How do you prefer your cinematic evil? Heroes and villains have long trod an ethical and moral gray area in movies, and much theorizing has occurred regarding this as a reflection of society. With There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, and No Country for Old Men, directed by the Coen brothers and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin, we are presented with yet a new view of the villain. The two films present violent character studies which resonate in contemporary American society.
The similarities between these two films go beyond the violence and the ego-driven protagonists. The differences, as well, are more than the sum of their parts. In Blood we have three players: Daniel Plainview (domineeringly played by Day-Lewis), his adversary, Old Time Religion in the person of Preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), and Oil (played by itself, but interchangeable with ferocious ambition, wealth-seeking, and blood).
The three players in No Country are more clearly defined: Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is not your run-of-the-mill psychopath. He moves calmly through the movie in pursuit of a satchel full of drug money, but his entrenchment in his victims' lives is too personal for a business-as-usual hired killer. His tracking is almost feral, as if he can smell Moss. Inside Moss’s mobile home Chigurh has arrived too late. He looks around him, removes a bottle of milk from the refrigerator, sits on the couch and drinks it, while observing his reflection in the silent television, as if sensing how Moss lives will tell him what his quarry is likely to do next. The violence he dispenses is uncompromising, but tempered by chance (a coin toss), and seems bound by rules that only he knows.
The novel upon which the movie is based explored the themes of predestination, free will and chance, and these questions are embodied in the person of Sheriff Bell (Jones), who is near retirement and voices the astonishment of someone who has lived long enough and dealt with enough evil to recognize how it has changed over time. Between these two axes is Llewelyn Moss, the unlikely hero, neither completely good nor bad, who stumbles upon the satchel of money. He knows it’s from a drug deal gone wrong, he knows bad guys will come after it, and he decides to pit his will and wits against theirs. He’s a poor man, but one who loves his wife, and he has a sense of humor. We like him. We’d like him to win, but there are no champions in this movie. The Bad guy gets away, the hero dies, and the nominal good guy retires, still trying to comprehend the evil he knows is out there, but with which he has decided not to contend.
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