I think American Gangster is a film that wants you to feel conflicted. On the one hand, it is a difficult film to like. In it, you watch the ascendancy of Frank Lucas, a North Carolina native turned Harlem criminal who rose from obscurity to captain New York’s heroin empire in the late days of the Vietnam war. In watching this ascendancy, we watch a man who succeeds by force of a fierce personality who can boldly gun a rival down in the middle of the street surrounded by witnesses. He had a business acumen that exhibited itself in a remarkable creativity that allowed him to deliver a purer product to the streets for half the cost, destroying the profitability of the rival (mostly Italian) gangs. This allowed him to succeed at a dark and seedy game which produced wealth as it destroyed the lives of those who consumed its products and their friends and family.
At the same time as we watch this climb to success, we have to see the lives of those who are tasked to bring him down. Law enforcement personnel that were involved in these events have threatened lawsuits over the film, and I can certainly understand why. The law enforcement of this film are universally repulsive, embracing a culture of kickbacks and corruption and showing open revulsion at anyone within their ranks that might show signs of integrity or character. The threats of lawsuits of course depend much on the veracity of these assertions, but I know I certainly wouldn’t want to be associated with the law enforcement of this film.
On the other hand, American Gangster is a difficult film to hate. Combining the strong direction of Ridley Scott and the exceptional acting of Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington, we are seeing masters of their craft take us through this journey. Lucas’ rise to success is as captivating as it is challenging. We are drawn into the world of early-70’s Harlem in a vivid way, and for what it is, it is a great ride. Beyond the excellence of the filmmaking, the story itself takes decidedly unconventional turns, turns that for my money work well to complement a difficult story. It begins with a decidedly Hollywood interpretation of the world, with Crowe playing the fiercely heroic Richie Roberts who, despite a mess of a personal life, is devoted to the cause of justice and determined to find the bad guys both within the police ranks and out on the street. This idealism leads him down a tangled journey until he stumbles on the rising star of Frank Lucas. While the film could have ended with the obligatory capture of Lucas, it doesn’t, and as it does, it invites into a much more complex picture of the characters and the story.
Among the criticism the film has received, some of the most fascinating has come from black film critics. While overall the reception has been very strong, there are a large number of black critics that have been especially dismissive of the film. Arguing that the film paints Frank Lucas and his lifestyle in too positive a light, some worry about its impact, as impressionable young men see the film and aspire to emulate Lucas’ success. They worry that Lucas will now become the hero of a new generation of criminals.
Their concerns are not without base. The Frank Lucas of American Gangster is a remarkably charming person. The casting alone can tell you that, as you’d struggle to find more than a handful of names with more charisma in Hollywood that Denzel. In Lucas’ story, you see a rags to riches that is built on hard work and innovation, and at times the consequences of this climb, or the horrific social cost that it is built on, seems to get only subtle allusions. In that, one might conclude that Scott is simply being irresponsible with his material, playing to our base emotions in providing us with a sadistic success story.
On the other hand, I am persuaded that Scott’s portrait is much more complex, and may simply reflect the reality of the story. After seeing the movie, I read several interviews with Frank Lucas and with people who knew him. It was an eerie portrait, as I encountered time and again the testimonies of people who had direct knowledge of his crime, even some who prosecuted him (including Richie Roberts himself) and men that sat on the bench for his cases who proclaim their affection for him. If Denzel offers the portrait of an evil man who is hauntingly charming, it seems that he is only reflecting the person he is trying to depict.
That Scott allows this portrait to emerge about Lucas strikes me as an important choice that elevates the film and its commentary. It would be easy for us to dismiss a Frank Lucas, whose rise to power is so despicable and whose “industry” is so clearly evil. But his rise, a climb to power that saw him rubbing elbows with leaders in entertainment and politics, was not done despite his personality, but often because of it. Indeed, the real portrait of evil itself is not unattractive, but in truth it is the attractions of evil that make it so alluring. If we are to be real about the truth of sin and evil in our lives, we would understand that temptation exists precisely because it is tempting.
American Gangster challenges us to consider the nature of evil in our own lives and the reality of temptation. We might look at Lucas’ rise to power and find his temptations easy to resist, but as we are drawn into his life, we are forced to recognize that we have our own temptations that seduce and call to us as well. We are not immune.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Gone, Baby, Gone: A Review
Gone, Baby, Gone welcomes us into the world of South Boston. It’s a world that seems to ooze with character. The Departed, Mystic River, and Good Will Hunting are just a few of the recent efforts to take us into this world, and Gone is a worthy successor to these solid films. I have mixed feelings about Ben Affleck as an actor, but he seems at least to have a future on the other side of the camera.
The film opens with the media circus already in a frenzy. A girl is missing, the mother is frightened, and the police are scouring the community looking for any possible leads. The problem is that this is the kind of neighborhood where not everybody talks to the police, and so the child’s aunt decides to hire Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennarro, two locals that have a small PI operation, to assist the police in the investigation. Reluctant at first, both agree, and being to turn over rocks in their neighborhood to see what they can find.
I found Gone’s setup a bit challenging to get through. Ultimately, Casey Affleck won me over with his solid performance, but at the outset, I couldn’t believe he was doing PI work. He actually was playing his true age, 31 at the time, but like Matt Damon, has such a young face it was hard to see him in the role. Moving through this distraction, though, the film quickly establishes why Kenzie would be an interesting hire for a desperate family. He knows the neighborhood, and knows its underbelly and the people that inhabit it.
Kenzie’s work leads him to work with Detective Remy Bressant and his partner. Bressant, played by Ed Harris, is a Louisiana native who has a lot of years in the neighborhood. Kenzie quickly wins over Bressant’s trust, showing his knowledge of the street that provides leads Bressant had no chance to drum up. Through Kenzie’s legwork, their work takes them into the depths of the local drug culture, as it becomes increasingly clear that Amanda, the missing girl, has been the victim of a drug deal gone bad.
The film does a very capable job of exploring the world of the media circus. At least since Al Pacino’s amazing performance in Dog Day Afternoon in 1975, the world of film has had many voices exploring the drive of the media to manipulate “human interest” stories to serve their own marketing ends. Here, the media creates the story of the desperate mother, victim of a cruel world, who only wants to be reunited with her child. The story is a myth, and we are forced to contend with the cruelty that lies beneath that surface, and the fiction of the public face. The media’s need to paint in broad brushstrokes, searching for clear heroes and villains, fails to comport with the real world.
