CS Weekly Archive > The Big Picture > 8/05/05

The Seven Best Examples
that Ante Up the Anti-Hero

by nick birren

Anti-heroes aren't all Clint Eastwood. These six types (yeah, we cheat a little to make this a seven best, sue us it's free) show the breadth and depth of just how anti a hero can be -- and how far an anti-hero can rise, given the opportunity.

Let's get one thing straight. The definition of an anti-hero does not begin and end with Clint Eastwood. Although his resumé of raw and rebellious heroes is iconic in the likes of Dirty Harry and The Man With No Name, he still doesn't define what an anti-hero is (although he comes pretty damn close). In total, there are at least six models of anti-heroes. This list purposely strays from the obvious choices (sans A Clockwork Orange's Alex de Large) like Snake Plissken and includes different examples than those simply pursuing honorable goals through dishonorable means. Anti-heroes generally lack traditional hero qualities, such as idealism or courage, which essentially makes them more common than we all think.

Type 1 -- The End Justifies the Means
Leonard Shelby (Memento)
The most common type of anti-hero is the one who justifies the means by the outcome. These are the Frank Castles of our world that are so determined to accomplish their mission, that piling up absurd body counts is more than validated. For Memento's protagonist, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), life revolves around one thing: finding the man who killed his wife (Jorja Fox). From the very first scene, the audience sees Leonard's capabilities as he's introduced standing over a body of the man he's just killed. But going to the extreme lengths of killing another man is somewhat conventional within this model of anti-hero in movies. This is why it's more chilling when Leonard steps in front of a mirror for the first time revealing his tattoos. Because of his short-term memory loss, Leonard has compiled an eccentric amount of notes to track down his wife's killer. However, he tattoos important clues on his body to remind himself of the pain of losing his wife and his goal of finding her killer. Not only does he go to the local parlors and have professionals do it, but we also witness a few scenes of Leonard painfully tattooing himself as he sits quietly in his own motel room.

Type 2 -- The Outsider
John Bender (The Breakfast Club)
The second type of anti-hero is the outsider. They distrust any conventional social systems and ideals, while relishing their place on the periphery of society. In The Breakfast Club, John Bender (Judd Nelson) knows exactly who he is, and he isn't afraid to say it: he's "a criminal." From this label, we understand he consciously challenges established rules and authority in society, even relishing this status among his classmates. Bender's defiant battles with Principal Vernon (Paul Gleason), the face of authority, only demonstrate his distrust to this conventional system and his commitment to nontraditional ideals. In addition, his monologue about his family life, centering on his abusive father (would that woman just get him a chicken-pot-pie!), demonstrates why he lives his life outside the system. At the end of the film, Bender becomes a more sympathetic character as he shows his affections for Claire (Molly Ringwald). However, this doesn't mean that he's giving up his outsider status. If anything, by giving Claire his earring, he's making a compromise to accept her lifestyle and ideals, while simultaneously inviting her into his world as one who distrusts conventional values.

Type 3 -- The Failures
Jake and Elwood Blues (The Blues Brothers)
Anti-heroes can also be failures. For instance, they may be protagonists passionately moving toward a particular goal, but fail at nearly every avenue despite having minimal and short-lived successes. From the beginning, 'Joliet' Jake and Elwood Blues (John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd) are established failures. Jake failed at life and wound up at Joliet State Penitentiary, and Elwood let the band break up and sold the original Blues Mobile. To make matter worse, "The Penguin" (Kathleen Freeman) gives them a seemingly impossible goal of legitimately raising $5,000 to save the orphanage where they grew up. Believing they're on a mission from God, the Brothers Blues are doggedly persistent while gaining some successes, but eventually meeting greater failures. For instance, they succeed at putting the band back together, but end up playing the wrong gigs and dig themselves deeper in debt. They succeed at promoting their concert, but their car runs out of gas, causing them to be late and almost miss their show. They succeed at raising the five grand, but end up running from vengeful state troopers, irate fascists ("I hate Illinois Nazis!"), good ol' boy rednecks, and a psychotic mystery woman (Carrie Fisher) armed with a bazooka. By the end of the film, after going 106 miles to Chicago on a full tank of gas and a half pack of cigarettes, it's dark and they're wearing sunglasses ("Hit it!"), but the Blues Brothers are able to pay the money to save the orphanage, but are sent right back to where they started…"Joliet."

