In the aftermath of this year Oscars, there seems to be a universal “buzz” surrounding The Coen Bros masterpiece “No
Country
for Old Men” which picked up no less than four gongs at the ceremony held last weekend. The talented duo have a fine directorial CV littered with critically acclaimed classics such as Oh Father, Where Art Thou, Barton Fink and Fargo, and No
Country for Old Men is probably their finest hour. That aside, much preoccupation with the film is due to the performance of one man, Javier Bardem who won the best supporting actor for his portrayal of the terrifying and oddly coiffured Anton Chigurh. Also, Bardem is the first Spanish actor to have ever won an Oscar. Needless to say he is very famous in his native country, but has now made history in Hollywood. His star already flickered quite brightly in the USA due to his brief appearance in Michael Mann’s crime drama Collateral where he played as a vicious crime lord who summons Tom Cruise''s hit man to do the dirty work of dispatching witnesses. And of course there is his much gossiped dalliance with fellow Spaniard actress Penelope Cruz, which highlight the pages of Spain’s prensa roja (Pink Press) and LA based gossip columns. Are they or aren’t they?
Bardem has played the spectrum of roles from Latin Lotharios to tortured disabled poets to psychopathic villains and in his native country, Bardem is no stranger to receiving nominations and and awards. His film debut was at the age of six and he appeared in several television series before turning to painting and, eventually, athletics (he was also a member of the Spanish national rugby team.) Among his best known Spanish films are Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside) in which he played the Spanish quadriplegic and poet, Ramon Sam Pedro, who was driven to suicide after an unsuccessful battle for the legalisation of euthanasia. He won Best Actor at the 2004 Venice Film Festival for this role. He also starred in The Dancer Upstairs, a thriller set in South America, in which his prize-winning role was of a police detective in obsessive pursuit of an anarchist rebel and caught up in an impossible love affair. In 1992 he appeared in Jamón, Jamón, ( with Ms Cruz) which was an international hit, but his role as a sexy stud made him wary of being typecast so he made a deliberate decision to avoid such roles later. Eventually he would land his international breakthrough performance role in Julian Schnabel''s Before Night Falls in 2000, as Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role, the first Spaniard to be so honoured. Although Spanish actor Javier Bardem is a major star in his homeland, however, it seems that all he has ever wanted to do was work with the Coen
brothers and it was a hairdresser that helped him solidify his dream. His Spanish agent however discouraged him. Bardem recalls “He told me, that''s not going to happen, ever. And truly, truly, that''s what I most wanted. But I''m from Spain, so that could never happen. And then they (the Coen brothers) called. And I didn''t believe it at first. And then I read the material, the script and I thought, no I can''t do this. But then I read the novel and I talk to them and they explained the themes. And so here I am." The Chigurh character, he explained, is the absolute embodiment of violence. "You call me. I come. I create pain. I go. And everything changes." To inhabit a stone-cold killer, he needed to rid himself of conventional whims or goals, somebody not centred in his own emotions. “He’s a person doing a duty, but at the same time he''s not a robot." It was the haircut, he says, that helped him find the character. Barded claims no credit for it, saying it was the production''s hairdresser who suggested the Prince Valiant-like cut. And just as the haircut is old-style, behind the times, so Chigurh seems to be always a step behind everybody in the normal world. He doesn''t interact normally. On the other hand, Chigurh is ahead of everyone else in terms of understanding their futures; he is, in fact, the agent of their destiny. For anyone who has missed the enormous buzz surrounding No Country, it''s a grim, violent story about a young Texan welder, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), who stumbles across a drug transaction gone wrong and walks away with a suitcase with $2-million in drug money. He wants to keep it, but some very nasty people, Chigurh being the nastiest, want to separate him from it. Thematically, it deals with the lack of meaning in modern life - articulated best by the taciturn. world-weary sheriff, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones). It will go down in the annuls of film history as a classic and foo Bardem, a dream come true.