This reflection on the media is an excellent setup for the moral center of the film. Ultimately, the plot brings us to a place where Kenzie is forced to contend with moral choices in a morally ambiguous world. While the plot itself may be a bit convoluted, the payoff is worth the suspension of disbelief, as the film refuses to let us off the hook. We want moral clarity and we want moral choices to receive their rewards. Gone won’t let us go there. To the extent we think the choices are clear, the more the film makes us see the price they pay for those choices. Left with a wrong choice that could produce right results and a right choice that will produce wrong results, we are left to wonder which is the right way to go.
I expect we will rarely be presented with the choices that have this kind of clarity in life, but the moral universe this film inhabits is nonetheless very much our own. We are surrounded by systems that are broken, that reward poor ethics and punish good behavior. Christians enter those systems with a worldview that calls us to a different kind of living. Standing against the brutish pragmatism that calls us to compromise, the Biblical call is to a kind of fierce commitment to kingdom living that is unwavering even when the price is high.
As vivid as this call may be in Scripture, it is a call that still exists in a real world where the consequences will be vividly felt. Gone, Baby, Gone invites us to feel in vivid terms the reality of our broken world, and challenges to remain unsettled regardless of our convictions. That is not a bad corrective to have before us regardless of the decisions that we are wrestling with.
The film opens with the media circus already in a frenzy. A girl is missing, the mother is frightened, and the police are scouring the community looking for any possible leads. The problem is that this is the kind of neighborhood where not everybody talks to the police, and so the child’s aunt decides to hire Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennarro, two locals that have a small PI operation, to assist the police in the investigation. Reluctant at first, both agree, and being to turn over rocks in their neighborhood to see what they can find.
I found Gone’s setup a bit challenging to get through. Ultimately, Casey Affleck won me over with his solid performance, but at the outset, I couldn’t believe he was doing PI work. He actually was playing his true age, 31 at the time, but like Matt Damon, has such a young face it was hard to see him in the role. Moving through this distraction, though, the film quickly establishes why Kenzie would be an interesting hire for a desperate family. He knows the neighborhood, and knows its underbelly and the people that inhabit it.
Kenzie’s work leads him to work with Detective Remy Bressant and his partner. Bressant, played by Ed Harris, is a Louisiana native who has a lot of years in the neighborhood. Kenzie quickly wins over Bressant’s trust, showing his knowledge of the street that provides leads Bressant had no chance to drum up. Through Kenzie’s legwork, their work takes them into the depths of the local drug culture, as it becomes increasingly clear that Amanda, the missing girl, has been the victim of a drug deal gone bad.
The film does a very capable job of exploring the world of the media circus. At least since Al Pacino’s amazing performance in Dog Day Afternoon in 1975, the world of film has had many voices exploring the drive of the media to manipulate “human interest” stories to serve their own marketing ends. Here, the media creates the story of the desperate mother, victim of a cruel world, who only wants to be reunited with her child. The story is a myth, and we are forced to contend with the cruelty that lies beneath that surface, and the fiction of the public face. The media’s need to paint in broad brushstrokes, searching for clear heroes and villains, fails to comport with the real world.
This reflection on the media is an excellent setup for the moral center of the film. Ultimately, the plot brings us to a place where Kenzie is forced to contend with moral choices in a morally ambiguous world. While the plot itself may be a bit convoluted, the payoff is worth the suspension of disbelief, as the film refuses to let us off the hook. We want moral clarity and we want moral choices to receive their rewards. Gone won’t let us go there. To the extent we think the choices are clear, the more the film makes us see the price they pay for those choices. Left with a wrong choice that could produce right results and a right choice that will produce wrong results, we are left to wonder which is the right way to go.
I expect we will rarely be presented with the choices that have this kind of clarity in life, but the moral universe this film inhabits is nonetheless very much our own. We are surrounded by systems that are broken, that reward poor ethics and punish good behavior. Christians enter those systems with a worldview that calls us to a different kind of living. Standing against the brutish pragmatism that calls us to compromise, the Biblical call is to a kind of fierce commitment to kingdom living that is unwavering even when the price is high.
As vivid as this call may be in Scripture, it is a call that still exists in a real world where the consequences will be vividly felt. Gone, Baby, Gone invites us to feel in vivid terms the reality of our broken world, and challenges to remain unsettled regardless of our convictions. That is not a bad corrective to have before us regardless of the decisions that we are wrestling with.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Michael Clayton: A Review
In law school, it was a story told so frequently it was easy comedy. A fresh-faced One L (first-year student) would enter law school with wide-eyed dreams of fighting for justice, whether that be by keeping criminals off the streets, keeping those same criminals on the streets by fighting the inequities and injustice in the system, or by fighting for some other cause of the neglected and downtrodden.
Then came the second year. In the fall, when the interview season would open up for second-year summer internships, those same crusaders would be seen wearing their finest suits giving the firms with the long and impressive string of names a try. By the end of the third year, they were already researching the lease costs on their new car, planning their vacation and condo rental, and getting ready for their full dive into the world of the big firm.
This kind of path isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Michael Clayton invites us to explore the compromises that come into the play in this somewhat ordinary legal journey. The directorial debut for Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter for such strong scripts as the Bourne series and The Devil’s Advocate, another excellent film about the big time law firms, Clayton is a fascinating study of compromise in its late stages. George Clooney plays the title character, a man pushing 50 who traded in a career as a prosecutor for a role as a special counsel for one of the giant firms in New York. He is the firm’s “fixer,” the guy who cleans up the messes that the extremely wealthy and powerful clients of the firm find themselves in.
One of Clayton’s “fixer” projects was Arthur Edens, played by Tom Wilkinson, who is one of the partners at his law firm. Edens is a brilliant litigator and fierce fighter, but has struggled with mental illness throughout his life. Though the illness has been controlled through medication, it fell to Clayton years ago to get him straightened out when he had fallen off the wagon and threatened his career and the firm’s viability. Now, years later, Edens has gotten himself into trouble again.
Edens has been pouring himself into a single case. His client is an international agricultural products company and is facing a multi-billion dollar class action suit for allegedly introducing some kind of chemical into the water supply that has killed or injured a number of people. In the middle of a deposition of one of the plaintiffs, Edens goes off the deep end, and strips naked and runs through the building screaming.
