BARDEM, IN NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, BEST PSYCHOPATH

By Sofi Terracota

Tomatasos.com

Psychopaths in the seventh art have always been a source of fascination for moviegoers. 

On many occasions we are in search of characters who reflect that otherness in everyday life, and those who suffer from this mental condition always end up attracting the attention of the public on the small or big screen. 

A study published in The Journal of Forensic Sciences (via Business Insider) places Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men – by a 94 percent margin – as the best psychopath in cinema. 

No Country for Old Men  is a 2007 film directed by the Coen brothers and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson and Javier Bardem. 

It places us in rural Texas during the 1980s, when welder and hunter Llewelyn Moss discovers the remains of several drug dealers who have killed each other in a failed trade. Moss keeps the money and that's when Anton begins to track him down, killing whoever stands in his way and leading to a tense game of hunting.

The study Psychopathy and the Cinema: Fact or Fiction? brings together the efforts of psychiatry professor Samuel Leistedt, along with 10 other colleagues in Belgium, who in a span of three years saw more than 400 films released between 1915 and 2010. Their goal was simple but powerful: look for the most realistic psychopaths in cinema.

It is interesting to discover that the most famous of pop culture are not listed because they simply do not come close to what a person with this condition would do in the real world.

According to the paper, Anton Chigurh by Javier Bardem is the best psychopath in the cinema because his homicidal instincts are handled with a disturbing normality, showing no reaction in his expressions: 

“He seems to be effectively invulnerable and resistant to any form of emotion. or humanity" 

No Country for Old Men is often regarded as the best of the Coen brothers, with critics pointing to Javier Bardem as the best of the film, a cold performance in the best sense of the word.

Other prominent psychopaths in the study are Hans Beckert in M, a child killer, and Henry Lee Lucas in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Some celebrities who were left off the list for being completely unreal are Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, Gordon Gekko in Wall Street, Norman Bates Psychosis and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. The conclusion about these last characters is that they are closer to the villainous than to what a psychopath itself represents.