Type 4 -- The Reluctant Ones
Trevor Reznik (The Machinist)
Bernie Laplante (Hero)
Unlike the first three models, anti-hero types four through six generally have an arc resulting from the story pushing them in specific directions. For instance, the fourth type of anti-hero starts the story showing selfish and unlikable traits despite encompassing heroic capabilities, a la Han Solo. But as the story unfolds, so does the character, as the story forces them to use their heroic capabilities. The way Christian Bale brings to life the lonesome Trevor Reznik is an excellent example of how great writing can inspire great acting. On the page, Reznik is an outsider. He doesn't play poker with his co-workers, he stays home bleaching his bathroom floor, and he regularly visits a local prostitute. More importantly, Reznik hasn't slept in over a year, which is the cause of his grotesquely famished and skeletal physique. Externally, his body is dying, thereby serving as a representation of his internal (mental) state: a dying and increasingly maddening soul. Reznik's story is about self-discovery; it's not so much that he's losing his grip on reality, it's the mystery of why. You get the sense that things weren't always this way. At times, Reznik shows his heroic side -- standing up to the boss for another co-worker, charming a waitress at an airport coffee shop -- but it isn't until the end that he relents to his guilt and becomes more sympathetic for his profession.

Bernie La Plante (Dustin Hoffman) is an amoral man and a hustler. He is facing criminal charges for credit card fraud, and his wife wants to limit his child custody rights because he's a negligent father and a drunk. In an attempt to reconcile the situation, he goes to his son's birthday, but along the way, a plane crashes in front of his face on a deserted road. Although Bernie's actions -- pulling people from the fuselage, thereby saving their lives -- seem heroic, his motivations are the exact opposite: he's actually there to steal the survivors' wallets. What appeared to be a redeeming moment for this otherwise sleazy character is really just a man doing heroic things for all the wrong reasons.

What's great about La Plante is that he knows exactly who he is, and is fully aware of his own pessimistic idealism toward life. At one point, he even tells his son that the only truth in life is that people live their lives according to lies. For very self-comforting reasons, when people grow up they pick their own "layers of bullshit" and live by those standards. Of course, by the end of the film, Bernie's own self-protective layer of bullshit is peeled back, as he's made to confront his own demons and become a sympathetic and selfless hero -- even if it all started out by accident.

Type 5 -- Dragged kicking and screaming into heroic action
Oskar Schindler (Schindler's List)
The fifth type of anti-hero has a similar arc to number four, except they are devoid of any heroic qualities at the beginning. These anti-heroes are generally motivated out of immoral qualities such as envy, lust, or power, but are later reversed. Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) was fueled by greed: he didn't want to exterminate the Jews, he just wanted to exploit their "free" labor so he could line his own pockets. Morally, Schindler held no convictions about the horrific treatment his workers suffered at the hands of the Third Reich -- as long as his factories were producing and his bank accounts were growing, he was happy. But with this greed came selfishness, and it's this selfishness that inevitably allowed Oskar Schindler to evolve. Schindler arcs from a businessman who only wants to profit from the war, to a businessman concerned for his workers only because they're integral to his business (having them deemed "essential workers"), to a human being who wants to save as many souls as he can from the Nazi death machine. Oskar Schindler's greed shaped his sympathy for his Jewish workers, which in turn brought about his compassion for all Jews and even his guilt that he should have done more to save them (as exemplified in his speech about his ring, which he regrets not selling so that he could save one more life).

Type 6 -- No redeeming characteristics
Alex de Large (A Clockwork Orange)
Lastly, the sixth type is more or less a villain. Despite generating some sympathy as the story unfolds, there are generally no redeeming qualities in this type of anti-hero whatsoever, leaving them simply just…anti. When I first saw A Clockwork Orange, it was like watching a car crash: I couldn't believe that someone made a movie in which the central character was so unrelenting and unsympathetic that I found myself hating him every minute he was on screen -- but yet, I couldn't look away. In fact, a movie I thought I was going to turn off before the end of act one kept me intrigued all the way through, despite its perverse sense of humor. It was because I simply needed to know what was going to happen to Alex. Here's a guy who sadistically invades a quaint suburban home of an innocent and unsuspecting couple, beats the husband within an inch of his life (all to Alex's rendition of "Singing in the Rain"), then proceeds to rape the man's wife right before his bleeding eyes. However, despite all this, Alex does become a more sympathetic character. After his imprisonment, Alex volunteers for a type of experimentation that is supposed to rid him of his violent instincts. It does, and upon his release back into the world, he's forced to confront his criminal past by dealing with members of his old gang, the Droogs, and the very family that he once terrorized at the beginning.

Nick Birren is from Chicago and is a die-hard Cubs fan. If anyone else out there has this same disease, click on the byline for support.

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