In trying to help Edens out, Clayton is brought into a case that quickly puts on him a crises of conscience. Already struggling with personal failures, Clayton finds his firm defending the bad guy here, and he quickly becomes aware that there is much at stake in this battle. The company’s general counsel, played by Tilda Swinton, is fierce in her desire to defend the company and, perhaps more importantly, defend her boss. In the midst of his madness, Edens has discovered the fateful memo, the single document that shows that the company knew of the chemical’s risks, and signed off on the distribution based on their own cost-benefit analysis.
The film does a fantastic job of setting the stage for our entry into this life. Clayton’s world is a ruthless and vicious world, where lives are bought and sold in the name of self-interest and survival. Clayton, struggling with his own sense of disappointment in his life, seems to come at the case with a dawning realization of the price he has paid for the life he has lived. When he tries to raise some of these questions to his boss and mentor, he is pushed aside, with a reminder that he has always known how “we pay the light bills around here.”
The film poses more questions then answers. Clayton is essentially trapped within a system for which there is no answer. Even though he knows the truth, it is not as if he can simply come forward and betray his client. To do so, he would subject himself to disbarment and his firm to a bankrupting claim of malpractice. The film opts for some stereotypical Hollywood pyrotechnics to wind its way out of this mess. That’s all well and good, but it simply drives home how difficult the questions of real life become.
As an attorney, I represented some clients I found fairly distasteful. I wasn’t always sure I like the side that I represented. I rarely like the outcomes the cases had. My own wrestling in this world, a wrestling that led me first into public service and eventually into ministry, was a desire to live a life of meaning. In my own wrestling, I would often reach the end of my cases, look at the resolution, and say, “Is this it?” Hollywood rules dictates that Michael Clayton does something to solve the problem, but the real life version of this story may realistically involve nothing more than Michael Clayton finding the strength to walk away, knowing that some problems really can’t be solved.
In one of the more interesting scenes in the film, Edens recounts how many billable hours he had put into this case. As he toys around with the numbers, he winds up proclaiming that he had spent 12% of his life on this case. Edens is driving himself insane as he realizes he has wasted that much of his life in a worthless venture. It is the sadness of wasted time, the sadness of a wasted life.
The power of the Michael Clayton is in the call to count the cost. Perhaps the work we do will not take us down as dark of corridors as we see here, but the opportunity to compromise is still a daily pressure. Michael Clayton makes the bold proposition that many of those compromises aren’t that mysterious, and that many times we walk into these traps with our eyes wide open. Whether the seduction is money, or power, or security, or ego, the temptations only expose the darkness in our souls and our willingness to trade meaningful lives for meaningless enticements.
“What does it profit a man, if he gains the world, but loses his own soul?”
Then came the second year. In the fall, when the interview season would open up for second-year summer internships, those same crusaders would be seen wearing their finest suits giving the firms with the long and impressive string of names a try. By the end of the third year, they were already researching the lease costs on their new car, planning their vacation and condo rental, and getting ready for their full dive into the world of the big firm.
This kind of path isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Michael Clayton invites us to explore the compromises that come into the play in this somewhat ordinary legal journey. The directorial debut for Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter for such strong scripts as the Bourne series and The Devil’s Advocate, another excellent film about the big time law firms, Clayton is a fascinating study of compromise in its late stages. George Clooney plays the title character, a man pushing 50 who traded in a career as a prosecutor for a role as a special counsel for one of the giant firms in New York. He is the firm’s “fixer,” the guy who cleans up the messes that the extremely wealthy and powerful clients of the firm find themselves in.
One of Clayton’s “fixer” projects was Arthur Edens, played by Tom Wilkinson, who is one of the partners at his law firm. Edens is a brilliant litigator and fierce fighter, but has struggled with mental illness throughout his life. Though the illness has been controlled through medication, it fell to Clayton years ago to get him straightened out when he had fallen off the wagon and threatened his career and the firm’s viability. Now, years later, Edens has gotten himself into trouble again.
Edens has been pouring himself into a single case. His client is an international agricultural products company and is facing a multi-billion dollar class action suit for allegedly introducing some kind of chemical into the water supply that has killed or injured a number of people. In the middle of a deposition of one of the plaintiffs, Edens goes off the deep end, and strips naked and runs through the building screaming.
In trying to help Edens out, Clayton is brought into a case that quickly puts on him a crises of conscience. Already struggling with personal failures, Clayton finds his firm defending the bad guy here, and he quickly becomes aware that there is much at stake in this battle. The company’s general counsel, played by Tilda Swinton, is fierce in her desire to defend the company and, perhaps more importantly, defend her boss. In the midst of his madness, Edens has discovered the fateful memo, the single document that shows that the company knew of the chemical’s risks, and signed off on the distribution based on their own cost-benefit analysis.
The film does a fantastic job of setting the stage for our entry into this life. Clayton’s world is a ruthless and vicious world, where lives are bought and sold in the name of self-interest and survival. Clayton, struggling with his own sense of disappointment in his life, seems to come at the case with a dawning realization of the price he has paid for the life he has lived. When he tries to raise some of these questions to his boss and mentor, he is pushed aside, with a reminder that he has always known how “we pay the light bills around here.”
The film poses more questions then answers. Clayton is essentially trapped within a system for which there is no answer. Even though he knows the truth, it is not as if he can simply come forward and betray his client. To do so, he would subject himself to disbarment and his firm to a bankrupting claim of malpractice. The film opts for some stereotypical Hollywood pyrotechnics to wind its way out of this mess. That’s all well and good, but it simply drives home how difficult the questions of real life become.
As an attorney, I represented some clients I found fairly distasteful. I wasn’t always sure I like the side that I represented. I rarely like the outcomes the cases had. My own wrestling in this world, a wrestling that led me first into public service and eventually into ministry, was a desire to live a life of meaning. In my own wrestling, I would often reach the end of my cases, look at the resolution, and say, “Is this it?” Hollywood rules dictates that Michael Clayton does something to solve the problem, but the real life version of this story may realistically involve nothing more than Michael Clayton finding the strength to walk away, knowing that some problems really can’t be solved.
In one of the more interesting scenes in the film, Edens recounts how many billable hours he had put into this case. As he toys around with the numbers, he winds up proclaiming that he had spent 12% of his life on this case. Edens is driving himself insane as he realizes he has wasted that much of his life in a worthless venture. It is the sadness of wasted time, the sadness of a wasted life.
