or the character Chigurh discussed, people seem not to get the point of this guy or his story. What do people usually always say? From my experience, the only thing most people bring up about this guy is how much of a badass he is and how the acting is so good and how cool he was, very philosophical even. People forget that Coens were obviously tryna point out how much of a mortal he is, how weak he actually really is even with being a great hitman.

Part of his story-arc is that he believes he's some invisible and the deliverer of fate and death. The gas station scene where he berates the owner about being privileged and marrying into the business; I'm sure you all thought it was some awesome enlightening badass scene that makes him all so cool, and I'm sure the Coens were tryna fool the regular viewer to think that way. In truth, all it is was a person bullying a weaker easily frightened old man. Imagine if Chigurh tried that with a much more capable person. A more capable person would have prolly stood their ground against Chigurh's threats.

Like Josh Brolin's character; Llewelyn Moss. Moss was your average person and Chigurh's menacing threats didn't scare Moss. In fact Moss fought back and injured Chigurh. 100% sure Chigurh's pride and ego was more hurt than the shotgun pellets in his stomach. I'm gonna call him Sugar for now on.

Now I'm not saying Sugar isn't talentless. He's obviously a very good hitman and does his job well. All I'm saying is he's way too full of himself even while knowing he's completely crazy. After being injured by a nobody like Moss, he still goes on thinking he's God. The movie shows that he's got some form of principles but he gets most of his kills by catching people off-guard, though which I believe is cowardly but somehow he's okay with it. Also, at the end he killed Moss's wife similarly how he almost killed the gas station owner; by bullying and threatening a weaker person who cannot fight back which is ALSO cowardly.

The end crash he got into shows just how much of a mortal he is. And with this, everyone should have understood the point "everyone is mortal". With all of his skills, Sugar got by sometimes with dumb luck. The themes present in the movie shows that anyone can die. It frames the story in such a way that Sugar seems invincible, but he isn't, nobody is in this story.

I honestly do not know how so many people I encountered about this movie got lost in this easily interpreted movie.

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Okay.
Do Raising Arizona next.

@Doe
@Josiah_Is_Back
@MC_BatCommander

Thoughts? Comments? Opinions?

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Why did you mention me I don't give a fuck about this

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I thought you did my bad

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The final monologue by TLJ is one of my favorite monologues of all time

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yup

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Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.

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MC_BatCommander posted...

Why did you mention me I don't give a fuck about this

Lmao

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Tupacrulez posted...

Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.

STP

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Tupacrulez posted...

Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad.

I don't feel bad.

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I think of the car crash scene as a Coen prank. It comes out of nowhere and you begin to think "wow, they actually invoked some cosmic justice" but after here he escapes into the void. I think the movie's focus leans more toward Sheriff Bell coping with this threat of Chigurh that God has abandoned him to. If the Coens wanted to stress Chigurh's mortality and melt his reaper complex, that car crash would've been fatal, like the one in A Serious Man. Instead, Chigurh disappears out of one more impossible scenario.

In fact, I'd say this scene underscores how unreachable Chigurh is. He kills another man in a traffic collision while becoming gravely wounded himself in front of two witnesses while an ambulance is approaching, and he STILL escapes.

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Actually the end scene is up to the viewer to decide if he survived or died. It's a play against Sugar's true principles as he thinks he's fair but actually a coward, and to remind him again that he's no God.

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Doe posted...

"wow, they actually invoked some cosmic justice"

Get outta here with that Hays Code shit.

The viewer already knows that Chigurh can clean up direct gunshot wounds with no lasting damage.

I object to this idea that Chigurh has a god complex. I think the textual evidence is scant. He downplays his own code during his pseudo-philosophical ramblings ("then it will be just another coin... which it is" *smirks*) and he explains the coin toss reasoning pretty succinctly ("it got here the same way I did")

Chigurh thinks highly of himself, but so do all the other gunslingers in the story sans Tom Bell, to the point that Moss staked Mary Jean's life on it.

