Summer of Films: Flight (2012)

Normally, I’m a fan of Denzel Washington. He has a compelling screen presence and his films tend to maintain a certain level of quality which I appreciate. Flight sounded like more of the same. It’s not. I really, really hated this film. Let’s discuss the disaster that was Flight.

Plot

Flight is the story of airline Captain Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington). The film opens with Denzel awaking in a hotel room with a Brazilian supermodel. They’ve been fooling around. He’s drunk and probably high, but his phone is ringing. He is being called to fly a commercial airliner from Orlando to Atlanta. He doesn’t look good... but one line of coke later and the soundtrack kicks out “It’s Gonna Be All Right” from Gerry and the Pacemakers and Denzel is good to go.

He boards the plane and addresses the passengers from the galley. As he does, he empties three vodkas into an orange juice bottle he’s drinking. He returns to the cockpit and takes off into a storm. As they take off, he needs to gun the engines beyond safety protocols to push his way through the storm to a clear patch. After that, he falls asleep and lets his co-pilot take over.

Denzel wakes up a few minutes later as the plane starts a nosedive. The hydraulics have failed and the plane is headed straight down. To save the plane, Denzel inverts it and flies upside down, which lets him straighten the plane just long enough to glide it in for a survivable crash. Only six people die.

Denzel wakes up in the hospital. Despite saving 105 people with a maneuver that we are told no other pilot could have done, Denzel learns that he’s suddenly the villain because the NTSB has taken a blood sample and found that he was super drunk and high on cocaine. They want to send him to jail. This will all happen at a final NTSB hearing. Fortunately, Denzel’s lawyer gets his toxicology report suppressed, so all Denzel has to do at the hearing is deny that he was drunk. But when the NTSB decides to accuse one of the dead stewardesses of having drunk the vodka, Denzel grows a conscience and announces that he drank them and that he is an alcoholic, even though this means decades in prison for him.

Why This Film Stunk

Directed by Robert Zemeckis, this film won some awards and made $161 million on a $31 million budget, but I still despise it. Why? Well, for starters, the plot I described above sound pretty good, doesn’t it? Sure it does, only I left something out. The plot I described above takes up about 15 minutes of film time... but the film is 138 minutes long. So what happens in the other 123 minutes? Filler.

In several painfully long and slow scenes, we see Denzel throw away all of the hundreds of alcohol bottles he’s hidden around his house as well as the pot and the pills. He stares meaningfully at each and we stare with him. But you know how it is with alcoholics, so naturally we are treated to him buying more and we tearfully watch as he struggles not to drink any of it. Then he drinks it. Even worse, for reasons completely unknown, Denzel meets a woman who is a drug addict whose life is utterly boring and falling apart and the director thinks it’s a great idea to bring them together to be boring together... and we get to watch all of it. Yawn. I honestly contemplated skipping through those scenes after a while.

But that’s not even the worst sin in the movie. The bigger sin is the feeling that the whole thing is nonsense. It’s clear that whoever wrote this has no idea how the NTSB really works. They had no idea what brought down the plane or how to describe it to the audience. They had no idea what the NTSB does when it investigates. They didn’t seem to realize that the NTSB would be much more interested in finding out why the hydraulics failed than they would be in proving that Denzel had been drunk and high when he saved the plane. The sad result is that what could have been an interesting mystery about a plane crash with a good deal of tension as the question of his sobriety waits to be discovered at any moment turns into a nonsensical witch hunt in which the NTSB doesn’t care at all about what caused the plane to crash.

Nothing else makes sense either. The press seems to view him as a villain even though they apparently don’t know about his being intoxicated – as far as they should be concerned, he worked a miracle. Denzel has a friend (John Goodman) who can show up seemingly instantly and at will to give him drugs. After drying him out for a week, Denzel’s lawyer and best friend put Denzel into a hotel suite the night before the hearing. They have carefully removed all the alcohol from the minibar. Yet, magically, in the middle of the night the adjoining door to the next suite just happens to open, letting him into the empty neighboring room where he discovers the minibar and he goes hog wild; he goes to the hearing drunk and high on cocaine. Queue Gerry and the Pacemakers again.

The film creates fake tension by having Denzel fight with his lawyer (Don Cheadle) for no reason that makes any sense. Cheadle, by the way, is presented as a good guy even though he violates the rules of ethics in major ways that should easily lead to his debarment, including knowingly putting Denzel on the stand to lie. We are introduced to the evil airline owner who hides the fact from Denzel that he might go to jail... something everyone including Denzel already knows. Denzel pressures a stewardess to lie for him when the reality is she couldn’t have testified to what he wants her to avoid saying anyway. Not to mention, there's no payoff as we never see her testify.

Then we have the ending. The NTSB has been after Denzel, or so we are told as we never actually hear anything except through Denzel’s friends... show don’t tell, folks. But Denzel’s lawyer has gotten the toxicology report suppressed. So there is no alcohol issue anymore the NTSB can use to get Denzel. So they should now focus on the plane crash, right? Nope. The NTSB now seems determined to accuse a dead stewardess of being an alcoholic and having drunk the vodka Denzel did. Why? What does the NTSB care if a stewardess was drunk (a stewardess who was a heroine because she saved a boy who had slipped out of his seat when the plan inverted)? This is nonsense. The real NTSB will want to know why the plane crashed, not if a stewardess was drunk. Moreover, they will know that Denzel was drunk, even if they can't put it into the report. So why smear a stewardess? Further, as Denzel has been established as being both ultra-selfish and desperate to avoid prison, why would he care if they accused her of drinking the three vodkas? There is no way that draws a confession from him.

This movie made my head spin in bad ways. It was obvious the writer didn’t grasp the subject matter of airplane crashes or how the NTSB works. It was obvious the writer didn’t understand his characters. This feels like an attempt to grab an Oscar for playing drunk and the airplane crash was incidental to that. The film is packed with deus ex machina too... too much coincidence. Too much happens off screen - almost everything actually. The director mistook boredom for gravitas. And finally, the film was packed with clichés.

Take for example, the use of “It’s Gonna Be All Right” whenever Denzel cokes up and suddenly fills with energy and confidence. This has the feel of having been done a million times. The scene with the evil boss, the portrayal of alcoholism, John Goodman’s entire character... these are all things you’ve seen a million times before and none of them feel fresh.

Ug.

I like Denzel. I like Zemeckis too. But this was a disaster. It was boring. It was stupid. The only good bit was the airline crash itself, which was impressive CGI work, and they even had to ruin that with an impossibly clear “cell phone” video of the crash.

Thoughts?

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Margin Call (2011) v. Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps (2010)

Wall Street was an amazing film. Yes, it was Oliver Stone’s attempt to slander the 1980’s and Reaganism, but Stone misfired and what he created instead was a film that captured the thrill of the 1980’s and sent a generation of kids to finance school to become his villain Gordon Gekko. Since that time, Stone’s ability as a filmmaker has faded. In 2010, he went back to Wall Street to see if he couldn’t steal some of his prior glory. He couldn’t. The movie he created was overly complex, meandering and stupid. It stood for nothing really. The movie he should have made was Margin Call.