The power of the Michael Clayton is in the call to count the cost. Perhaps the work we do will not take us down as dark of corridors as we see here, but the opportunity to compromise is still a daily pressure. Michael Clayton makes the bold proposition that many of those compromises aren’t that mysterious, and that many times we walk into these traps with our eyes wide open. Whether the seduction is money, or power, or security, or ego, the temptations only expose the darkness in our souls and our willingness to trade meaningful lives for meaningless enticements.
“What does it profit a man, if he gains the world, but loses his own soul?”
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Shoot 'Em Up: A Review
They say that comedy involves risk. For Shoot ‘Em Up, that risk first comes to us as Smith, our “hero,” has to use a gunshot to sever an umbilical cord after helping a woman give birth in the middle of a gunfight. Hope you set your steel will in place for this one.
Smith is sitting at a bus stop when a pregnant woman runs by him, fleeing from some tough looking characters. Reluctantly, Smith comes to her aid, taking on the strangers and trying to rescue the woman. He fails, and the woman is killed shortly after the birth. With the newborn in his arms and having no real understanding as to what is going on, Smith determines to keep the child away from the bad guys.
I’m not sure that everyone who sees Shoot ‘Em Up will perceive it as a comedy, but it’s about the only thing that makes the film palatable. Standing in the tradition of Quentin Tarrantino (I’ll leave the question of whether it is a “grand” tradition in your hands), who himself was echoing John Woo and a long line of Hong Kong cinema, Shoot ‘Em Up is a satirical action movie that prides itself in capturing the absurd. It takes a classic American action setup - the lone action hero, drawn into a battle he can’t win, finds a way to overcome through grit and determination - and stretches it as far as it can. The action sequences have a lyrical quality, serving as a kind of ballet for alpha males. Even the obligatory female sidekick, this time a “fetish” prostitute with her own bizarre business, stretches stereotypes to the limit. It eventually draws us into an even more absurd political plot that makes Watergate look like shoplifting penny candy at a drug store.
For all of its grand action, the movie is kept more captivating than it deserves because of the great actors involve. Clive Owen, playing the hero “Smith,” shows the dark hero that will be familiar to fans of Sin City, while Paul Giamatti plays a truly despicable villain in Hertz. Owen gives us an understated performance, which contrasts well with Giamiatti’s broad performance. Between the two of them, we are drawn into their dance, “enjoying” an intense and fascinatingly bizarre ride.
Shoot ‘Em Up could serve as an easy escape for fans of extreme action film, but what is a Christian to do with this kind of exploration of violence? Like the Kill Bill series, this film explores the world of extreme action cinema, but Shoot ‘Em Up doesn’t wear its social commentary on its sleeve. Unlike Kill Bill, it sustains its sense as a revenge fantasy throughout, and to the uncritical eye, one could walk away from the film with a sense of affirmation of the extreme violence that it has explored. For this reason alone, many would reject the film outright.
The problem that Shoot ‘Em Up has is that it isn’t cleanly drawn. Yes, it’s a satire, but a satire of what? The extreme action genre? American violent entertainment? We’re not sure, and as the political plot unfolds, it is increasingly clear why. It’s hard to define what’s in view in the satire because in the end everything is in view in the satire. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is worthy of admiration. Like the Ecclesiastes writer, everything is meaningless.
I’m reminded of Jim, the bully from The Simpsons. After making some snide remark, a friend asks him, “Dude, are you being sarcastic?” He hangs his head and responds, “I don’t even know anymore.” Shoot ‘Em Up is an enjoyable entertainment as far as it goes, but as it pushes the absurd, with less art and style than a more capable director like Tarantino might exercise, it runs the risk of exhausting itself on its own cynicism. The great tradition of satire and absurd comedy works best when it offers a constructive alternative to the institutions or way of life that it cuts down. Shoot ‘Em Up has no idea how to go to that place.
Smith is sitting at a bus stop when a pregnant woman runs by him, fleeing from some tough looking characters. Reluctantly, Smith comes to her aid, taking on the strangers and trying to rescue the woman. He fails, and the woman is killed shortly after the birth. With the newborn in his arms and having no real understanding as to what is going on, Smith determines to keep the child away from the bad guys.
I’m not sure that everyone who sees Shoot ‘Em Up will perceive it as a comedy, but it’s about the only thing that makes the film palatable. Standing in the tradition of Quentin Tarrantino (I’ll leave the question of whether it is a “grand” tradition in your hands), who himself was echoing John Woo and a long line of Hong Kong cinema, Shoot ‘Em Up is a satirical action movie that prides itself in capturing the absurd. It takes a classic American action setup - the lone action hero, drawn into a battle he can’t win, finds a way to overcome through grit and determination - and stretches it as far as it can. The action sequences have a lyrical quality, serving as a kind of ballet for alpha males. Even the obligatory female sidekick, this time a “fetish” prostitute with her own bizarre business, stretches stereotypes to the limit. It eventually draws us into an even more absurd political plot that makes Watergate look like shoplifting penny candy at a drug store.
For all of its grand action, the movie is kept more captivating than it deserves because of the great actors involve. Clive Owen, playing the hero “Smith,” shows the dark hero that will be familiar to fans of Sin City, while Paul Giamatti plays a truly despicable villain in Hertz. Owen gives us an understated performance, which contrasts well with Giamiatti’s broad performance. Between the two of them, we are drawn into their dance, “enjoying” an intense and fascinatingly bizarre ride.
Shoot ‘Em Up could serve as an easy escape for fans of extreme action film, but what is a Christian to do with this kind of exploration of violence? Like the Kill Bill series, this film explores the world of extreme action cinema, but Shoot ‘Em Up doesn’t wear its social commentary on its sleeve. Unlike Kill Bill, it sustains its sense as a revenge fantasy throughout, and to the uncritical eye, one could walk away from the film with a sense of affirmation of the extreme violence that it has explored. For this reason alone, many would reject the film outright.
The problem that Shoot ‘Em Up has is that it isn’t cleanly drawn. Yes, it’s a satire, but a satire of what? The extreme action genre? American violent entertainment? We’re not sure, and as the political plot unfolds, it is increasingly clear why. It’s hard to define what’s in view in the satire because in the end everything is in view in the satire. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is worthy of admiration. Like the Ecclesiastes writer, everything is meaningless.