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Questionmarktarius posted...

Get outta here with that Hays Code shit.

I'm not saying that's how the movie should have ended or something. I'm just explaining what thoughts and emotions that scene should tend to provoke.

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Doe posted...

I'm just explaining what thoughts and emotions that scene should tend to provoke.

The only thought and emotion that scene provokes is "get outta here with that Hays Code shit."

I think Anton Chigurh's apparent mortality was an intentional device to further reinforce his characterization as the personification of fate. He's not invincible, and that's the point. As he tells Llewelyn's wife at the end: "I got here the same way the coin did." He is subject to the same vagaries of chance as everybody else, but it is perhaps his acknowledgement of this fact and his complete acceptance of it (even embracing it as his own raison d'etre) that allows him to survive time and time again.

A lot of it also has to do with perception. Remember at the end when he tells the boy with the bicycle "take the money... and you never saw anything. I was already gone." Anton thrives on the reputation and mystique he has built for himself. Even if he knows he's mortal, that doesn't matter as long as others look at him as a ghost, or an unkillable force. Which then reflects back at us, the viewers: how do we perceive Anton? And is our perception accurate, or merely the byproduct of the story presented to us by the Coen Brothers?

Chigurh is a complete badass. Really well acted, too.

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I actually think I enjoyed the movie more than the book.

The book is still good though.

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Chigurh believing he's an agent of fate is just one of the great things about the book/movie.

The theme I really like is the post-vietnam angle, with the violence of the war spilling over into the states through the men that fought being the dividing line between the old country and the newer, more violent one.

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Gobstoppers12 posted...

Chigurh is a complete badass. Really well acted, too.

What i tell yall

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codey posted...

Chigurh believing he's an agent of fate is just one of the great things about the book/movie.

It's great because he's literally not what he thinks he is.

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Okay but what's up with the woody Harrelson scene with the floors miscounted. It's in the book and film and why

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The Trent posted...

Okay but what's up with the woody Harrelson scene with the floors miscounted. It's in the book and film and why

I took it as two things. One is that it's just a way to show that he's a careful, observant man. He knows what's up before heading into a situation because he does his research and scouts stuff out. It's a small way of showing that he is the real deal, and makes it a big deal when Anton gets him. He's a real pro, not just some guy, and Anton takes him out of the equation easily.

The other is that it hints what's going on in the building. There's a missing floor because there's criminal stuff going on there that you have to be in the organization to access. Could be money, could be drugs, but I think it's just world building and a small bit to drive home that Root's character isn't just some businessman, he's a criminal bringing lawlessness into cities just as much as as Chigurh is.

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^Could be, also could simply be an allusion to the lack of a 13th floor in many buildings due to the superstition around the number

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Yet he does get away and the movie ends in hopelessness

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InYourWalls1 posted...

^Could be, also could simply be an allusion to the lack of a 13th floor in many buildings due to the superstition around the number

I've thought about it and don't think that's it. Buildings that "skip" the thirteenth floor still have one, it's just called the fourteenth. They still have the proper amount of floors, they're just mislabelled from fourteen on. Wells said a floor was missing, not skipped. He likely counted them from the outside, and when he rode the elevator noticed that the number of floors there didn't match the floors that he counted.

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Josiah_Is_Back posted...

"I got here the same way the coin did." He is subject to the same vagaries of chance as everybody else, but it is perhaps his acknowledgement of this fact and his complete acceptance of it (even embracing it as his own raison d'etre) that allows him to survive time and time again.

Don't think that's it at all. When he says this, he's not saying it's chance. He is literally saying it's fate, it's destined and even implying it is in his control.

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Did he actually kill ol dude's wife at the end? I thought that was left up in the air

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Smackems posted...

Did he actually kill ol dude's wife at the end? I thought that was left up in the air

Yes. He checks his boots for blood when he leaves the house, a previously established idiosyncrasy. In the book she actually called the coin and called it wrong

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