Transcription
[Music] Hi, welcome to LIF foot media. My name is Brenda Malone. One of the best movies that's ever been made, and I don't just mean amongst the recent crop of average movies, but I mean in the entire history of cinema, one of the best movies that has ever been made is No Country for Old Men, the Cohen Brothers' adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name. It is a great piece of filmmaking for a whole lot of reasons. The acting is phenomenal, the cinematography is amazing, the use of sound is amazing. Uh, it has some profound and deep questions to ask about the human experience. The scriptwriting is just top-notch. It's right up there alongside great films like The Godfather.
And one of the things that makes this film so good, in fact, I would say it's probably one of the top 10 movies that's ever been made in the entire history of cinema, is because of its villain. Its villain in this film is just truly memorable. The villain is a character by the name of Anton Shigur, played by Javier Bardem. And I think, to be fair, Javier's acting in this, the way he plays this villain, is just phenomenal. In fact, I would say that it's this role that quite probably led to Javier Bardem, uh, being offered the role of the arch-villain in, uh, the Bond film Skyfall, uh, because he's just, he's just so good at playing this villainous character.
What's interesting about this character and the reason why he's a truly great villain, sort of Darth Vader pre the prequels level of, of villainy, was because whenever he's on screen, there is just an extreme tension. As a viewer, most of the time when you go into a movie and you see the villain on screen, you sort of instinctively, somewhere, even if it's deep in your subconscious, you know that no matter what their menacing characteristics are and no matter what the evil things they do, uh, are, you know that they're going to be beaten, they're going to be defeated in the end. But with this villain, whenever he's on screen, there is just such a, a tension, such a sense of dread, you just don't know what the outcome is going to be. Even rewatching the film, it's still very much present. And, and part of that is obviously the way he's written, the story in which he sits, the fact that this character is a much bigger character, obviously the acting of Javier Bardem, and the fact that this character isn't just a villainous character. This character is a personification of something else. He is a representation of something greater.
This is, like I said, a film that has some very deep questions to ask and to explore about the human experience. And so it's hardly surprising that the villain isn't just a villain. He isn't just a one or two or even three-dimensional villain in this film. He is actually something much bigger than that, something much more ethereal. He is a personification, a representation of something universal to everyone's human experience. So the big question I want to explore in today's episode is, what exactly or who or what is it that Anton Shigur, the character, is supposed to represent in this movie? And as far as I can see, there are at least five possibilities for what this villain is supposed to represent in No Country for Old Men. So without any further ado, let's get straight into it.
The first possibility, and this is one that a lot of people put forward, is that Anton Shigur is actually supposed to represent the character of death. He's supposed to be the Grim Reaper. And there's lots of good evidence to back this up. He wears dark clothes, he is sort of an odd character, he has a very funny haircut, which actually looks like a hood, which is obviously something symbolic of what the Grim Reaper wears. He has a white face, and at times he becomes really, uh, drawn, his his features really sort of bags under his eyes, he becomes very pale, and it's very pronounced. Uh, he has a very sort of otherworldly quality about him. He moves through the story in a way where often he's totally unnoticed, apart from that one or two people that he's interacting with. And it's very much what death is like. You know, death is something that often catches us by surprise. And the whole idea of of people going about their business and not noticing death in their midst. Um, but he very much, death is present to the person who is, is experiencing that experience. And so, you know, he, he has that sort of quality about him. He's very, there's a simplicity to his character, there's no backstory given. Uh, in most movies, you get at least some backstory about a villain. In this situation, the only time we get any real backstory about Anton Shigur, and it comes from Woody Harrelson's character, uh, is that Woody Harrelson talks about the characteristics that he has and he talks about some of the things he's done in the past. It doesn't, he doesn't talk about where he has come from. You know, and that would make sense if you think about that, the, the, the fact that death is not a person. Even though death is personified in the Grim Reaper, the Grim Reaper is not a person. So he's not going to have a backstory, he's not going to have a family or a past. You know, he's an ex-military man or he had a wife and kids and they were killed in an accident and that set him on the path to becoming death. And so very much in this film, No Country for Old Men, Anton Shigur is like that. He, he is part of the story and he's so fundamental to it, but there's no real backstory about who he really is. He doesn't seem to actually even have a past, which kind of makes sense.
And then of course, there's the fact that he, he, he carries around two weapons that he uses, uh, in this film. And the two weapons that he, that are his weapons of choice, uh, in this film, uh, one is he has a, a cattle prod, uh, which runs on a tank of compressed air. It's a small little handheld device that is used for killing cattle. And it fires out a bolt which then fires back into the weapon again, uh, and it's put between the eyes of the cattle. You fire, you kill the cattle, and then, uh, you can harvest the meat. So there is a sort of harvesting element to this weaponry, which is obviously again, hearkens back to the scythe, which is a harvesting tool of the Grim Reaper. And then there's the fact that he carries a, um, a, a large rifle with him. It's, it's a two-handled weapon, you can't carry it in one hand. And the thing that really sticks out is that giant, rather large silver silencer on the end of it. So it's got this dark weapon with a silver end. It's very much again, like a scythe with a dark handle and the silver blade off the end of it. And so there's a lot there that points to the fact that maybe Anton Shigur is actually supposed to represent death in this film.