I’m reminded of Jim, the bully from The Simpsons. After making some snide remark, a friend asks him, “Dude, are you being sarcastic?” He hangs his head and responds, “I don’t even know anymore.” Shoot ‘Em Up is an enjoyable entertainment as far as it goes, but as it pushes the absurd, with less art and style than a more capable director like Tarantino might exercise, it runs the risk of exhausting itself on its own cynicism. The great tradition of satire and absurd comedy works best when it offers a constructive alternative to the institutions or way of life that it cuts down. Shoot ‘Em Up has no idea how to go to that place.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
3:10 to Yuma: A Review
During a couple of summers in college, I felt the lure of the West. Whether it was hiking in Colorado and Utah, or just making the amazing drive along the Tetons or across Montana, the West represented, and represents, a place for healing and renewal, a place with no memory and the promise of tomorrow. Over the years, many trips out there, now more often for snowboarding than backpacking, have proven to be just the kind of healing moments I have needed.
Because of that deep love I have for the West in my own story, I’m particularly intrigued to see Hollywood do its best to revive the Western genre this fall. 3:10 to Yuma is the first of several to come, and if Yuma is any indicator, we’re in for a treat. This is a remake of a 1957 classic starring Glenn Ford, and if you’re going to remake a classic, you would be hard pressed to find a better duo than Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, two of the very finest out there today. They deliver fine performances that are the centerpiece of this interesting drama.
Bale plays Dan Evans, a Union veteran and partial amputee who has made his way to Arizona with his family to make a new start as a rancher. Suffering under a brutal drought, he has buried himself in a debt to a local landowner who is set on getting Evans’ property out from under him to sell it to the railroad. He is a man without allies, fighting to survive in a harsh world where everyone is using his back as a stepping stone to bigger things.
While riding to town to deal with his debt, he comes across Ben Wade, a notorious outlaw who is in the process of robbing a stagecoach. Evans’ survives his encounter with Wade and his gang, and continues on to town, only to find that Wade has beat him there. The gang is in process of throwing the sheriff off their trail, but Wade shows his weakness, delaying because of a woman, allowing them to capture him. A representative of the railroad company, who was the victim of the robbery, recruits several people to take Wade to a nearby town, where he must make a prison train that is coming through the next day. Short several men, they recruit Evans to accompany them, giving him the chance to make some desperately needed cash.
It is a somewhat convoluted setup, but what it leaves us with is a long trail ride for Evans and Wade to interact. They are fascinating characters, defying many of our stereotypes from Westerns. Wade is certainly a villain, but he is also a charmer, drawing Evans’ wife to declare that he is “not what [she] expected.” His charm and engaging conversation could easily leave one disarmed, feeling safe around him. He takes advantage of that, of course, reminding us several times of the core brutality that has made him such a feared outlaw.
Evans can be frustrating to figure out. He seems to be trying to stand for the right thing, but at times it isn’t clear why. Is his intensity born out of stubborn pride or selfless nobility? The film eventually unveils more of his motivations, but even as we learn more of his past, the relative purity of his motives aren’t always made entirely clear. Perhaps in the end he is simply a man of mixed motives, as it is for almost everyone in the film’s universe.
I expect that people’s response to the film will be grounded in their ability to deal with the ambiguity of the moral universe. Similar to Unforgiven and other modern interpretations of the Western genre, we are not given many characters who are fully sympathetic or purely evil. Our hero and our villain each can at times be imminently likable and imminently detestable. This is appropriate, as it sets us up for a fascinating last action sequence, as our hero and villain remind us more of Butch and Sundance than Marshall Kane and his showdown. Their unlikely partnership with an unlikely goal allows us to see their best come out. We start by rooting for Evans, and wind up rooting for both of them.
This kind of ambiguity, reflective of many of the films of our more cynical age, is something I find myself resonating with. It is easier for me to relate to a flawed hero than a pristine one, easier for me to comprehend the villain with a spark of humanity than the wholly depraved one. The more we glimpse visions of sinner and saint coexisting within the same human being, the more the characters invite us to hold up a mirror next to them. We are indeed complex souls, shaped by forces both within and without, given to sin but not wholly devoid of that mark of true humanity that was our divine gift in creation.
Where I want to depart from this ambiguity, though, is when it comes to its vision of redemption. The film leaves us with an uncertain conclusion, as we are not sure what is going to happen or whether there was real redemption at all. I think it’s fair that many would leave the film with the sense that there was no redemption at all, merely the end of a single chapter that would repeat itself down the road with a new cast of characters. Others may find the promise that characters have grown and changed, and will be different because of their experiences. Either way, where I find hope is that the complexity and ambiguity that this film captures is not the end of the story. We are not doomed to forever be sinner and saint, but have the hope that there is an Outside Force stronger than the shaping winds in our lives that can yet decisively win this battle within us.
Because of that deep love I have for the West in my own story, I’m particularly intrigued to see Hollywood do its best to revive the Western genre this fall. 3:10 to Yuma is the first of several to come, and if Yuma is any indicator, we’re in for a treat. This is a remake of a 1957 classic starring Glenn Ford, and if you’re going to remake a classic, you would be hard pressed to find a better duo than Christian Bale and Russell Crowe, two of the very finest out there today. They deliver fine performances that are the centerpiece of this interesting drama.
Bale plays Dan Evans, a Union veteran and partial amputee who has made his way to Arizona with his family to make a new start as a rancher. Suffering under a brutal drought, he has buried himself in a debt to a local landowner who is set on getting Evans’ property out from under him to sell it to the railroad. He is a man without allies, fighting to survive in a harsh world where everyone is using his back as a stepping stone to bigger things.
While riding to town to deal with his debt, he comes across Ben Wade, a notorious outlaw who is in the process of robbing a stagecoach. Evans’ survives his encounter with Wade and his gang, and continues on to town, only to find that Wade has beat him there. The gang is in process of throwing the sheriff off their trail, but Wade shows his weakness, delaying because of a woman, allowing them to capture him. A representative of the railroad company, who was the victim of the robbery, recruits several people to take Wade to a nearby town, where he must make a prison train that is coming through the next day. Short several men, they recruit Evans to accompany them, giving him the chance to make some desperately needed cash.
It is a somewhat convoluted setup, but what it leaves us with is a long trail ride for Evans and Wade to interact. They are fascinating characters, defying many of our stereotypes from Westerns. Wade is certainly a villain, but he is also a charmer, drawing Evans’ wife to declare that he is “not what [she] expected.” His charm and engaging conversation could easily leave one disarmed, feeling safe around him. He takes advantage of that, of course, reminding us several times of the core brutality that has made him such a feared outlaw.
