1- Would you like to give examples of what you find most striking about Chigurth's behaviour?
2- What do we learn about him from Carson Wells ( a rival hitman and ex-partner of Chigurh who is also on the trail of the money) ?
3-
I'm going to quote from a review of the film written by Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader.
I'll try not to do this if I can avoid it, and leave discussion of the film to a thread after the discussion of the novel.
Note: "The Silence of the Lambs": Ted Tally's screenplay was based on Thomas Harris's 1988 best-selling novel of the same name.
(emphasis mine)One reason I tend to dislike movies about psycho killers is that I can't respond to them with the devotion I feel is expected of me. I'm too distracted by the abundance of these characters on-screen when they rarely appear in real life, and by how popular they seem to become whenever we're fighting a war. What is it about them that people find so exciting? Reviewing The Silence of the Lambs over 16 years ago, I was troubled by the way the thriller tapped into "irrational, mythical impulses that ultimately seem more theological than psychological," and how critics who loved it seemed "better equipped to regurgitate the myth than to analyze it." (...)
The waves of love that went out to Lecter, epitomized by the five top Oscars the movie received in 1992, were a mix of giggly fascination, twisted affection, and outright awe for his absolute lack of remorse. This was during the first gulf war, a time when we were grappling with our own feelings about killing masses of people on a daily basis. I suspect Lecter represented a savior of sorts, a saintlike holy psycho who made us feel less uneasy about wanton slaughter.
We may not feel the same kind of affection for the real psycho killers in our midst, but they do inspire similar fear, fascination, and mythologizing. Seung-Hui Cho was clearly crazy when he slaughtered 32 people at Virginia Tech last April, but he was also smart enough to know there was no question that if he sent a media kit off to the national press they'd use it. He might have had more power to get himself onto the cover of Newsweek than the editors would have had if they'd wanted to keep him off. (...)The picture of human nature in No Country for Old Men is by contrast so bleak I wonder if it must provide for some a reassuring explanation for our defeatism and apathy in the face of atrocity. I admire the creativity and storytelling craft of the Coen brothers, but I can't for the life of me figure out what use they think they're putting that creativity and craft to. As I left the screening in Toronto, all I could think was, "America sure loves its mass murderers."
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/s ... 07/071108/
No Country For Old Men is a successful novel.
a- Do you think the character of Anton Chigurgh accounts for much of its success?
b- The modern sociopath character is asociated with American literature.
Any commments about Jonathan Rosenbaum's Review?
c- (How can I phrase this nicely...?): Do you see a link bewtween the American public or readers' psyche and the appearance of psychopaths in novels and films who become very famous characters?
d- Here one can try analysing the fans who then love the same books and films in the rest of the world.
4- Here are more quotes about Chigurh:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2008 ... odiac.htmlChigurh isn't caught red-handed . His deeds don't catch up to him; he simply fulfills his character-as-destiny, expressing the essence of who he is . (...)Chigurh exhibits the occasional glimmers of personality -- pride, arrogance, annoyance, determination -- but he never succumbs to fits of dudgeon. He kills not from anger, or even for money, but because it is his nature.