Margin Call is one of those financial films that will scare most people away just by its description: “Huh, some guys who create something called asset-backed securities find out their assets are worthless and they don’t know what to do about it. Shoot me now... let’s watch Transformers.” In reality though, this is an excellent film that is worth seeing, even for people with no idea what an asset-backed security is. Moreover, this film very simply explains what happened in 2008 and how the financial world came crashing down.

Margin Call begins when junior risk analyst Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) discovers that a group of assets the firm holds are worth far less than they paid for them. They are worth so little, in fact, that the losses on these assets alone (which are bought on margin) would bankrupt the firm if the world knew their true value. And in that regard, Peter and his boss (Paul Bettany) realize that the world will discover the truth within days. They tell the firm’s higher ups.

This sets off a series of events as senior firm personnel are called in even though it’s late night to come up with a strategy to deal with this crisis. A strategy is slowly developed to dump as many of these assets as possible at the opening of the trading day, no matter what the loss on these sales. This will destroy the firm’s reputation and the reputation of its traders, but it is the only way the firm will survive. In the process of developing this strategy, the film does an excellent job of explaining what asset-backed securities are how the firm was blindsided by their collapse in value, and you see a good deal of infighting, moralizing, struggling with hard decisions, and the lining-up of fall guys and scapegoats. The end result is a surprisingly gripping film, driven by a strong cast: Jeremy Irons, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Spacey, Simon Baker, Demi Moore, etc., which gives you a fairly accurate insight into how the financial crisis of 2008 began and how it played out at its very beginning.

By comparison, Money Never Sleeps is convoluted fantasy. It is Oliver Stone’s attempt to make you hate Gordon Gekko the way he wanted you to hate him after Wall Street. Essentially, the story of Money Never Sleeps is that Stone resurfaces from prison and finds his estranged daughter (Carey Mulligan). He claims he wants to rebuild his relationship with her. Coincidentally, she’s dating Shia LaBeouf, who is a trader at an investment firm. Shia is trying to raise money for a nuclear fusion project which would provide the world with massive amounts of clean energy. Unfortunately, Shia keeps getting blocked by Josh Brolin, who runs another Wall Street bank.

Gekko comes to Shia’s aid by telling him that Brolin is the enemy. Brolin, coincidentally, profited from the collapse of Shia’s old firm, which also led to the suicide of Shia’s old boss. Shia seeks revenge by spreading rumors he thinks will hurt Brolin’s firm. Brolin is somehow impressed by this and bizarrely hires Shia. Shia takes the job because he wants to avenge his boss’s suicide. He then uses his new position to get the Chinese to finance the fusion project. Everyone is happy.

Shia then learns that the Chinese (through Brolin) have betrayed him by investing in solar panels and fossil fuels instead of fusion. He is sad again. Gekko then proposes an alternative plan. All Shia needs to do is to convince Gekko’s daughter to give Gordon access to the $100 million trust fund he left her in Switzerland, and they could fund the project themselves. Naturally, he agrees because this is for a good cause. Of course, the daughter agrees too... and then Gordon steals the money and re-establishes himself on the street as a hedgefund manager. This was apparently the plan all along, no matter how Rube Goldbergian it was. Gordon won’t even give the money back in exchange for normalizing his relationship with his daughter and his new grandson because HE IS EVIL, people!!! (“F*** you idiots need to finally see that! He used his daughter!! How much more obvious can I make this?!!” – Oliver Stone)

As this story stumbles along, we are told that the collapse of Shia’s firm started the financial crisis. This led to a bailout of Brolin’s firm, which Brolin got because he dines with the regulators. But don’t worry, Gekko’s daughter runs an obscure website and she publishes the story of how Brolin caused everything, which causes Brolin to give back $1.1 billion and puts him under scrutiny by the government. Then Gekko gives the $100 million to the fusion people and they all reconcile. Yay.

These movies couldn’t be more different. Margin Call is accurate. It is cutting. It is dramatic. You don’t know what is going to happen, but you can’t pull your eyes away from the screen as these people, who seem decent in good times, turn into sharks when things go wrong and they find themselves balancing their own futures, the existence of the firm, the welfare of the employees, the welfare of the market, and the harm to the country. Each of them handles this differently, and that makes them fascinating to watch as they struggle with how to survive this likely career-ending crisis.

Most interestingly, none of them were villains when they caused this crisis, but some now become villains... or are they? Indeed, while it is easy to see them as rotten, the real question you keep asking yourself is if you would actually do anything differently at this point. That idea makes this a truly soul searching, gripping story as you place yourself into the shoes of these characters and you wonder how you would handle being them. Would you be more noble? Is there even anything more noble you could do? What could you live with? What could you ask of others? These are all fascinating questions which are brought on by this film.

Wall Street, by comparison, is a joke. It has zero accuracy in terms of the financial crisis. It feels like Stone took a couple contradictory paranoid ideas, invented a villain, and then spun a fantasy which he thinks is damning but comes across as fringy and silly. He seems to suggest that the financial crisis is the result of a villain or two spreading lies about other company’s assets and thereby causing a panic. That’s ridiculous. At the same time, the story meanders on this point as it is only told to us in asides to the Shia v. Gekko story, and that story is ridiculous. The idea that Gekko orchestrated a plan which involved people being framed and fired and committing suicide and a nation-threatening financial crisis just to get at his daughter’s trust fund through her boyfriend is ludicrous.

The long and the short of it, is that I had no idea what to expect when I watched Margin Call and I found myself glued to the screen. This film felt like a mix of the best parts of Wall Street and Glengary Glenn Ross. It was tense, interesting, and informative. You feel like you understand the financial crisis so much better by the time the film is over and you find yourself both despising these people but wondering if you would have acted any differently. It is a brilliant film.

Money Never Sleeps, on the other hand, is a film you should skip. It is only a reminder of how much Stone has lost as a storyteller.

Thoughts?

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Summer of Films: The Grey (2011)

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect from The Grey. Would this be a pointless action film? Would it be a weepy “buddy” film? I wasn’t sure. One thing I did know was that this one would be a tricky film to get right. So imagine my surprise to find a very enjoyable film. I can’t call the film “great” because there just isn’t enough to it, but it certainly was a top notch film that will hold your interest and keep you waiting to see what happens next.

Plot

Liam Neeson works as a hunter for an oil company of some sort. He works up near the arctic circle, and his job is to shoot wolves before they attack the company’s workers. His tour of duty has come to an end, however, and it’s time for him to fly home. Hence, he and about a hundred others board a plane for the civilized world.

It crashes.