Evans can be frustrating to figure out. He seems to be trying to stand for the right thing, but at times it isn’t clear why. Is his intensity born out of stubborn pride or selfless nobility? The film eventually unveils more of his motivations, but even as we learn more of his past, the relative purity of his motives aren’t always made entirely clear. Perhaps in the end he is simply a man of mixed motives, as it is for almost everyone in the film’s universe.
I expect that people’s response to the film will be grounded in their ability to deal with the ambiguity of the moral universe. Similar to Unforgiven and other modern interpretations of the Western genre, we are not given many characters who are fully sympathetic or purely evil. Our hero and our villain each can at times be imminently likable and imminently detestable. This is appropriate, as it sets us up for a fascinating last action sequence, as our hero and villain remind us more of Butch and Sundance than Marshall Kane and his showdown. Their unlikely partnership with an unlikely goal allows us to see their best come out. We start by rooting for Evans, and wind up rooting for both of them.
This kind of ambiguity, reflective of many of the films of our more cynical age, is something I find myself resonating with. It is easier for me to relate to a flawed hero than a pristine one, easier for me to comprehend the villain with a spark of humanity than the wholly depraved one. The more we glimpse visions of sinner and saint coexisting within the same human being, the more the characters invite us to hold up a mirror next to them. We are indeed complex souls, shaped by forces both within and without, given to sin but not wholly devoid of that mark of true humanity that was our divine gift in creation.
Where I want to depart from this ambiguity, though, is when it comes to its vision of redemption. The film leaves us with an uncertain conclusion, as we are not sure what is going to happen or whether there was real redemption at all. I think it’s fair that many would leave the film with the sense that there was no redemption at all, merely the end of a single chapter that would repeat itself down the road with a new cast of characters. Others may find the promise that characters have grown and changed, and will be different because of their experiences. Either way, where I find hope is that the complexity and ambiguity that this film captures is not the end of the story. We are not doomed to forever be sinner and saint, but have the hope that there is an Outside Force stronger than the shaping winds in our lives that can yet decisively win this battle within us.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
The Lives of Others: A Review
“To think that people like you once ran a country.”
The story is told of Lenin, who reached a point in the midst of the Russian revolution where he could no longer listen to his favorite musical work by Beethoven. Listening to it, he said, made him want to hug people instead of strangling them, something that the revolution required of him. What if he kept on listening? Could things have turned out different?
In the midst of the late August movie doldrums, I enjoyed the absolute treat that was The Lives of Others, last year’s well-deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Film, which sought to deal with this very question. This film transports us to 1984 in East Germany. Taking place not long before Gorbachev’s election as Soviet president, the words glasnost and perestroika are still unfamiliar to most people, and for the people we meet, from artists to politicians to members of the Secret Police, the communist state is well-entrenched and is here to stay. Within that bleak backdrop, we are introduced to Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, brilliantly played by Ulrich Mühe, who sadly passed away from stomach cancer a few weeks ago. A long-standing member of the Stasi, the East Germany secret police that monitored the activities of GDR citizens throughout its existence, our first glimpse at Wiesler shows him teaching a group of new recruits about the art of interrogation. Taking them through the brutal and unrelenting methods that bring out the “truth” from unwilling suspects, we see the cold and calculating approach that has made him brutally effective at his job over so many years.
Wiesler is tasked to open up monitoring on Georg Dreyman, a playwright who is introduced to us as the only East German artist read in the West that isn’t a subversive and remains loyal to the state. Started because of Wiesler’s prompting of his former classmate and now boss, Anton Grubitz, we witness the astoundingly thorough manner in which the Stasi would conduct their surveillance. The writer/director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, apparently meticulously researched the methods and technology of the Stasi, and so what we see is a remarkable reenactment of their work. Wiring Dreyman’s home with microphones and cameras, Wiesler then began a surveillance of every conversation, every phone call, and every visit, throughly documenting Dreyman’s life so that senior officials might find out the truth within this national treasure.
What should have been a routine surveillance, though, goes awry for both the listener and the suspect. For Dreyman, he is surrounded by other artists who have found different ways to express their dissatisfaction with the state. Most of these efforts have cost them, as friends are being denied the ability to publish, are being restricted in travel, and are undergoing other threats and intimidation to bring them in line. Although initially resistant to the temptation to criticize the state, Dreyman is brought to question his loyalty with the suicide of his friend and mentor, another playwright and artist. With the questions coming, Dreyman sets out to publish a criticism of the GDR in the West, bringing to light some of the dark underbelly that hasn’t been exposed to the world.
Meanwhile Wiesler is undergoing his own conflict. Our exposure to his superiors leaves us convinced of their inadequacies. For all of their talk of the great socialist state, his boss is an ambitious politician, who spends most of his time placating his superiors and planning his ascendancy to greater things. The party leader he is trying to win the favor of is a repulsive man who is more interested in seducing Dreyman’s girlfriend than he is in providing meaningful leadership. This is the painting of corrupted power that Orwell gave us in novel form. Slowly, we see Wiesler quietly observe this hypocrisy and, generally without verbalizing it, start to challenge their world.
In contrast, Wiesler is secretly drawn to Dreyman. He hears his music, he reads his books, he listens to his passionate relationship with Christa-Maria, and he seems to find himself wanting more. We get few glimpses into Wiesler’s world beyond his job, but what we see makes us understand that there is a desperation and a loneliness that defines his existence. The more he observes, the more he is drawn in, and so we see Wiesler start to cross boundaries. He orchestrates Dreyman’s discovery of Christa-Maria’s relationship with the party leader. When she declares that she is going to be with this party leader, he confronts her, persuading her to go back to Dreyman without exposing his relationship. As Dreyman’s questioning of the system becomes more profound, so Wiesler finds himself risking more and more to protect Dreyman.
I will leave the details for your own discovery, but within this journey lies the point that some found offensive about the film. For those that lived through life with the Stasi, the notion that there was a gentle and kind person inside an agent waiting to be brought out, a kind of “hooker with a heart of gold,” is difficult in the extreme. From what I’m reading, some want to see the people that participated in this evil regime as irredeemably wicked.
I remember an article a few years ago written by a Rabbi that had a title that was something like “Why the holocaust teaches us nothing about evil.” Essentially, the argument he was making was that the evil of the holocaust was so extreme that it could not be categorized alongside other examples of evil that we encounter. It was evil of a different stripe, not just a more extreme version of evil we encounter.
