Transcription
Welcome to the Heavy Spoilers Show. I'm your host, Paul, and this video is turning to No Country for Old Men. So, when doing our big breakdown of the movie, I got into deep diving on a number of videos and articles on the film. One that stuck out to me was by What Is Anti Logic, who did a fantastic video breaking down their theories on the movie. I touched upon it in our video, but since making it, it's something that's stuck with me. I think there's a lot of factors in it that I really want to touch upon, and it's taken me off in a certain direction that's made me realize one thing, and that is that Chigurh isn't real.
Throughout this video, yeah, we're going to be talking about the evidence to support that and what we think is actually going on. Without further ado, huge thank you for clicking this. Now, let's get into No Country for Old Men.
The coin doesn't have no say, it's just you. Okay, so What Is Anti Logic theorized that Moss and Chigurh are actually the same person. They thought that the movie had a sort of Fight Club motif in which their two personalities imagining things play out. The pair never interact, they never talk to each other, and yet throughout the film, they share a lot of actions. Both sit down on the couch in Moss's trailer looking at the TV. We see them drinking. They also both remove their socks at one point, and both their weapons are similar. They both buy clothes from strangers in the movie, and so on and so forth. The eyes that Moss went out that night to give the water to the guy because Chigurh knew he had to meet with a businessman at the side of the deal gone wrong. I love that theory, and though I don't necessarily think that them being the same person is what I take from it, I think that there are very interesting elements there.
It's with this in mind that I studied it out whether Chigurh was actually real, and when going back through the film, I think that he is, in fact, something else. That takes us in a few time. Few time. The time of my life, and I owe it all to you.
Now, in order to explain this, we have to look at the book in itself for context. Every chapter in it is opened by the narration of Sheriff Bell, which itself is mirrored in the opening of the movie. "I always like to hear about the old-timers. Can't help but wonder how they'd operate at these times." He begins by telling us the stories of old sheriffs and also some strange cases that he's come across before. This includes a child abduction that he just can't get his head around, and lastly ends there by saying this: "The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure." So, this is very much his story, as he's the only survivor out of the quote-unquote good guys.
Now, I don't think he knows Chigurh well enough to actually include him properly in this story because the pair never meet. Though they are what you'd class as the hero and villain characters, at no point do they ever come face to face. It's a strange thing that people often criticize the movie for. Well, they don't criticize it, but they bring it up, and that's because the pair both fit the archetypes of a classic Western. You see, back in the day, kid's heroes would wear white hats and the villains would wear black. That's the case with it here too, and it's all done to place them at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Now, looking at Chigurh, he pretty much kills everyone that he comes across, except for a few select characters. Picked up by the policeman at the start, he ends up strangling him before then stealing a car from someone unlucky enough to cross his path. The gas attendant, lucky enough to live, and the woman at the trailer is saved by a toilet flush. A year later, he then ends up killing the businessmen and then the cartel members at the motel. He then kills the checking guy at the hotel, Carson Wells, the chicken coop truck owner, the guy who hired him, and lastly, Llewelyn. So, there's very few people that encounter him that live to tell the tale, and this was in a time before CCTV.
Now, in the latter part of the film, the two people who might be able to place him there are either scared into not talking or they're just bored out. "Are you going to shoot me?" "That depends. Do you see me?" "Take it in." "You didn't see me. I was already gone." So, there's a high possibility that Sheriff Bell wouldn't even get a description of him or any idea of what the villain of his story looked like.
Now, going back to these first two people that encountered him, there's a low possibility that they would talk to Bell. Either the gas station guy likely was in question because the police would have no way to track the burned-out car's journey back to the station. Ask him that means that he would have had to report the crime himself, which is still something you can argue whether would have happened. Even if he had have, though, it would have been that there was just a guy acting weird from earlier in the day, which Bell might not have put together with the crimes. The second woman would be someone that we would know would have been asked at some point in the film, but he never brings her up or uses her as a way to lead to Moss. So, let's just scrap them as being people that would talk to Bell, because this kind of theory, it does kind of hinge on that.
So, to me, no one other than Chigurh would end up giving that information back to Bell, or the ones that wouldn't do it out of fear of retribution or because they were given money to keep quiet. Beyond that, we also see how Chigurh moves throughout the film. Even when he's walking around with a massive gun, no one really sees him or pays attention to him. Chigurh even blows up a car at Mike's Pharmacy for a distraction to keep the attention locked solely on that as he walks in. No one looks at him, no one pays attention, and in many ways, he's just like a ghost.