Another possible theory is that Anton Shigur is actually supposed to represent time, rather than death. And you think about this, once again, there's good evidence for this. He is a character who is relentless and unceasing. He just doesn't stop. He never stops. And that's very much the characteristic of time. Time waits for no one, right? That's the old saying. Time never ceases, it just keeps marching forward. And another thing about this character in this film is that you always notice he is always moving forward. You know, he kills one character, steals their car, and then he quickly moves on to the next car that he's stealing or the next character. He is relentless, he is unceasing, he just keeps moving forward. There's always forward momentum. Even when he's confronting other people who have weapons, he is always front-footing. And even at the end of the film, after the car accident, he is moving forward. He doesn't stop and stand still. It's that brief pause and then off he goes again. It's very much representative, I think, of of time and and the, the unceasing, the relentless nature of time.
There's also the interesting monologues and the dreams from Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff, who was played by Tommy Lee Jones. And you remember that he talks about, a lot of his monologues are about time and about history and they're about time catching up with people. It's just, it's so much of his character is focused on this idea of time moving on. And also history, of what's gone before, which, which again, would sort of point to that possibility that Anton Shigur is time chasing at the heels of the sheriff and the others in the movie as well.
And then there's a really intriguing scene that happens, um, after Llewelyn throws the bag of money on the Mexican border. He throws the bag of money over the top of the fence, and it's, it's lying on the river bank, and he's planning to come back for it. And of course, Carson Wells, who's played by Woody Harrelson, spots the bag and so he knows where it is. And then he is confronted by Anton Shigur. And he says to him, look, don't kill me. I can get you this bag of money. I know where it is. The bag of money is what you want. I can go there and I can get it and I can be back here in 20 minutes with the bag. And Anton Shigur, and it's so weird and just, it's just this cold, clinical response. And he says, I don't need that. Basically, he says, the bag of money is going to come to me in the end anyway. I don't need you to do this for me. Which is really quite insane when you think about it, because any sane person would say, you're right, my my goal is the money, you go and get me the money right now and I will spare your life, life, as long as, you know, or take me to the money. But he doesn't. He says, it doesn't matter. I don't need your help because I will win in the end. And that's effectively a characteristic of time again. It catches up to everybody. Time always wins. You can't escape your future. It's not something you can ever get away from. And it's, and, and that particular, uh, scene is, and that particular aspect of the film is very reminiscent of that.
Another possibility is that Anton Shigur represents some sort of capitalist excess, some sort of unethical, excessive capitalism that has got out of control. And this, once again, has lots of good evidence to back it up too. Uh, money is the primary motivation that drives the plot and which drives him. And in actual fact, initially, it looks like, uh, he has been hired by someone else to track down this money. But as the, the movie sort of progresses, you start to realize that maybe he's not really interested in the money because he's been hired by someone else to do this. Perhaps he's after the money himself for whatever reason. And so this, this obsession though, on the money itself, and it very much drives the movie. The whole plot is around this rather large, um, uh, bounty of cash that Llewelyn stumbles across first, obviously, and then Anton and as in pursuit of, and so are others. It's very much about, uh, um, currency and also transactions. The, the, the criminal transactions which led up to him finding the money in the desert and then being pursued, etc. You, when you think about it, Anton Shigur, in many ways, could be a personification of perhaps some sort of heartless corporation or heartless finance company or bank that just, it doesn't care about people. It's only interested in the money. And a person is just a means to an end. A person is just an object in the way of that entity getting its hands on more money. And, and it sort of seems that very much Anton Shigur could very much fit that mold.
You also think about it too, the way he engages with characters. It's quite conceivable you could imagine him sitting there with characters and substituting out some of those iconic lines that he utters in this film and instead having him say things like, look, it's not personal, it's just business. And it would very much fit with that character. It would not be out of place at all because it's very much how he conducts himself. He's very utilitarian in his nature. He's focused on the end goal, and the end goal is the money. The gangsters in this film also are not really your typical gangsters. Now, we've seen Godfather type gangsters before who run businesses, but they, they still have this shady sort of character and murderous sort of, uh, menace about them. But the gangsters in this film, the ones we see on screen, they actually look like sort of respectable businessmen. They, they come across more like a corporation than they do like a gang. And there's that point at which Carson Wells sits down, Carson Wells sits down with Anton Shigur just before he's killed. And you remember one of the things he says to him, which is interesting, the turn of phrase that he uses, he says, look, I'm just a day trader. Which is an interesting turn of phrase to describe what his profession really is. Again, it points to the possibility that this is actually about excessive capitalism, immoral capitalism that has gone, uh, without any sort of restriction and has gone into immoral and unethical territories where the human person is ultimately the victim of its actions.