Waking up in the freezing wilderness, Neeson realizes very quickly that they will never be found. Thus, he tells the other survivors that they need to walk their way out of the wilderness. They don’t really agree... not until one of them gets eaten by wolves. See, it turns out that they have landed in the hunting grounds of a particularly vicious pack of wolves, run by a massive gray alpha wolf, and these wolves have a taste for human.

The rest of the story is simple: as Neeson and the rest make their way through the wilderness, the wolves hunt them and pick off the stragglers.

Why This Film Works

Films like this are difficult because they don’t give the director much to work with. On the one hand, you have “facing the elements,” fighting exhaustion, and fighting off the foe who can attack at will. That may sound like more than enough, but it’s not. The reason is that all of this has been done so often that it’s frankly rather dull. How many ways can you show wanting to fall asleep or freezing in the snow or doing the same things we know they must do to survive? The attacks are obviously more interesting, but they are necessarily rare or the film becomes a bit of a joke. So how do you fill in the rest of the film in a way which keeps the audience’s attention?

That’s where the other hand comes in. On that other hand, you have some personal drama that can be used to fill the time. This can include a dispute or tension or conflict between the survivors as they try to make their way to safety. The danger here, however, is that the drama will feel fake. Sure, some people don’t like taking orders or they may not trust someone else, but the further you go with this, the less believable it becomes because it starts to seem like the characters care more about fighting than they do the danger they face. Indeed, this is one of those moments where no matter what your differences are, you still stick together until it’s over.

The alternative is some sort of internal monologue where the main character does his best to keep himself motivated as his body slowly begins to fail. The danger here is that the audience may not like the main character enough to care about his plight. Moreover, directors often fall prey to the idea of trying to tell a completely different movie through the flashbacks, which hurts the pacing of the main film.

Director Joe Carnahan gets around these issues by embracing them all, but only in tiny amounts. Essentially, we are shown enough conflict to know that the men are scared, but not enough to see them as stupid. We are shown enough flashbacks to know what the men have to live for, but not enough to weigh us down or slow the story. We see Neeson’s story in flashback too, but it isn’t much longer than the others, though it has a strong punch. And we get an inner monologue from Neeson which is credible, intense, and gives us genuine insight into his character.

What really makes all of this work, however, is Neeson. Like so many other characters in this type of situation, Neeson has a tragic past. I won’t tell you what it is, but it builds expertly and when you find out the kicker, it may bring a tear to your eye. That gives you a strong reason to feel for him. But even without that, Neeson does several things that strike you throughout – things that are normally missing in films like this. For example, after the plane crash, when most characters are proving their macho cred so they can lead, Neeson takes charge because his personality is so strong and then he stops to console a dying man. And the way he does it is unique. He tells the man honestly that he will die, and then he calms him to the prospect. This is a powerful moment that sets Neeson apart from anything you've seen before and it turns him into the man you want with you in the event of a disaster. You also learn that he was suicidal the night before and his reason was philosophically inspired: “I’ve stopped doing this world any good.” He also has a fascinating moment where he calls out God: “Do something! Come on! Prove it! Fuck faith! Earn it! Show me something real! I need it now. Not later. ... I’m calling on you.” Throughout, his character surprises with clever moments like this.

The one downside... or maybe not... is the ending. I won’t spoil it for you, but I will say that it’s not a traditional ending and some people won’t like it at all. I personally wanted more at first, but felt satisfied as I thought about the meaning of it all.

All told, this is a film where you all know the plot, you all know what will happen, and you can guess most of the characters. Nevertheless, the film feels fresh and it will pull you in and hold your interest. I definitely recommend this one.

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Summer of Films: Argo (2012)

Argo is one of those film. If it had been released in the 1990s, it would have been dismissed as pointless, predictable and dull. But in our current age of dumbed down filmmaking, Argo is seen as something of a decent and interesting film. In fact, the critics gave it a 96% score. It deserved a 60%.

** Spoiler Alert **

Plot

Argo is based on the real story of the CIA’s efforts to rescue a handful of American Embassy personnel from Iran during the evil Carter years. The story begins with the Iranians storming the American Embassy in Tehran. As they do, six Americans escape out the back of the Embassy. They make their way to the home of the Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor. From there, they call home for help.

Back in Washington, the various agencies feud about who will run the operation to rescue these six. Eventually, the CIA takes charge and they float a number of operations. None of them are good options. The one they ultimately choose involves a CIA operative (Ben Affleck) going to Iran, pretending to be a location scout for a movie company. The movie they are making is a bizarre and pathetic Star Wars knock-off called Argo, and they claim they want to film in various parts of Tehran and the surrounding country. The real plan, however, is to pick up the six, who will pretend to be part of the film crew and then leave Iran under Canadian passports.

Naturally, the plan runs into complications throughout and they barely escape.

This film is a lost opportunity.

This film has serious potential. For one thing, you have a truly interesting setting. Not only is this an interesting historical moment, but it’s a fascinating location to set a film as few other Western films have ever been filmed in Iran. For another, you have a series of fascinating storylines that are ripe for exploitation. For example, you can explore how to set up a genuine film company as they need to set one up to support their story in the event the Iranians do any investigation of who they are. Then you have the question of how they navigate the Iranian government, which was awash in revolutionaries. Finally, you have the escape plot itself, which calls out for dramatic near-misses. Each of these aspects should make for an excellent and interesting film if done right.

Unfortunately, the film fails to exploit these things because the film is lazily written. Indeed, the biggest problem with the film is that it never digs into the details of what happens. For example, we are never told how they really escape. We are never told how Affleck can fly in as one person and leave as seven without this raising huge red flags. We get hints of Iranian interference, but there is never a sense given of how systematic this is, whether the interference is getting worse or better, or even if the Iranians are really aware of the true identity of the six or are just being difficult. The result is a film that plays out only on the surface and, consequently, never gives us enough information to know when the characters are in danger and what things would increase their danger. As a result, the film struggles to create the tension and angst that should be inherent in its theoretically provocative storyline.

In fact, where this really comes through is at the end. As the six try to make their way through the airport and onto the commercial jetliner waiting for them, we see other Iranians racing to the airport to stop them. But we don’t really have an idea who these Iranians are or if they represent a true threat. We’re not even sure what they will accuse the six of, or if the six have a reasonable defense. We don’t know how long it will take these Iranians to get to the airport. We don’t know where in the airport the six are at any particular time. We don’t know if the Iranians can stop the plane or if the six are safe once they board. The result is that we are basically told that the law of films will apply, which means we will be shown a series of fake near misses as the characters make a hair-splitting escape in the final frame. But since we know they will escape, and we have no way to track how finely the hair is being split, all we can do is watch indifferently as things happen that feel meaningless and fake to us as the film drives toward an inevitable and obvious ending.

Moreover, adding things like some random airport guard deciding to call the Argo production company to verify their credentials doesn’t add any tension because this feels like a film gimmick to raise the level of tension, which tells us right away that nothing will come of it. Having the Iranians race out onto the runway doesn’t add tension either because, again, this feels like a film gimmick. Indeed, a more realistic ending would involve the tower cancelling permission to leave or the Iranians blocking the runway...not racing alongside the plane.

