Anyone reading this probably knows that Hollywood movies are not a good place to find accurate depictions of mental illness. Sure, some films can examine the real-life psychology of sociopaths and criminals with rigor and research, but most screenwriters would rather write scenes of murder and mayhem than bother interrogating the minds of their killers. If you ever see a movie psychopath laughing madly at his own chaos, he’s doing a movie thing, not a psychopath thing. Even films that claim to know psychology aren’t always accurate, often communicating bits of psychological realism without doing the heavy lifting. Think about “Psycho” or any other movie about dissociative identity disorder.
However, according to a 2014 Science News report, one movie murderer can be described as entirely psychologically accurate: Anton Chigurh from the Coen brothers’ 2007 Best Picture award winner, “No Country from Old Men.” Anton Chigurh, played by Academy Award winner Javier Bardem, is an assassin who murders his victims using a device called a tethered bullet gun (a widget that fires a bolt into a victim’s brain via air pressure and then retracts it). They are generally used to slaughter livestock. But Anton is not just a murderer; he is a soft-spoken, intense monster who seems completely detached from the world around him. And he never laughs madly. Indeed, when he smiles, it seems fake and manipulative. Anton doesn’t really know what human emotions are. This is a more accurate depiction of a psychopath.
This is the conclusion reached by forensic psychologist Samuel Leistedt and his colleague Paul Linkowski after a fun three-year project. The pair watched 400 films, each featuring an alleged psychopath, to see which films best represented psychopathy as an illness. Anton Chigurh was, according to their study, the most accurate portrait.
Anton Chigurh is cinema’s most accurate psychopath
As part of his work, Leistedt spoke to and psychologically analyzed real-life hitmen, and he observed that Chigurh had the same cool, anxiety-free demeanor as his patients. “[Anton] does its job and he can sleep without any problem. In my practice, I have encountered a few people like this. They were like that. Cold, intelligent, no guilt, no anxiety, no depression,” Leistedt explained, diagnosing Anton as a “primary, classic/idiopathic psychopath.” If you meet someone who reminds you of Anton, maybe be a little wary.
Hans Beckert, the child murderer played by Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang’s 1931 classic “M,” also topped the list. In this film, Hans stalks and kills children in Berlin, sparking a city-wide criminal crackdown. Naturally, the local petty criminals hate Hans for single-handedly increasing the town’s police presence, so they decide to go after Hans themselves. At the end of the film, Hans screams in terror, stating that his murderous urges are something he has never been able to fight. Leistedt diagnosed Hans as a “secondary, pseudopsychopathic, additional diagnosis of psychosis.” He also noted that Henry (Michael Rooker) in John McNaughton’s 1986 horror film “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” is disturbingly realistic. He doesn’t plan, has no empathy, and lives in poverty and chaos.
Continuing, Leistedt explained that as scary as many famous movie villains are, they are not accurate depictions of psychopathy. Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in “Psycho” is a great example of this. As Leistedt observed, Norman might have psychosis (read: hallucinations/delusions), but that’s different from outright emotionless psychopathy. Ditto Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in “The Silence of the Lambs” by Jonathan Demme. The character’s unsettling calm, Leistedt noted, is not a characteristic of true psychopaths, no matter how entertaining he may be.