There's also the interesting thing about the character of Llewelyn, played by Josh Brolin. And, and he's a working-class guy. Um, he's a good guy. We know that. There's lots of indications. That scene in the hotel where the woman offers him to come back to her room and have a few beers, and he says, no, because I'm a married man. And one beer leads to another. He's, he's a very moral man. He's been a veteran, so he is someone who has served greater causes than just himself. And the whole thing about him and this money, he doesn't want the money out of greed. The money, so the moral question is pretty straightforward because he found the money. He didn't steal it, he didn't shoot anyone. He found the money. He stumbled across this money. And so there's clearly, you could say, there's a pretty clear moral claim that he could make on that money. And I think most people wouldn't have too much of an issue with that. But the interesting thing is what he does once he gets the money. He doesn't take the money and spend it on super yachts and big fancy houses and drugs and women or anything like that. It's all about securing a better future for his family. That's the whole point of him taking that money. And then the whole point of him and his relationship with Anton Shigur is that he is trying to outmatch and outlast Anton Shigur so that he can have the money and use it to secure his family's future. It's not a selfish, uh, vice or greed or anything like that that drives him. And so he's the sort of good guy, which, and he's also your typical working-class kind of guy. And so very much, I think this relationship that he has to the money and to Anton Shigur could very much represent your average working-class person and their experience of life, where they are working their guts out and toiling away to try and secure a better future. It's not about greed, it's not about having stuff, it's not rampant consumerism. They're actually trying to do this. They're trying to get money for their family and for the betterment of their family and for their family's future. It's very much like a cycle of work that is sort of, you could say that this movie is a bit of a, the story is a metaphor, uh, for, for particularly for, um, the character of Llewelyn. And it's interesting, there's one point where he has to sneak back across the Mexican border and he throws this bounty of cash, this, this briefcase full of cash, he throws it over the fence to hide in the grass on the river bank. And what's interesting is when I saw that, I thought to myself, you, you get that real sense of desperation. He's got no other choice but to do this. And you get the sense that this could be symbolic of someone who has worked and worked and who has just gone bankrupt or who has just lost their life savings or their life savings are in jeopardy in some sort of finance scheme. It's, it's sort of when you look at the movie that way, it could well be read that way as well. So, as I said, one of the other possibilities is that this is about some sort of capitalist excess.
The next theory is that Anton Shigur represents some sort of modern ideology that fails to respect the dignity of the human person. So perhaps he represents some sort of moral philosophy, uh, like utilitarianism or consequentialism, and the focus is on the end justifying the means, and you don't really think about and and prioritize the dignity of the human person. Um, this sort of, the evidence to back this up would be the conversation that that, uh, Ed Tom Bell, Tommy Lee Jones's character, has with the El Paso Sheriff when they're having dinner together, and they have that conversation about morality and how moral standards have slipped. And then part of that conversation, they talk about Anton and how he returned to the scene of a crime to kill Carson Wells. And they, they both are like, who does that? Who goes back to the scene of a murder to murder another person? And they talk about how this is the sort of no sense of shame or even basic virtue in that kind of action. You know, there's something really, really evil about what's going on here. There's no respect for human dignity. In some ways, you could even argue that perhaps Anton Shigur, uh, is very symbolic of that Nietzschean sort of Superman, the will to power. He's just relentless. He doesn't care about God or morality. It doesn't come into it for him at all. He is just so focused on the utility, the outcome of what, and this sort of relentless pursuit of what he must do. There's no concern for the people he's killing. There's, there's also that opening monologue from Ed Tom Bell where he talks about the fact that sheriffs used to, uh, go, uh, about their duties without even carrying a gun. And now, obviously, it's become a necessity for them to carry a weapon. And we actually see him with the weapon himself. And again, there's that sort of sense of moral decay. And the fact that they, in that conversation, they tie Anton Shigur very much back to that, indicates that perhaps he's representative of some sort of moral decay. Uh, he's representative of some sort of ideology that does not respect the dignity of human persons. And the other interesting thing is his choice, his main choice of weapon. He uses a tool that is normally used for the, uh, execution of cattle, and he uses that on people. He's cold, he looks them right in the eyes, and he uses, uses it on them without even missing a heartbeat. It's very much indicative of the fact that he doesn't see people. He doesn't see human dignity. He sees them as nothing more than cattle. And that's why that's his weapon of choice.