The key evidence that Chigurh is just a figment of Bell's imagination comes at the motel in what would normally be the final showdown. Approaching the motel room, we see Bell looking at a blown-off lock and can clearly catch someone in the reflection of it. If you stare at it long enough, that definitely looks like Chigurh. And to cut in with this are the scenes of him standing behind the door. However, when Bell opens it up, nobody is there, and the room's completely empty. This highlights to me that Chigurh was never real and rather he acted as a manifestation of all of Bell's ideas about what the face of evil was.
The entire movie is basically about him realizing that he's not equipped for this new reality in which psychopaths run rampant and kill for pleasure. "No Country for Old Men" that is about him, and he often ponders how the old-timers would have handled modern day. Some of the old-time sheriffs never read more gun. In the end, Bell retires because he realizes he's not good enough to catch men like Chigurh, which is how he got away. That he never encounters him, and this in the end had to create this character for his story.
This is also highlighted to us in the film when we hear him discussing this. "You know, Charlie Waller's got that place out east of Sanderson." This is involving a story about a farmer who used a bullhorn to kill cattle, but it ended up ricocheting and hitting him. "In the sheriff later on," when Llewelyn asks about them, he says, "Was that a true story about Charlie Waller?" "Who's Charlie Waller?" To me, this shows he likes to spin a tale in the moment but doesn't really hold much attachment to it because he knows it's not real. That story, of course, has a bullhorn being used as a weapon, and who else uses a bullhorn as a weapon? That's right, Chigurh. You son of a bitch. I believe that Bell brought this across from his story about the farmer because that's just the weapon that was on his mind at the time.
The movie is simply Bell retelling a story that led to his retirement, but the specifics of it are where things get hazy. We never see what happens with the drug deal gone wrong. I never see how Moss gets killed. The fact is, Bell knows the setting that stuff went down at, but not the specifics, which is why he skips over it. Instead, I think Chigurh is an urban legend type figure who's been invented by Bell to explain the actions of either the cartel or bounty hunters hunting him, making them one person simplifies the story and gives it its villain. But in reality, he never existed. However, the public audience, and even Bell himself, they all need someone they can point the finger at. That is the killer who got away and escaped the grasp of the law, never to be seen again.
This ghost acts as a far better story, and we can even look at our own history in order to support this. That comes in the form of Jack the Ripper, who's arguably the most famous serial killer of all time. Countless stories exist about him, and these range from comics to TV shows, games, movies, stage plays, and more. The Ripper was never caught, and because of this, there's been a number of theories about his identity. People have believed he was the Royal Physician covering up the murders of the crown, the prince himself, lowly doctors, beggars, and so on. We will never have conclusive proof, and there's even some who suspect that the Ripper was more than one man. That's because crimes like that had been perpetrated in Whitechapel before. There was no forensic evidence to conclusively link the crimes, and there was also the possibility of there being copycats. It's not completely out of the question that there were several murders that the Ripper figure didn't carry out, but the legend makes it easier to put them all under the same moniker.
The name Chigurh also comes from the Spanish word "seguar," which means to follow. Thus, there is a possibility that even that was created by Sheriff Bell, but a person to these evil deeds that rocked his county. Chigurh is a boogeyman type figure, along the lines of Michael Myers or even death himself. In the story, he never shows any emotion, doesn't seem to have any real wants or goals, but beyond getting the money, he disappears mysteriously to never be seen again. He also says that he comes with a coin on the same journey that it did. "I got here the same way the coin did." Indeed.
In the end, I think what we are looking at isn't a person per se, and instead, we are seeing Bell trying to comprehend the horror he witnessed in his mind. He's still dealing in black and white rather than the wickedness that the world's now faced with. It's easier to make a grim Ripper-type figure to explain this, and Chigurh fits the mold for the story. Chigurh is a monster, death personified, who comes in and disappears without leaving any trace of himself. There's no one to say they saw him. Most of the people left in his wake are dead, and in the end, no one ever really encounters him. Thus, to me, Chigurh is just a ghost, and in the end, he didn't really exist. At least, I think. Obviously, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, so make sure you drop them below. And also, check out What Is Anti Logic's video, as it's really worth watching. They're quickly becoming one of my favorite channels, and also thanks to all you guys who told me I should watch them.
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