I hear echoes of this argument in the negative response to The Lives of Others. The brilliance in the movie is that it draws us into Wiesler’s world, letting us see the emerging conflict as he saw a different way of living than the way he had spent his career. His heroic acts, made all the more heroic because of the silent way that he endures their consequences, offer a glimpse into an emerging sense of humanity, a struggle with a moral universe that doesn’t seem satisfied with the choices he has made.
Much like Downfall and Letters from Iwo Jima, Lives lets us glimpse at the perspective of “the enemy.” What we see gives us hope. Hope that evil can be seen for what it is, and that good can emerge even in the darkest of backdrops. Hope that the glimpses of good are worth the heavy price they can exact. Hope that people can change, even if systems seem like they can’t.
The story is told of Lenin, who reached a point in the midst of the Russian revolution where he could no longer listen to his favorite musical work by Beethoven. Listening to it, he said, made him want to hug people instead of strangling them, something that the revolution required of him. What if he kept on listening? Could things have turned out different?
In the midst of the late August movie doldrums, I enjoyed the absolute treat that was The Lives of Others, last year’s well-deserved Oscar for Best Foreign Film, which sought to deal with this very question. This film transports us to 1984 in East Germany. Taking place not long before Gorbachev’s election as Soviet president, the words glasnost and perestroika are still unfamiliar to most people, and for the people we meet, from artists to politicians to members of the Secret Police, the communist state is well-entrenched and is here to stay. Within that bleak backdrop, we are introduced to Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler, brilliantly played by Ulrich Mühe, who sadly passed away from stomach cancer a few weeks ago. A long-standing member of the Stasi, the East Germany secret police that monitored the activities of GDR citizens throughout its existence, our first glimpse at Wiesler shows him teaching a group of new recruits about the art of interrogation. Taking them through the brutal and unrelenting methods that bring out the “truth” from unwilling suspects, we see the cold and calculating approach that has made him brutally effective at his job over so many years.
Wiesler is tasked to open up monitoring on Georg Dreyman, a playwright who is introduced to us as the only East German artist read in the West that isn’t a subversive and remains loyal to the state. Started because of Wiesler’s prompting of his former classmate and now boss, Anton Grubitz, we witness the astoundingly thorough manner in which the Stasi would conduct their surveillance. The writer/director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, apparently meticulously researched the methods and technology of the Stasi, and so what we see is a remarkable reenactment of their work. Wiring Dreyman’s home with microphones and cameras, Wiesler then began a surveillance of every conversation, every phone call, and every visit, throughly documenting Dreyman’s life so that senior officials might find out the truth within this national treasure.
What should have been a routine surveillance, though, goes awry for both the listener and the suspect. For Dreyman, he is surrounded by other artists who have found different ways to express their dissatisfaction with the state. Most of these efforts have cost them, as friends are being denied the ability to publish, are being restricted in travel, and are undergoing other threats and intimidation to bring them in line. Although initially resistant to the temptation to criticize the state, Dreyman is brought to question his loyalty with the suicide of his friend and mentor, another playwright and artist. With the questions coming, Dreyman sets out to publish a criticism of the GDR in the West, bringing to light some of the dark underbelly that hasn’t been exposed to the world.
Meanwhile Wiesler is undergoing his own conflict. Our exposure to his superiors leaves us convinced of their inadequacies. For all of their talk of the great socialist state, his boss is an ambitious politician, who spends most of his time placating his superiors and planning his ascendancy to greater things. The party leader he is trying to win the favor of is a repulsive man who is more interested in seducing Dreyman’s girlfriend than he is in providing meaningful leadership. This is the painting of corrupted power that Orwell gave us in novel form. Slowly, we see Wiesler quietly observe this hypocrisy and, generally without verbalizing it, start to challenge their world.
In contrast, Wiesler is secretly drawn to Dreyman. He hears his music, he reads his books, he listens to his passionate relationship with Christa-Maria, and he seems to find himself wanting more. We get few glimpses into Wiesler’s world beyond his job, but what we see makes us understand that there is a desperation and a loneliness that defines his existence. The more he observes, the more he is drawn in, and so we see Wiesler start to cross boundaries. He orchestrates Dreyman’s discovery of Christa-Maria’s relationship with the party leader. When she declares that she is going to be with this party leader, he confronts her, persuading her to go back to Dreyman without exposing his relationship. As Dreyman’s questioning of the system becomes more profound, so Wiesler finds himself risking more and more to protect Dreyman.
I will leave the details for your own discovery, but within this journey lies the point that some found offensive about the film. For those that lived through life with the Stasi, the notion that there was a gentle and kind person inside an agent waiting to be brought out, a kind of “hooker with a heart of gold,” is difficult in the extreme. From what I’m reading, some want to see the people that participated in this evil regime as irredeemably wicked.
I remember an article a few years ago written by a Rabbi that had a title that was something like “Why the holocaust teaches us nothing about evil.” Essentially, the argument he was making was that the evil of the holocaust was so extreme that it could not be categorized alongside other examples of evil that we encounter. It was evil of a different stripe, not just a more extreme version of evil we encounter.
I hear echoes of this argument in the negative response to The Lives of Others. The brilliance in the movie is that it draws us into Wiesler’s world, letting us see the emerging conflict as he saw a different way of living than the way he had spent his career. His heroic acts, made all the more heroic because of the silent way that he endures their consequences, offer a glimpse into an emerging sense of humanity, a struggle with a moral universe that doesn’t seem satisfied with the choices he has made.
Much like Downfall and Letters from Iwo Jima, Lives lets us glimpse at the perspective of “the enemy.” What we see gives us hope. Hope that evil can be seen for what it is, and that good can emerge even in the darkest of backdrops. Hope that the glimpses of good are worth the heavy price they can exact. Hope that people can change, even if systems seem like they can’t.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Superbad: A Review
Seeing Superbad reminded me of many conversations with Steve Mackler. Steve was a foul-mouthed guy who was a year-older than me in school. I was on the debate squad, he did humorous interpretation, and so we had many weekends around each other at speech competitions. Steve had a knack for making the conservatives blush with his raw and frank sense of humor. He was also easily one of the funniest people I have ever known, with the ability to bring me to tears with his quips.
