Satyamdas said:
I guess I find your views of evil characters limiting and needlessly binary. I just don't see the need or benefit of comparing one character against another when the entire focus of each film is on something completely different. I don't even think the xenomorph or Michael Myers is a good example of evil, because there was no morality to consider in battling them. Those movies are not about the concept of evil, they are about visceral scenes of fright and horror.
The human being is not a theme nor an essay, though. The human is a human, first and foremost, and their thematic place in a story can't supplant that face. Though he was speaking of Chekhov's short stories, I think Dan Schneider put it quite well:
"At a time where Post-Modernism and even Post-Post-Modernism are still spoken of as daring, and innovative, for they move beyond plot and character, Chekhov shows that while plot is often disposable, it is virtually impossible to construct even a passable story without solid characterization. readers need to be drawn in, and an idea, no matter how ingenious, needs to interact with a character, and one that is not a stereotype. Human mnemonics is centered upon emotions, which are limned with characters, not by mere ideas. Ideas can suffice in philosophy but character creation is the engine that sets the art in motion, indeed, is often the art in the art of storytelling."
Evil as a concept is rich enough that it can be presented as force of nature or as personal characterization, Chigurh or Rosenthal. Chigurh was not so cartoonish as to not resemble a human. In fact, the scenes between him and the gas station attendant, the motel manager, and Carla Jean did plenty to reveal his own inconsistencies and internal moral system, illogical though it may be.
I agree that he's not made to resemble something TOTALLY divorced from a human being, but there's really not a lot of depth nor breadth to what we do see. There's almost something at the end with Carla Jean, but it comes all too late and still doesn't really do enough. We see pretty much one side of the man throughout the movie, which is really like a surface-level characterization, no matter how cool or badass what we do see may be.
Yes, evil as it is realized in Chigurh is evil to combat, that struggle against the force of evil was the entire point of NCfOM. The character's strength in this area was the very absence of making him relatable or humanizing him. He was thus something of an apparition or a force to deal with, rather than an examination of the particulars of an evil person, and this made the observations of Bell and the theme of the film more poignant. If you give Chigurh reasons for his evil nature, then you dilute the main message which is that pure evil exists and we can't understand it. You make Chigurh a sympathetic figure or give him too much exposition, and then the theme as evil as force of nature is lost completely.
I say again, though, that if your evil is going to be personified, then the personification had BETTER be a person and not a caricature. Bell does say some very nice things, but if Chigurgh just sort of embodies them and nothing more, then you're really limiting the depth and poignancy that such observations can have. If, however, he lives up to them while simultaneously having moments that show that there is something more to him, some sort of humanity that seems to move beyond the unidirectional characterization that Bell makes of him, that ends up deepening both the character and the film. As it stands, the movie's message is to combat a form of evil that really does not and cannot exist, at least as shown. The thing is, the Coen brothers have done very well with this theme before, particularly in the later A Serious Man, which is actually an even bleaker movie but which ends up working far better because the evil/randomness in the main character's life is not a person but a nameless, faceless force.
Now if that theme doesn't sit well with you, I can understand that. But what I don't understand is the desire for every personification of evil to fit some preconceived mold or for every one to be a realistic portrayal in order for it to be an effective character.
That's the thing: I'm NOT asking for every personification of evil to fit some preconceived mold. Chigurgh, as depicted, fits pretty comfortably into a stereotypical mold of movie evil, which is ironic since the movie makes attempts at structuring itself in a way that subverts Hollywood tropes. The thing I'm asking for is for a character like Chigurgh to break the mold that he's cast in, to show that there is more to him than meets the eye; doing so would necessarily deepen the movie's examination of evil and its place in the world, for it would show not just his evil but how he is able to wield it against the fact that the world rejects it. I'm not asking for the cliche, Hollywood attempts to "humanize" people by giving them traumatic pasts or whatever. We don't have to know anything about his past. But I do think that we have to know that in the present, he is a human being living in the world, not just somebody that exists only to embody evil as it exists in the mind of a filmmaker.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that No Country for Old Men is a bad or mediocre movie. It's not. It's a good, sometimes VERY good movie that I think is limited by the fact that one of its three main characters is not nearly as well-developed nor human as the other two, which is doubly disappointing since Javier Bardem put such gusto into the performance and could have, I think, handled added depth and humanization.
3/10