Argo is a story with true potential, but the film underwhelms at every turn. This is a film that doesn’t care about its characters and which prefers Hollywood gimmicks to the solid drama available to it. In a way, it’s as if Affleck (the director) just didn’t care enough to learn the story except at a surface level and he plugged the holes where the tension was missing with chase movie tropes. That makes this film really hard to like.

Thoughts.

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Film Friday: The Village (2004)

I wanted to like The Village so much. After The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and even Signs, M. Night Shyamalan had won me over, even if his films weren’t as well received by the public as they should have been. But The Village never worked. It started well, but it fell apart quickly and it just kept getting worse.

** heavy spoiler alert **

The Plot

The Village is an odd story about a group of people who live in a village surrounded by a vast forest. The film appears to take place in the 1880s or in a world where humanity has been reduced to the technological and cultural level of the 1880s. Indeed, these people have no modern machinery, no cars, no electricity and no modern medicine. They also dress like Mennonite farmers and they talk like caricatures of the 1880s. The story centers around Ivy Elizabeth Walker (Bryce Dallas Howard), who can best be described as Tom Sawyer in a dress. Ivy is the daughter of the village leader Edward Walker (William Hurt), and she is blind.

As the story begins, we are told that the forest is controlled by evil creatures the villagers call “Those We Do Not Speak Of.” These creatures wear red cloaks and look something like wild boars. And apparently, there is some truce which involves the villagers staying out of the forest so the monsters won’t raid the village. But then there is an attack. In the meantime, a love story has arisen between Ivy and Lucius Hunt (Joaquin Phoenix). Lucius wants to brave the forest to get medicine from some nearby town to stop children from dying from common illnesses. The village elders forbid this. But then Lucius gets stabbed by Noah Percy (Adrien Brody), a retarded man. He is dying. So the elders decide to let Ivy venture to the town to get medicine to save him. That’s when the “big” secret gets revealed.

The Problems

Like I said, I wanted to like this film a lot. And the beginning of the film has a neat vibe to it that does present you with an interesting world that pulls you into the story, even if the dialog feels oddly stilted. Soon, however, the plot falls off the rails. And the reason it does this is because Shyamalan couldn’t decide what he really wanted to make. Did he want a horror movie? A romance? A tale of evil? A psychological thriller? Yeah, sort of.

The ultimate problem with The Village is that Shyamalan never picks a single genre which will drive the film. Instead, the film meanders between genres. By failing to pick a dominant genre, Shyamalan ends up creating a film which dabbles in several genres but never does any of them effectively. For example, the idea of the creatures in the woods is truly terrifying. And when they first appear, you really do get the makings of a heck of a horror movie. But that idea resolves itself without ever delivering a real bang. The romance between Ivy and Lucius starts well enough as well. You like both characters and you see how their relationship will ultimately prove to be satisfying once they overcome the obstacles in their path. This is a classic romantic premise and you feel like you are on your way to an exceptional romance. But that never goes anywhere either.

Both of these storylines basically stop when Lucius gets stabbed. At that point, a new storyline begins which asks whether or not the people who created the village have done something truly evil to the kids who are stuck in the village. But frustratingly, the film never delves into that either. It sets it up and it spends a few minutes batting the idea back and forth, but before this issue can be explored to any degree, the film shifts to Ivy walking through the woods to save Lucius.

This is a storytelling disaster. At each phase, you are presented with a story that you instinctively know has been very well setup and could be a great story – a horror film, a romance, and psychological thriller/tale of evil. But each time, right after the setup, the film cuts off that storyline and starts a new one. Thus, you get a horror film which becomes a romance before it unleashes any horror, and the romance becomes a psychological thriller before it give you any romantic payoff, and the psychological thriller morphs into “blind girl walking through the woods” before the issues are even fully established. This is highly frustrating.

For one thing, this wastes all the investment in the horror and romance storylines because they prove meaningless to the story. For another, the blind girl walking through the woods is the weakest storyline, so focusing on that is a huge mistake. Moreover, if anything in this film could be called a common theme, it is the storyline questioning whether or not the adults have been justified in their deceptions. That is the only storyline that really is relevant in each part of the film. BUT, once their deception is revealed, i.e. right when you expect the payoff to this story, the film shifts to blind girl walks through the woods, and all the questions that were raised by the actions of the adults get dropped, if they even got asked. This is like watching the first two thirds of a Twilight Zone only to have the last third be replaced by something from another drama. It’s completely unsatisfying.

Further, this structure undermines the big twist Shyamalan drops at the end. When the blind girl makes it through the forest, we suddenly learn the BIG secret about the adults. This secret is meant to shock the audience and to cast everything the audience has seen in a new light. But because this relates to the storyline which was already dropped by the time the secret is revealed, it lacks punch. A twist simply won’t work when it doesn’t relate to the story that is on people’s minds at the moment, and when this twist arises, the only thing the audience is left with is “girl walking through the woods.” Each of the other stories ended by that point.

Mixing genres is one of the hardest things to do in storytelling. Unless you really are an expert in both genres and you are a talented enough storyteller to bring those two storylines together seamlessly, then what you end up with is a story that is neither fish nor fowl and satisfies no one. Shyamalan’s problem is in the mixing. Indeed, his problem isn’t that he couldn’t have told a horror story, a romance, or a psychological thriller. Clearly he could, as each of these started quite promisingly. But rather than weave them together to create one overall film, he just runs them in series and cuts them off when he needs to start the next one. Thus, you end up with three partial stories and one complete story, none of which satisfy. Had Shyamalan actually brought them all together, The Village might have been his best film. Instead, it was just another Shyamalan film that didn’t live up to the hype.

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How Not To Create Conflict

Drama derives from the decision-making process. More specifically drama derives from the conflict that must be resolved in the decision-making process. The greater the conflict, i.e. the more difficult the choice, the greater the drama. This isn't a difficult concept. Yet, so many films fail right at this point because they don’t grasp how to establish the legitimate competing interests that make the decision difficult. Let’s look at two recent SciFi films that failed in this regard.

The first film was on the SciFi Channel (yes, I refuse to acknowledge the lame name change) a couple weeks ago. In Morlocks (a rip off of the BBC show Primeval), Robert Picardo plays a Colonel who has been tasked with using a time travel machine to steal technology from the future to help American competitiveness. . . I guess Steve Job’s death was more serious than we thought.

Picardo sends a team a few years into the future, who learn both that humanity has been destroyed by evil creatures and that Picardo will create these evil creatures using DNA brought back from the future. Sounds like fixing this is a no-brainer, right? Just don’t breed the creatures and everything will go fine. Except, Picardo’s son is dying and that DNA could be used to treat his son. That’s the conflict. Oy.

