Film Fight Villains

Film Fight: Villain of the Week
No Country for Old Men/There Will be Blood vs. Our Past Film Tradition

I love the struggle of good against evil. Take The Exorcist. Give me a priest in a white collar who takes on the devil who spins a girl’s head around and makes her vomit green. The white collar wins, even though he has to throw himself out a window to do it. That is a good guy. I love a hero. Jason Bourne in the Bourne Ultimatum bravely faces the villain and, even though he is shot, smashed, his car crashed on the freeway, flips over three times without an airbag, he walks away… Well, why not? He is a “good guy.” And “good guys” get away safe…okay, he limps a little.

But times are changing.

Last year, our hero in The History of Violence kills, maims, pops his own brother, and comes home–well, he’s got to do bad stuff to continue to be good–waits to be accepted, his children say okay, his wife holds back a moment, then looks up at him, tear in the eye…not to worry, we know she’ll understand.

In today’s movies, the villain gets his day. And which of the two fascinating “villains” will win the envelope?

Take Bardem in No Country for Old Men, carrying not just an ordinary gun but an animal kill-machine which puts holes in the foreheads of bulls and he’ll do the same for you. He kills bloodily not only those who have taken his honestly earned drug money, but anyone else who comes across his path. Only way to save yourself: take the flip of a coin he offers and call it right. He is a non-stop killing machine. [Spoiler alert] He gets everybody and, in the end, a car smashes him. All he suffers for his “crimes” is a simple bone sticking out of his arm. Oh that must smart. But he doesn’t react and he walks away with the money. Oh yes, the good sheriff, the “hero” realizes that life is pretty depressing and can’t figure out how to spend his days now that he’s stopped trying, and failing, to catch bad guys.

Worse than a killing machine is the remarkable Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will be Blood, whose life is intent on bringing in the oil so that eventually you can fill up your tank at almost four bucks a gallon. His beloved son gets dreadfully hurt in an accident, loving papa takes him to shelter and…does he dial 911? No, a gusher comes in and he rushes to see the beauty of it. [Spoiler alert] When the boy seems so damaged that he’s of no use in helping papa sell oil wells, he dumps him in a “home.” Doesn’t even take him, just dumps him without a kiss of goodbye. And in the end, when the now deaf son, recovered, comes to forgive his papa, saying he’s now going to be a teacher, old dad has no use for him. It’s oil or nothing.

So what does that say about our world which these films reflect? I remember the ’30s when, even in the Depression, our films let us know that good always triumphed. I was a teen during the “good war” where our guys were roaring to get overseas to finish off those rotten Nazis. But then there was no TV, no cell phones, no Internet so that we could learn at the push of a button that all over the world, bad guys were winning, and that we have hardly anything to save us but “the luck of a coin toss.”

Now we stand bewildered. Can good still triumph, or are we in the early days of the apocalypse?

Call me a romantic. I like the good guys to win at the end. This year, two great performances by Day-Lewis and Bardem were enough to draw me to their films, but when Bardem walks away from murder with only a bone sticking out of his arm, come on. And Day-Lewis turns on the good son who has come to make peace. Great writing, great acting. But is this a reflection of today’s world? Or ee-gods, has the world always been like this and we’ve been going to the movies to avoid seeing reality?

Well, I’ll look through my DVDs and watch James Stewart take on the whole villainous dishonest politcal establishment, fighting to make an honest government in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. This being election night…I’m still watching and dreaming.