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So the last time I did a list-based series of posts, things turned out pretty well. Part of that, I think, was due to the fact that the subject matter -- movies about the movies -- is fairly modest in size and scope. There just aren't that many movies to cover, so the chance of missing something or just generally coming off like a douchebag is not really that much higher than normal (granted, this is not saying much).
This series of posts will be nothing like that. The subject of anti-heroes in the movies is, well, huge. A simple Google search for "movies" and "anti-hero" provides more lists than you can shake a wiener at.
As a result, I'm fairly sure I'm a moron for tackling it, a fact I'm sure at least a few of you fine people will remind me of.
Not an anti-hero.
So it will happen this way. Keeping with the human fascination with lists that are divisible by five (for example: five things), this list will cover 10 of the best anti-hero characters in movie history, with the first four entries covering two characters each, and the last two getting their own entries.
At least, that's the plan. Even with just five entries last time, I still managed to fuck things up.
Now a few words on the term anti-hero. It seems that everyone has their own definition of it, so for reference here's mine -- an anti-hero is a character who, despite being immoral, selfish, a killer or whatever, manages to accomplish the chief heroic act in (this case) the movie.
This definition helps separate out a lot of sundry characters we just end up rooting for because they're clever, or put upon, or think they're doing the right thing -- from characters who are mediocre or even bad human beings but who manage in the world of the story to rise at least for a moment to the level of a hero (for whatever reason).
This distinguishes them from characters like Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange or Blondie from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, who despite the fact that we root for them can not be called anything but, you know, protagonists. Which is of course different from a hero.
So now that's all been covered, let's get into it.
#10 -- Larry Flynt
As seen in: The People vs. Larry Flynt
ANTI: In the movie (as in real life), Larry Flynt is a mostly uneducated, philandering smut peddler. Facing a run of bad luck running a strip club in Cincinnati, he publishes the first Hustler magazine with pictorials of the women who dance in his club.
He becomes involved with Althea Leasure, a runaway turned stripper played by Courtney Love, publishes nude photos of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and generally goes out of his way to offend every measure of taste and decorum possible, including, famously, publishing a cartoon that implies conservative icon Jerry Falwell lost his virginity to his own mother in an outhouse.
In court repeatedly on obscenity charges, Flynt is a disaster. He yells repeatedly, fires his own lawyer, wears diapers and at one point throws an orange at a judge.
HERO: But -- beyond the fact that he's portrayed, and by all accounts is in real life, as a completely classless asshole -- Flynt is right. The obscenity laws of the United States are ludicrous. As Flynt at one point says, you can get a Pulitzer for printing a picture of a murder, which is illegal, but go to jail for printing a picture of a sex act, which is legal.
This is madness, and by railing against it, even in his cartoonishly immature circus act fashion, Flynt does a public good.
Though he loses most of his obscenity trials, by the end of the movie Flynt has triumphed in the Supreme Court over the legality of his Falwell ad, solidifying a relaxed standard for satirizing public figures that still influences public satire today, enabling everyone from SNL to stand up comedians to do what they do.
Though he remains someone you'd probably never want to meet, by paying the price both in jail time and lawyers fees, Flynt proves himself a hero. Not just to people who want to look at fake and/or skanky boobs, but to anyone who thinks it's important to make that choice for themselves.
"If they'll protect a scumbag like me," Flynt says. "They'll protect anyone."
#9 -- Barry Lyndon
ANTI: A boobish, naive teenager turned ruthless gambler and profiteer, the story of Barry Lyndon is often described as the odyssey of an opportunist, tracing his humble beginnings in Ireland -- a lost love, a duel, and an escape from the law -- to his eventual profession as a gambler and his cold-hearted seduction of a widow.
As directed by Stanley Kubrick and portrayed by Ryan O'Neal, Barry is anything but sympathetic. Forced to join the Army to survive after being robbed while on his way to Dublin to escape a murder he didn't actually commit (I know, it's complicated), Barry deserts at the first opportunity, stealing the costume and papers of a messenger.
When a Prussian officer discovers Barry's lies, he's forced to join the Prussian army, which is even worse than the British one. Eventually he's brought back to Prussia and told to spy on a chevalier (whatever that is), who the Prussians think is an Irish spy. Instead, he and the chevalier join forces as a gambling team, cheating rich nobles at cards all over Europe (and fighting duels to collect when necessary).
By this point, as the Narrator puts it:
"Five years in the army, and some considerable experience in the world, had by now dispelled any of those romantic notions regarding love with which Barry commenced life. And he began to have it in mind, as so many gentlemen had done before him, to marry a woman of fortune and condition."
Stripped of his innocence, Barry seduces the widow Lady Lyndon, who falls hard (and stupidly) for him. Once they're married, and he has charge of their finances, Barry essentially throws her away, engendering the undying hatred of his adopted son, Lord Bullingdon.
After Bullingdon -- now a teenager -- insults Barry one too many times in front of a party of guests, Barry beats him mercilessly, rendering Barry a social outcast among the upper crust he's been trying so hard and so expensively to join.
HERO: The only good thing in Barry's life, other than money, is the son he and Lady Lyndon have, an annoyingly precocious kid named Bryan, who softens Barry's cool facade.
When Bryan dies in an accident, Barry falls into a prolonged drunken stupor, giving Bullingdon an opportunity to challenge Barry to a duel over mastery of the Lyndon estate.
The duel scene -- justifiably famous -- proves to be both Barry's undoing and his greatest triumph as a human.
Despite having both reason and opportunity to kill Bullingdon, and a lifetime of war, gambling and murder to harden him to the idea, he chooses not to. Bullingdon accidentally fires into the ground, so Barry -- weary and aging -- does as well. After trying to buy his way into the title and style of a gentleman and failing horribly, Barry finally finds a measure of grace and nobility in his mercy toward Bullingdon.
Bullingdon, though he has the bloodlines of a Lord, fails the moral test. Though in a twist that's very Kubrick, his very act of failing a moral test leads to the passing of a social one, since Barry's resulting injury allows Bullingdon to take control of the Lyndon estate and banish Barry to Europe.
But even though he loses the duel, Barry rises for that brief moment into heroism, showing mercy on a young kid who is clearly shitting his pants. The cold world of the movie punishes him immediately for this act, but still, after a lifetime of being a heel, Barry finally rises above.
you Moran
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