We’re supposed to believe Picardo becomes so blinded by the possibility of saving his son that he’s willing to destroy the planet. But this isn’t a genuine conflict for two reasons. First, whether Picardo acts or not, his son will die. If Picardo does nothing, then his son dies of cancer. If Picardo breeds the creatures, then everyone including his son dies and gets eaten. That’s not a genuine conflict because both choices lead to the exact same result: a dead son. Will he have broccoli OR broccoli? Ooh, the suspense!

Secondly, the writers completely fail to grasp another critical aspect of creating a conflict: the choices need to be the only choices. Unless Picardo is entirely retarded, he will try to find some third alternative, e.g. destroying the DNA to change the future and then continuing with his mission. So the conflict here isn’t even between death by cancer or death by mauling, it’s between death v. death v. trying something else. That makes the whole set up false and robs this choice of any legitimacy.

The other film was called Doomsday (it’s since been renamed Annihilation Earth). This movie features Star Trek TNG’s Marina Sirtis doing one of the worst southern accents ever... it will make your ears bleed it's that bad. The basic premise was that some evil company built a series of reactors around the world using some new technology. The reactor in France blows up, goes all black holey and wipes out southern France. If the hero can’t solve what has caused this glitch, the other reactors will blow in a chain reaction and will destroy the planet.

To solve what happened, the hero must venture to southern France. As he goes, he comes across a dirty little French girl who has skinned her knee and lost her mommy. Here comes our conflict. He’s under a severe time limit, yet he and the other characters fight over whether they should stop and help the girl or continue with their mission. Baaaah!! This isn’t a legitimate choice because the two options are so ridiculously unbalanced that only an idiot would have any problem making this decision. His choices are either to comfort the girl until the planet explodes or to save the planet. How can there be any question? This is like debating if you should stop to buy a Band-Aid for a paper cut while you’re rushing to the hospital to get your massive heart attack treated.

This moment was meant to inject drama into what was otherwise nothing more than a travel scene. It was also supposed to give us the character’s bona fides as a caring hero. But what it really tells us is the filmmakers are clueless. They can’t distinguish true dilemmas from fake dilemmas and they have no idea how a hero would (or should) act at a key moment of crisis. The fact they chose this to create drama is pathetic.

I see these kinds of stupid choices strewn throughout films. Fake conflict is created by characters inexplicably being unwilling to speak the truth when asked despite there being no negative consequences to doing so, or inexplicably being unable to reschedule dates or meetings, or somehow thinking their only choices are fight or flee when they really have a plethora of options. If a decision doesn’t make sense, it’s not dramatic. And if there are better options out there, you need to explain why those can’t be chosen by the character. Moreover, you can’t simply set any two choices against each other, the choices you pick for your character to agonize over need to be the kinds of choices that would actually force some indecision.

So often we focus on how bad writers and bad directors use deus ex machina or happy coincidences as a way to solve their characters’ problems, but the real fault begins with the inability to construct legitimate conflicts in the first place. If your characters are facing legitimately difficult decisions, then you won’t need to rely on coincidence or divine intervention to solve your crises.

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Film Friday: The Caine Mutiny (1954)

The Caine Mutiny is a classic. It’s also one of my favorite films. This movie does everything right, including having a fantastic twist long before twists were cool. It is an acting tour de force. And what makes this movie work, believe it or not, is subtlety.

** Spoiler Alert -- If you don’t know the ending, see the movie before you read this review. **

The Plot

Adapted incredibly well from Herman Wouk’s novel of the same name, The Caine Mutiny is the fictional story of a mutiny aboard a United States Navy destroyer-minesweeper during World War II. The story begins with the arrival of self-centered, spoiled Ensign Willie Keith aboard the Caine. Keith resents being assigned to the Caine, an ancient, beat up minesweeper, because he saw himself as more important than this. What’s worse, the Caine’s captain is a slob who has let discipline fall apart.

Keith befriends the ship’s executive officer Lt. Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson) and its communications officer Lt. Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray). Maryk is earnest and loyal, but not very bright. Keefer is cynical and cowardly. Soon the Caine’s captain is replaced by Lt. Commander Phillip Francis Queeg (Humphrey Bogart), a no-nonsense career officer who has served in hard combat for several years. At first, Keith is happy that Queeg has taken over because Queeg demands regular navy discipline. But it doesn’t take long for Keith to resent Queeg because Queeg seems arbitrary and tyrannical. It also becomes apparent that Queeg’s nerves are shot. All of this alienates the crew and worries Maryk, who fears that Queeg is unfit for command. During an ensuing monsoon, Queeg freezes up and Maryk relieves him of command to save the ship. A court martial follows.

What Makes This Film So Great

At the core of The Caine Mutiny lies some truly spectacular acting. Van Johnson walked a tightrope with Maryk, between being a simple, earnest man we could trust and respect and being just dumb enough to be made a patsy. MacMurray had to be trustworthy enough that we believed Maryk would trust him, but cowardly enough to explain how he kept his hands clean, and cynical enough that his attacks on Queeg were sharp and eviscerating and would sway the audience. Both of these performances required real understanding of human nature and how to walk the fine lines that separate very different personalities.

But the real star was Bogart. The Caine Mutiny includes one of the greatest acting performance ever when Humphrey Bogart testifies at the court martial. Bogart’s portrayal of a man breaking down on the stand was so captivating the entire film crew actually gave him a thundering round of applause when he finished. It was well deserved.

This was an incredibly fascinating and subtle performance. We’ve seen Queeg throughout the film and in each instance, he was arbitrary or cowardly. Even when he tried to be jovial, he seemed tyrannical. Moreover, we know for a fact he froze up in the monsoon and put the ship in danger -- thus, we know Maryk was justified in his actions and has essentially been wrongfully accused by Queeg. Hence, we are predisposed to hate Queeg. But Bogart can’t let us hate Queeg because of the twist to come. So Bogart needed to find a way to make us sympathetic to both Queeg and Maryk, even though they are directly opposed.

Here’s how he pulls that off. First, when Queeg shows up at trial, he tries to diffuse the whole proceeding by being magnanimous and stating that he holds no malice against the mutineers. This teases the audience by suggesting he may recant. It also suggests mental instability because of the personality shift. But as he’s questioned by the prosecutor any pretense of honesty vanishes and he knowingly shades the truth. Bogart tells us Queeg knows he's lying, because he acts like a man trapped in a lie. He’s hesitant in his testimony, he shifts uncomfortably in his chair, and he seems unable to make eye contact with the defendants.

Bogart has done two interesting things here. First, he gives the audience hope that Queeg will break on the stand because Queeg is already falling apart. This raises the stakes for the cross-examination and heightens the tension. Secondly, by suggesting that Queeg feels trapped in his lie, Bogart starts to break down the audience's hate. When Queeg first walked into the room, the audience saw Queeg as a petty tyrant. Suddenly, there is the suggestion that Queeg can’t help himself. This introduces the idea that Queeg is actually a pathetic character rather than a genuine tyrant.