The fifth and final possibility, and this is the one that I actually think makes the most sense, and I think this is what Anton Shigur is supposed to be the personification of, is the idea that Anton Shigur is actually supposed to be representative of evil itself. And the reason I think he's evil and not merely death is because of the random nature of the way he impacts the world, and particularly the lives of people that he encounters. He has that whole coin toss that he does with people. And it's, it's not, it's not really characteristic of death. Now, yes, I know you could call back to, uh, movies like Ingmar Bergman's, uh, The Seventh Seal, you know, the knight who plays chess with the Grim Reaper. But I, I, I think that's, uh, while there's definitely an allusion to that, I don't think that you can compare what he's doing here. There's lots of reasons why I don't think that's it. It's not really a direct comparison. I don't think the same sort of thing is going on here. He's so random in the way that he does it. Everyone, and death doesn't do the Grim Reaper doesn't offer, he might have played chess with one knight, but he doesn't offer everyone the chance to win their life. And yet, that's pretty much what Anton Shigur does.
There's also the fact that Anton Shigur engages in killings that the Grim Reaper, that death wouldn't engage in. He goes on effectively self-interested revenge killings when he goes out after those gangsters. Uh, you know, death obviously is the, the Grim Reaper obviously kills people, but the Grim Reaper is very much, you, you see him in his typical personification as being a servant of something bigger. You know, you have a ledger, and every person has has allotted so much time here on Earth, and when their time is up, their time is up, and the Grim Reaper comes to collect what is due. He's not, it's not personal for him. It's something, it's a duty that he has to fulfill. He's not, he doesn't go on a revenge killing spree. Yet very much that is part of this, a much more personal intent that we see in this character, which wouldn't seem consistent with the Grim Reaper, but would be consistent, I think, with evil. Uh, evil also afflicts both good and bad people alike, and that's very much Anton Shigur. He will, he will kill people who has no reason to kill, not just, you know, innocent people who happen to be in his way, but people who are innocent and he has absolutely no reason to kill. The gas station owner, he had no reason to even begin that process of possibly ending his life with him, but he does it. And it speaks to the fact that he is evil. There's a randomness, there's, there is, there's no calculus here.
The other thing is, he's seemingly unstoppable. Again, evil in our world is not preventable. And that's very much the character of Anton Shigur. Even in the end of the film, he's up and he's off again. He's just relentless. But there's something interesting about what, what happens at the end of the movie. And at the end of the movie, he is involved in a serious car accident. Now, first of all, as is often the case in real life, serious evils are brought to an end by accident, or in a way that wasn't really intentional, or in a way that people never saw or expected to happen. And, and that's very much what happens here. His, his, uh, reign of evil, if you like, is brought to an end by a random car accident, someone running a red light. And not only that, but he is also experienced a very serious and specific injury, uh, in that accident. His arm, his left arm is very, very, was so badly broken, the bone is sticking out of the skin, like it's a very, very serious injury. Now, some have suggested that maybe he doesn't survive there, but the indications are he will survive this. He walks off and carries on. But this is one of the interesting things about evil. Even though evil is often defeated in unexpected ways, which is what this car would represent, evil doesn't cease to exist. You may destroy it in one form, but it returns in another, different form. And that is hinted at, I think, at the end of this movie. Because what are the two characteristics, the two weapons, the two main characteristics of the villain Anton Shigur in this film? Are, are the, the cattle gun that he uses to kill people with, which is accompanied by a rather large tank of compressed air. So he has to use two hands for that weapon, and, and the large rifle that he has. Again, he has to use two hands for that weapon. So isn't it a possibility that this serious arm breakage that he's experienced, because he's probably not going to go to a hospital. We've seen him already, and we know that he doesn't go to hospitals to fix, uh, issues that he has. He repairs himself. He stole what was necessary from that pharmacy and then fixed his own, patched his own wounds up, and then carried on. So it's conceivable he's not going to go to the hospital. And that means that he's probably going to end up with an injury that is going to have some form of disability, or it's going to, uh, [ __ ] him in some way in that particular part of his body, which is quite significant because that part of his body is essential to, to, to the form that he has taken throughout this entire movie. The guy wandering around with this tank in one hand and this cattle gun attached to it, the other, or this two-handed weapon. Well, he can't do that anymore because he's only going to have use of one good arm, and the other one is never going to be as effective. So even if he's not totally defeated, he has been weakened in some way. Once again, this all points to a personification of evil.
The big thing for me, though, that why I think he's evil and not death, is the fact that there's just such a random nature to the way his impact is felt on the world. It's not like death, which is very clinical and precise. There is a formula for death, but Anton Shigur doesn't have that formula. So there you go. There's the five main theories. If there's others I've missed, I'd love to hear them. If you think that I've got it wrong, what do you think is the correct interpretation of Anton Shigur? Please let me know in the comments section below. Otherwise, thanks for watching. I'll see you next time on Left Foot [Music] Media. [Music] Oh.