POP CULTURE
The Mind of Javier Bardem
An award doesn’t necessarily make you a better actor.— Javier Bardem
I first met the character Anton Chigurh in Cormac McCarthy’s gripping No Country For Old Men. I was floored by the power of McCarthy’s prose, the original story and the striking characters.
When the Coen Brothers translated this book to film, it didn’t surprise me to find Tommy Lee Jones selected to portray the weathered sheriff caught up in the unsettling new kind of escalating violence. But who was this remarkable character inhabiting Anton Chigurh? From his first moments on the screen Javier Bardem was stunning.
So much so that I soon found myself looking for other films he’d performed in. I found many.
The Spanish actor’s versatility is remarkable. In The Sea Inside he plays a quadriplegic who wants to have assisted suicide legalized. In Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona he’s a handsome womanizer. In Goya’s Ghost he’s a Catholic priest defending the painter Goya during the Spanish Inquisition. In Love in a Time of Cholera he is Florentino, a young man smitten by a woman who married another, aging throughout the film into an old man who has waited a lifetime to consummate his love. In Skyfall he plays another Bond arch villain.