Then the cross examination begins. As defense attorney Barney Greenwald (José Ferrer) hits Queeg with a series of questions about seemingly minor incidents, Queeg begins to embellish. He doesn’t rant or rave or scream or challenge Greenwald, he simply changes his story as needed, each time adding more people to the list of people he’s calling disloyal. This reinforces the idea that Queeg has a problem, rather than being malicious. As the list grows, Bogart’s Queeg gets more and more nervous because even he realizes that while he might have thought he was right in each instance, the sheer number of instances and their similarity are starting to sound paranoid.

Then Bogart makes a key dramatic shift. Queeg is confronted with an incident where he is absolutely certain he was in the right and he jumps on it. Now he rants and raves and exorcises all of his frustrations about the disloyalty he felt he received. But rather than direct Queeg's anger at the mutineers, everything he says is aimed at proving he was right in his suspicions. In other words, Bogart transforms Queeg from a man accusing others to a man trying to justify his actions himself. This is a vital difference. If Queeg is accusing others, then we are happy when he fails. But if Queeg is trying to prove his own sanity, then we are sad when he fails. And when Queeg looks up and sees the shocked faces of everyone in the room, he stops. He knows he’s wrong.

At that point, we are relieved that Maryk and Keith have survived the trial, but we also feel a great deal of pity for Queeg. Then the film hits us with the twist.

As the mutineers celebrate their victory, Jose Ferrer shows up drunk. He’s upset because he thinks the mutineers were the real bad guys and he feels horrible about “torpedoing” Queeg to help them. Queeg was worn out, his nerves were shot. The crew fought him at every turn, and when you think about it, what seemed like humorous disobedience aimed at a tyrant really was a tantrum aimed at a man who was trying to hold together a United States Navy vessel that was falling apart. Ferrer even reminds us that we scoffed at Queeg when he came begging for help.

And like that, your view of every event in the film suddenly changes. Suddenly, we realize that the mutineers, and we the audience by proxy as we enjoyed their games, have been unfair to Queeg the entire time. We mistreated Queeg. We caused the very circumstances that led to the mutiny and we destroyed him. And that makes this one of the best twists of all time, because it fundamentally changes the meaning of the film and because the evidence was there from the opening frame. We just didn’t want to see it.

This is a classic example of everything that can go right with a film when you’ve got great actors, writers and directors who understand subtlety and how humans respond to certain behaviors. Every fact we needed to know was there all along, but we never saw the truth because our opinions about the characters were expertly manipulated so that we just didn't want to see it. This is how movies should be made.

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Film Friday: The Blind Side (2009)

The Blind Side is an enjoyable film, which I highly recommend. It’s heartwarming, it packs a truly positive message, and it’s probably the most conservative film I’ve seen in decades. So it won’t surprise you that liberal critics hate it: “it’s racist!” Yeah right, what isn’t? Let’s discuss.

** spoiler alert **

The Blind Side involves a rich, white, conservative, Christian, Republican family who take in an abandoned black teenager. Through their loving efforts, they help this teenager get through a private Christian school, become a football star, and get a scholarship at Old Miss. This is based on the real-life story of Baltimore Raven Michael Oher, though not every part is accurate. The title, The Blind Side, refers to his football position, left tackle, which protects the quarterback’s blind side. The film is well-shot, well-paced, and will easily bring people to tears, but in a good way.

1. Yep, It's Manipulative, But Less Than Normal

One of the criticisms made against the film is that it’s manipulative. Duh! Of course it is, but it’s surprisingly subtle compared to most of what comes out of Hollywood today. For example, Michael must overcome various hurdles, such as a drug addicted mother, a borderline retarded IQ, the resistance of teachers who think he can’t learn, a lack of socialization, a lack of trust, racism, and a drug dealer who wants to hook him on drugs. But each of these hurdles is underplayed rather than overplayed. Moreover, we don’t get any of the cliché moments you normally get, e.g. where Michael runs outside into the rain crying that he’s not good enough or where a clichéd enemy tries to make him fail or where the mother (Sandra Bullock) falls to her knees weeping melodramatically. Ironically, the same critics who attack the film for being manipulative, also complain that Bullock remains too composed throughout the film and should have periodically wept like she’d just found a room full of dead puppies.

These same critics also whined that the story was sanitized: the white family was shown to be nice and happy and their Christianity wasn’t hypocritical. Oh heavens! Those darn teachers actually tried to help Michael rather than sabotage him! That never happens! Michael is made out like a giant teddy bear. Unbelievable!

The most obvious response to this is that the critics really need counseling. These critics, like many big-city liberals, smugly see Americans as alcoholic, racist, hatemongers, who date-rape their girlfriends, beat their oppressed wives and harass gays while hiding a plethora of sexual perversions. This may be the norm in New York City or Los Angeles, but it’s not what you find in the rest of America. What you find in the rest of America is pretty much what you find in this film -- people who aren’t perfect, but who try their best. Moreover, show me a film that doesn’t idealize. Does anyone really expect that everything good shown in a film must be balanced out with something bad? And if that’s the case, then why don’t liberals make this same complaint in films with liberal heroes? And don’t forget, this is a true story, were they supposed to make bad things up just to be “fair”?

2. No, It’s Not Racist

What really upset the critics was that The Blind Side didn’t fit their views on race. Almost every one of them suggested the film was racist:

● “The so-called ‘feel-good’ film functioning as a well-timed balm for the conflicted soul of white America. But rather than a clear-eyed look at the disparity between upper-crust suburbs and a cross-town ghetto, we get gloss of the highest order.”

● “It's so clichéd and so patronising and there's more than a whiff of racism.”

● “Institutional racism as inspirational melodrama, it's regressive entertainment, our very own Triumph of the Will.”

This is why the critics gave it a 53% rating. But the public didn’t buy that and gave it a 90% rating. They also spent $309,208,309 on it. You shouldn’t believe the critics either.

To liberals, the racism begins with the idea that a rich, white woman can educate a poor black kid. The very concept offends them. What’s worse, some liberals now object to allowing whites to adopt black kids, something they nonsensically claim is “genocide.” Moreover, Michael is shown becoming a happier, better person as he learns whitey’s ways, another racist idea in liberal eyes. They also think it’s racist that Bullock’s friends and family accept her decision to take in this black kid; several called this is a “whitewash,” i.e. failing to show the real racism liberals assume must be present is evidence of the director’s racist intent to hide the truth. They also see racism in the lack of racism in the teachers, because they know the reason black kids do poorly is that racist teachers pretend black kids can’t learn (see Waiting for Superman). . . coincidentally, the liberal belief in lowering standards for blacks actually is premised on such a belief. It also offends them that the black characters are all bad, e.g. Michael’s drug addicted mother, a black man who abandons Michael, a drug dealer, a lazy bureaucrat, and an evil NCAA woman who wrongfully accuses the family of taking Michael in for the sole purpose of helping their favorite college. In other words, they are offended because the whites are too good and the blacks are all bad, and that’s racist in their eyes.