Jonah Hill is Superbad’s Steve, a foul-mouthed and horny high-school senior named Seth. Already dealing with the sad reality that he and his best friend, played by Michael Cara (to the delight of Arrested Development fans everywhere) will be graduating and heading to separate colleges in the fall, he is fairly myopic in his concerns. He doesn’t want to graduate from high school a virgin. He wants sex, and he wants it tonight.
What follows is a buddy comedy standing in a fairly deep tradition of similar comedies over the last 30 years or so. This one, coming from the same folks that brought us Knocked Up earlier this summer, is a good one, and in good I mean that it is extremely funny if you can handle that kind of humor. Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow have given us The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad, and in all cases my wife has reminded me that she’s not sure she wants to admit to anyone that she’s actually seen them. That’s OK, I caught her laughing.
To accomplish his mission, Seth commits at school to providing alcohol to a party that night. The party is hosted by the girl that he’s after, and Cara’s Evan finds out that his interest is heading there, and so their adventure must take them into the liquor store. They find a friend, Fogell, with a newly minted fake ID, and so they set out on their trail. The trailers give some of the zaniness away, but to spare you, I’ll suffice it to say that Fogell, or should I say “McLovin” winds up riding around with the strangest pair of cops since Reno 911, Seth winds up way over his head in a death match at another party, and Evan bumbles his way through much before they get back together. Their quest is not easy.
Admittedly, the nature of the comedy makes this a difficult movie to recommend blindly. I have friends that I know would enjoy it, and I have friends that I know wouldn’t. Either way, there are several things about the film that interest me. First, I wondered as I reflected on the movie whether it should be required viewing for parents of teenagers. I expect many of them would be shocked and horrified at the way in which sexual topics are explored, but my sense is that it is much closer to the reality of what teenagers are being exposed to than what parents assume their kids know. The film takes for granted the widespread access to sexual information that is a basic reality for many teenagers in our wired world.
Second, like Virgin and Knocked Up, the film takes a surprisingly conservative turn by the end. This genre, probably set in motion most by Animal House, has a knack for being a sustained celebration of sexual liberation in all its forms. This film isn’t. The path to freedom for these guys, mainly getting their objects of lust drunk so that they can conquer them, is a hollow dream, and by the end they seem to recognize that. Despite having a shocking amount of knowledge about sex acts and the female anatomy, they have very little wisdom about relationships, love, and the rich meaning of sexuality. This divide between wisdom and knowledge seems very prescient in our culture.
In the end, the movie is more a celebration of male friendship. Their friendship is what they understand most deeply and is what means the most. They still have sex on the brain, but in their more sane moments, they seem to recognize that their pursuit of alcohol and sex are mere distractors or coping mechanisms. The characters are pretty bankrupt in their pursuits, but they aren’t without hope. I think the success of the film and of these filmmakers in this brand of comedy is that they are drawing up imminently relatable people. We too often find ourselves bankrupt in our pursuits, but hope that there is something deeper, something more substantive that might pull us through.
Of course, it may be that Apatow and Rogan are just throwing in the heart in these films to justify a whole string of racy jokes and seedy adventures. I don’t think so, but even if it is, then they have just backed their way into something more substantive than they might expect. The deeper strain of these characters, from this and their other films, are strains that I can live with. There are certainly worse places from which to start a conversation.
Jonah Hill is Superbad’s Steve, a foul-mouthed and horny high-school senior named Seth. Already dealing with the sad reality that he and his best friend, played by Michael Cara (to the delight of Arrested Development fans everywhere) will be graduating and heading to separate colleges in the fall, he is fairly myopic in his concerns. He doesn’t want to graduate from high school a virgin. He wants sex, and he wants it tonight.
What follows is a buddy comedy standing in a fairly deep tradition of similar comedies over the last 30 years or so. This one, coming from the same folks that brought us Knocked Up earlier this summer, is a good one, and in good I mean that it is extremely funny if you can handle that kind of humor. Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow have given us The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Superbad, and in all cases my wife has reminded me that she’s not sure she wants to admit to anyone that she’s actually seen them. That’s OK, I caught her laughing.
To accomplish his mission, Seth commits at school to providing alcohol to a party that night. The party is hosted by the girl that he’s after, and Cara’s Evan finds out that his interest is heading there, and so their adventure must take them into the liquor store. They find a friend, Fogell, with a newly minted fake ID, and so they set out on their trail. The trailers give some of the zaniness away, but to spare you, I’ll suffice it to say that Fogell, or should I say “McLovin” winds up riding around with the strangest pair of cops since Reno 911, Seth winds up way over his head in a death match at another party, and Evan bumbles his way through much before they get back together. Their quest is not easy.
Admittedly, the nature of the comedy makes this a difficult movie to recommend blindly. I have friends that I know would enjoy it, and I have friends that I know wouldn’t. Either way, there are several things about the film that interest me. First, I wondered as I reflected on the movie whether it should be required viewing for parents of teenagers. I expect many of them would be shocked and horrified at the way in which sexual topics are explored, but my sense is that it is much closer to the reality of what teenagers are being exposed to than what parents assume their kids know. The film takes for granted the widespread access to sexual information that is a basic reality for many teenagers in our wired world.
Second, like Virgin and Knocked Up, the film takes a surprisingly conservative turn by the end. This genre, probably set in motion most by Animal House, has a knack for being a sustained celebration of sexual liberation in all its forms. This film isn’t. The path to freedom for these guys, mainly getting their objects of lust drunk so that they can conquer them, is a hollow dream, and by the end they seem to recognize that. Despite having a shocking amount of knowledge about sex acts and the female anatomy, they have very little wisdom about relationships, love, and the rich meaning of sexuality. This divide between wisdom and knowledge seems very prescient in our culture.
In the end, the movie is more a celebration of male friendship. Their friendship is what they understand most deeply and is what means the most. They still have sex on the brain, but in their more sane moments, they seem to recognize that their pursuit of alcohol and sex are mere distractors or coping mechanisms. The characters are pretty bankrupt in their pursuits, but they aren’t without hope. I think the success of the film and of these filmmakers in this brand of comedy is that they are drawing up imminently relatable people. We too often find ourselves bankrupt in our pursuits, but hope that there is something deeper, something more substantive that might pull us through.
Of course, it may be that Apatow and Rogan are just throwing in the heart in these films to justify a whole string of racy jokes and seedy adventures. I don’t think so, but even if it is, then they have just backed their way into something more substantive than they might expect. The deeper strain of these characters, from this and their other films, are strains that I can live with. There are certainly worse places from which to start a conversation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)