Of course, this is all crap. The problem lies with the critics, not the film. The critics want to believe that whites are racists and there are no bad blacks, except when they are forced to be bad by white oppression. Thus, they see the inclusion of bad blacks and the failure to highlight the secret white racism as evidence of racists trying to cover up their racism. But that’s twisted, and it tells us much more about what lurks in the hearts of these critics, than what might be hidden in the frames of the film.

3. One of the Most Conservative Films In Years

Finally, let me explain why this is one of the most deeply conservative films in decades. For starters, the family who take Michael in are conservative, Republican Christians. . . when was the last time Hollywood let that happen? And unlike most Hollywood portrayals, they are not obsessed with money or imposing their religious beliefs. In fact, they are a genuinely nice family. Moreover, they take Michael in because they feel a moral obligation to do so. Compare this with how Hollywood normally portrays Christians as hypocritical about their beliefs in charity and responsibility, or against the liberal view that charity derives from forcing others to pay for good deeds through government dollars.

Further, the film constantly makes the point that family is vital. We see this in the support both parents provide Michael from helping him with school to socializing him to giving him emotional support. And at the same time, we are shown how children are destroyed and left to fend for themselves in the world of drug addiction, single-motherhood with multiple baby-daddies, and ghetto culture which disdains education and personal responsibility.

The school also provides a plethora of conservative themes. The admission committee is swayed by the idea that good Christians would help Michael because it’s the right thing to do, not because they would profit by it. The teachers never lower their expectations for him -- in fact, that’s criticized as the reason he has such problems, because the public schools just passed him along. And they also are very flexible about finding nontraditional (read: not union approved) ways to teach him. There’s even a great NRA moment. And throughout the film, we are shown that hard work and responsibility are rewarded and reliance on others is not. Indeed, everything you see offers a conservative theme. (See my article on what makes a film conservative.)

Conclusion

The Blind Side is a heartwarming film every conservative should love. It’s the kind of film conservatives complain that Hollywood doesn’t make anymore. The story is touching and has a great message. The people are decent. And its values are thoroughly conservative. This doesn’t sit well with liberal critics who want to see a slam on white southern racists, but who cares about them? They need to sort out their own inner demons before they’re worth listening to. In the meantime, see the film. You’ll like it.

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Film Friday: Wall Street (1987)

Wall Street is a great film. It’s well-paced, well-shot, well-acted and quite dramatic. But it has a rather ironic history. It’s ironic because Oliver Stone wanted the film to stand as an attack on Wall Street and the Reagan philosophy, but it seriously backfired and he ended up sending an entire generation of kids to finance school specifically to become the very villain the film rails against.

** spoiler alert **

At one point, Oliver Stone was a talented director/storyteller. Wall Street was made at the height of his abilities and is perhaps his finest film. But it was this ability to craft a highly compelling and engrossing film that tripped Stone up. Stone, no friend of capitalism or Ronald Reagan, intended Wall Street to be an anti-Reagan, anti-Wall Street, anti-capitalism screed. He hoped to discredit everything Reagan had achieved and get people leaving the theaters believing that the Reagan recovery (then underway for several years) was smoke and mirrors, with the rich getting richer by illegal means and the poor being tossed into the streets. But people didn’t see the film that way. To the contrary, they were inspired to become the very thing he hated: Gordon Gekko.

If we take the story as Stone intended, we get the following. Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is an eager young man who wants to do better than his father (Martin Sheen), a beloved union man. Fox joins the white collar corporate grind, doing cold calling for a brokerage firm. But greed entices Fox into the world of corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas), an evil man who symbolizes the Reagan years. Gekko wrecks companies so he can squeeze out their savings for himself. Under Gekko’s spell, Bud changes. He becomes cynical. He goes from a normal American to buying modern art he once despised, to taking drugs, to falling for a woman who is, in essence, a high class prostitute or gold digger. Most importantly though, Bud becomes a slave to Gekko, doing his bidding, emulating him, and being used and abused by him. Ultimately, Bud becomes a criminal. Gee, capitalism sucks.

But Stone made a huge mistake by glorifying the experience. He gave it cool settings, beautiful people, access to a secret world, and even a great soundtrack. Consequently, what most people got out of the film was this: Gordon Gekko owns expensive cars, private planes and homes on private beaches. He has the coolest office in the world. He belongs to private clubs, where he gets to push around rich people who thought they were better than him. He makes his own schedule, orders off the menu in restaurants, gets the best tables, meets the coolest people, has sex with the most attractive women, and gets to play monopoly with real companies. And his life can be yours, if you're just willing to break a few harmless rules.

What’s more, Stone compounds his error by adding the character of Sir Lawrence Wildman (Terence Stamp), the white knight corporate raider. Wildman is the good capitalist, a man who genuinely wants to turn companies around and save jobs rather than wrecking them. BUT, we are also told that Wildman was Gekko before Gekko, and that his good guy status is only of recent vintage. Bud Fox reinforces this when he talks repeatedly about making a fortune so he can then do good with it. Thus, through Wildman’s actions and Fox’s words, we are told that it’s ok to be Gekko to get rich so long as we eventually do something noble with the money. . . at some point.

Thus, rather than the anti-capitalist “finance makes you evil” message Stone intended, the message that comes across in Wall Street is that it’s ok to do bad things to become ultra rich, because (1) it’s a great way to live and (2) you can redeem yourself later by doing good things once you can afford it. This was the message picked up by millions of college kids who suddenly wanted to become Gordon Gekko. They dressed like him, quoted him, and talked about becoming him. Indeed, just like LA Law sent kids to law school and ER sent kids to medical school, Wall Street sent them to business school to learn corporate finance. Screenwriter Stanley Weiser has confirmed this, stating that he has been approached many times by people who told him, “This movie changed my life. Once I saw it, I knew that I wanted to get into such and such business. I wanted to be like Gordon Gekko.” Charlie Sheen and Michael Douglas also report that people tell them they became stockbrokers because of Fox and/or Gekko.

How’s that for irony?

But there are more ironies to consider. For example, this was a criticism of Reaganism, but corporate raiding exploded under Clinton. Stone complains that Gekko wrecks companies for no reason except his own profit, but it was the corporate raiders of the 1980s/1990s who are now credited with making American industry profitable again by breaking up large conglomerates that were run by inefficient management -- indeed, the failure to do this in Japan is one of the causes blamed for their decades long economic nightmare. Stone also complains that the economy is a “zero sum game,” a fancy economic term meaning that every winner has an equal loser and that no new wealth is ever created. But the economy grew from four trillion dollars at the time of the film to thirteen trillion today, even though Stone’s criticism would have predicted little to no growth. Similarly, Stone’s predicted pension fund collapse never happened.

Finally, it should be pointed out that much of what Stone sees as criminal in the conduct of Bud Fox and Gordon Gekko is not actually criminal. It is definitely criminal for Fox to break into offices using the cleaning service, and it is probably criminal for him to trade on what his father knows, depending on how his father learned this information. But Fox following Wildman around to figure out what company Wildman wants to buy is not illegal, despite Stone’s obsession with that point. Indeed, this is not insider information, this is nothing more than seeing Warren Buffett checking out the local grocery store and buying their stock because you think he wants to buy the company. Nor is it illegal to call the newspaper and tell them you plan to buy a particular stock, assuming you are truthful. Stone makes this sound criminal as well, but this happens every day when people go on CNBC to announce what they are interested in.

Thus, while Wall Street is a great film and it’s quite fun to watch, it fails pretty miserably at delivering its intended message. . . unless that message was “greed is good.”

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Film Friday: Deliverance (1972)

At first blush, Deliverance is just the story of four guys who go on a river rafting trip that goes horribly wrong. . . kind of the 1970s version of the modern hillbilly-cannibal slasher flick. But if you dig deeper, it’s actually a social commentary about the changing relationship between modern man and nature. It’s also the movie that solidified two ultra-negative stereotypes that have come to dominate how many Americans see each other today: hicks and elitists.

** spoiler alert **

Based on the 1970 novel Deliverance by James Dickey, the John Boorman directed film is the story of four Atlanta businessmen (Burt Reynolds, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty and Jon Voight), who go rafting on the fictional Cahulawassee River in rural Georgia. The river is being dammed and will soon disappear, taking several communities with it. As they start down the river, they encounter a group of people who live in backwoods conditions. Toothless, dirty, and with little understanding of the world beyond 1930, these people become the enemy for the four men as they fight for their own survival.

Hillbillies v. Elitists

There has always been a tension between city folk and country folk. But until Deliverance, that tension wasn’t really as nasty as it’s become. Consider the portrayal of country folk in films like The Grapes of Wrath, Sergeant York or any number of films about the American South. Country folk were seen as simple, yet decent people, with a few bad apples in their midsts. At the same time, city folk were typically seen as bright, but impersonal and often yearning to return to the simpler life.

When told that his character "Toothless Bob" would need to rape another man, Herbert "Cowboy" Coward (with the shotgun) told the director: "I done worse."

Deliverance changed all of that when it create highly negative stereotypes for both groups. Instead of yearning to reconnect with the land, the four Atlanta businessmen are seen as condescending elitists who think they have the right to mistreat and ridicule the hillbillies. They see the hillbillies as a subspecies of humanity and are happy to let them know it. Thus, Reynolds goes so far as to insult these people to their faces, showing that he believes he can act with impunity to these inferior creatures. Beatty acts similarly, particularly pointing out their inbreeding, though he is more cowardly and thus talks about them only when he thinks he is protected by the group. Cox doesn't insult them intentionally, but he shows his condescension in the way he treats the hillbillies like children and is shocked when they demonstrate competence. Only Voight treats them as human beings. From this comes the stereotype that urbanites are cowardly and condescending types who see themselves as superior to ruralites and who feel they have the right to mistreat these people and impose their will on them. This has become a widely held stereotype in rural circles.

On the other hand, Dickey/Boorman’s hillbillies are dirty, inbred, toothless people who favor banjos, stills, shotguns and sodomy. This stereotype has easily overtaken the more noble view presented in the past. Indeed, the line “I'm gonna make you squeal like a pig. Weeeeeeee!” has become so infamous with urbanites that all you need to say is “squeal like a pig” and people who have never heard of this film know exactly what you mean.

Neither the hillbilly nor the urbanite stereotype is generally accurate, though there are people who fall into these categories (I’ve met both kinds). Nevertheless, these stereotypes have become so strongly ingrained in the American consciousness that people genuinely believe this is what they will find in the other, alien environment, i.e. small town or big city America. Indeed, the relationship between rural and urban America has probably never been worse than it is today, and these two stereotypes play prominently in explaining why that is. Deliverance is the movie that solidified these stereotypes.

Modern Man v. Nature

But there is more to Deliverance than sodomizing hillbillies. At its core, Deliverance is a movie about how these four distinct modern men handle their ordeal. And therein lies the social criticism and the real interest in the movie.

Three of the men represent distinct archetypes of the modern city-dwelling male. Burt Reynolds represents the throwback. He’s a man who worships sports, hunting and all things physical. He longs for the challenges presented by nature because they appeal to his primitive nature, and he disdains the modern world. He is aggressive, violent and acts without thinking. Ronny Cox is the polar opposite of Reynolds. He represents the modern intellectual. He can see all sides of every issue and is paralyzed by his inability to settle on a course of action. In the civilized world, he probably holds significant power, but his skills at handling theory count for nothing in the wild. Ned Beatty represents what happens when man loses touch with the physical world. He is fat and soft, weak and cowardly. His total surrender to modern convenience has made him helpless. Finally, Jon Voight, the fourth, represents the bridge between them. He is physically capable without being the beast that Reynolds is. He is smart, but in a real world sense rather than Cox’s theoretical sense. And he enjoys the creature comforts, though he has not become dependent upon them as Beatty has.

What they endure becomes a test of these archetypes, a test which all but Voight fail. Reynolds fails because his aggression brings on all of their problems. He alienates everyone they encounter, foreclosing any chance of getting help from the locals and fostering the suspicion that isolates the four. Moreover, his aggressive disdain for the weak Beatty makes teamwork impossible, leading to the two canoes splitting up, which makes them vulnerable to being attacked. Beatty collapses in a pool of his own helplessness and loses his manhood as the self-emasculated Beatty’s fate is to be sodomized by the hillbillies. Cox becomes paralyzed with indecision because he can’t pull his head out of the world of theory long enough to come to grips with the real world. His rather symbolic fate is to die when his head disappears beneath the water. Only Voight is capable of rising to the challenge.

And within this formula, Dickey lodges several criticisms. First, he argues that the throwbacks are the cause of our problems because of their mindless aggression. . . an argument made by elitists today. But he also argues that the intellectuals cannot help us because they can’t come to any conclusions on real world issues. . . an argument made by middle-Americans today. He also argues that modern humans have become so dependent on the comforts of the modern world that they would simply die if left in nature. . . an oft-repeated criticism that has become more and more valid as obesity rates rise and reliance on the internet takes off. And in the end, he tells us that the solution is to be as Jon Voight -- stay in touch with our physical natures but don’t let them dominate us, use our minds but don’t lose touch with the real world for some theoretical existence, and enjoy the comforts of the modern world but don’t become dependent on its conveniences.

These are themes that touch a nerve in modern America, where we are quickly losing touch with nature and what it takes to survive away from our modern conveniences. This is why the past forty years have seen concerns about the Alan Alda-ing of America, why ridiculous camps have appeared for males to “rediscover” their primitive side, and why such an animosity has arisen between city dwellers and country folks. We are living in a moment where our relationship to the natural world is changing significantly and it’s not clear yet how it’s all going to turn out.

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