Gran Torino, Catholicism, and Mad Men

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Gran Torino and Catholicism

I apologize for my hiatus in setting up this blog, I promised myself I would not let this blog die like so many others I tried to start so I will get right to it. Over the weekend my wonderful girlfriend and I watched Gran Torino, last falls Oscar vehicle direct and starring Clint Eastwood one of my favorite actors. The movie is about a Korean War veteran who is retired (or laid off its never clear) from a job at a Ford plant and lives in his old neighborhood in Highland Park, MI. Everything about this guy is old. The camera makes several crucial pans to the grizzled out, worn out face of Eastwood, playing Walt Kowalski, and we can just see the years of agony that have worn this face out. He is the last white person in his neighborhood which has been overtaken by Hispanics, blacks, and most notably Hmong refugees from Laos. After his wife's death we can just see Walt bitter at the world, the medicore generic homily the priest gives, his family's annoying insistence on taking his things and putting him in a home and their selfishness, the priests insistence he go to confession like his wife asked him too. But Walt is a man who wants to be left alone and die in peace with his six pack of Pabst and his Marlboros.

All of this changes when a young Hmong next door tries to steal his prisitine 1971 Gran Torino muscle car as part of a gang initiation. This then sets the tone for the rest of the film as Eastwood slowly grows attached to the Hmong family next store realizing how much they have in common and subsituting his selfish family for the gracious hospitality of those next door. He grows fairly close to the boys sister Sue and gradually to the boy himself as he starts to pay off his debt to Walt by doing chores around his house and the neighborhood. Yet slowly the tension builds with the gang that tried to recruit the boy and Walt with his guns left over from Korea and the tension building seems to be gearing himself up for an Eastwood style modern day showdown at the Ok Corral. The film sets in motion these gradual events and builds the story in a very slow and meticulous way so the characters are fully developed and the tension builds until it is incredibly taught gripping the audience. The film reminds me of Eastwood's talent as both an actor and director and I am now disappointed having seen the film that the Academy and other critics did not give it more attention.

The film is wonderfully paced and Eastwood does a great job getting stellar performances out of his cast, primarily made up of Hmong newcomers and unknown character actors. Similarly he delivers one of the most layered performances I've seen creating a character that is on the surface a racist, Bunker like curmudgeon who is also a tough guy ready to confront the gang. Walt eventually does, but in a way that the audience, knowing Eastwoods previous roles as the 'man with no name' in so many Western's and as Dirty Harry, both violent men of action, doesn't expect and in a way that truly elevates the movie and keeps it realistic and viscereal.

An interesting tension in the film is also the way it explores faith. It is never made particularly clear if Walt is still a devout believer, but I do like the contrast between his relatively young and inexperienced by the book priest, a man Walt repeatedly derides as a '27 year old, young overeducated virgin', who defines faith as coming to mass, regularly confessing, and going through the motions and rites of the religion and who assumes Walt will open up and confess because it is his duty. Yet unlike the empty cliches of the priests homily in the opening funeral scene, Walts faith is a much deeper, reserved, silent faith. Faith that is perhaps not grounded in a belief in God, but that certainly allows one to contemplate ways to end violence, bring about peace, love your fellow man, and martyr yourself for those values. The priest is depicted as being ineffective because he is unwilling to take the faith of his book out into the real world. An interesting scene is when the priest stands outside the gangs home with the police hoping to prevent a violent confrontation but is shown to be foolish when the police tell him its not worth it and haul him back in. This is contrasted with Walt who understands, perhaps because he is a former soldier, that direct action and taking a strong stance is preferable to passive action and symbolic action, but also that assertive actions do not necessarily have to be violent.

The film was depicted by many reviewers as a comment on the lost America. We see the decaying white middle class and efforts by the Hmong to emulate the Poles and Irish and Italians before them and assimilate into that melting pot. We see the decaying worn out infrastructure of the midwest, the stale bars that were once full of rowdy auto workers not full of bitter old men jaded by the country that left them behind. There is an interesting contrast between the Walts dual identity as an auto worker and a Korean War veteran since these are two groups that built this country that have now been largely forgotten.

Yet I would argue the film is more successful when viewed through the prism of a man recovering his faith both in himself, his community, and arguably in his God. The road to that recovery makes for a truly powerful film.

Mad Men

For those of you not familiar, Mad Men is the greatest show on television depicting the culture of ad executives in the early 1960s. The show is wonderful for a variety of reasons. Technically it is one of the best looking shows out there with wonderful costumes, design, and meticulous attention to detail that really emmerses you in the everyday reality of living during that era. This aspect of the show has had a profound impact on fashion in my opinion, with Don Draper style grey flannel suits, skinny ties, pocket squares, and horn rimmed glasses back in fashion with most people not even realizing its because of the show. Yet the show truly elevates itself in its slow, meticulous, intriguing story lines, episodic plots that build upon one another, its stylistic use of contemporary and time period soundtracks, and anattention to cinematography that is rarely seen in television.

Also unlike other shows that are set in the past, particularly other shows set in the 1960s, this show does not fall into the convention of having the historical events outweigh the characters and their personal stories. Unlike American Dreams, another drama set in the early 60s that aired in the early 2000s, Mad Men approaches events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis as vehicles to explore the depth and evolution of its characters and not as a history lesson. Mostly, the events form the backdrop to the everyday mundane work of people in an office, much like they do now.
In this manner the show is less about the 1960s as it is a show that happens to take place there.

Yet by making these characters real people we get in the mindset of the conservative white American male circa 1960 who is slowly baffled by the introduction of women into the workplace as partners and not just secretaries to flirt with. The slow push for civil rights is also hinted at though the characters living in isolated all white middle class lives are rightly isolated from most of those changes.

In another way the show also functions as a wonderful indictment against materialism. The main character has no identity, no real purpose, and is simply moving through the world, as he puts it in a recent episode 'change is neither good nor bad, it just is' and in that sense Don Draper just 'is'. Having acquired the American dream, an upper middle class home in the suburbs, beautiful blonde bombshell of a wife, great job, two kids, a Caddy in the garage, he is still entirely unsatisfied and depressed with his life. He eeks out an escape through meaningless and self destructive affairs and alcoholism, in a manner similar to Leo Di Caprio's character in Revolutionary Road but made more complex by his horrible life story and background. It seems that Don is able to sell the American dream to everyone but himself.

His wife Betty is also depressed with this lifestyle and with homemaking but has seemed to brought herself to this point with a dignified sense of resignation. Peggy is another interesting character who in the first season was subjected to the flirtations and harassment of her peers, but has now finally battled her way into her own office yet is still not seen as one of the boys. She is also taking on many of the negative character traits of the feminist career woman. She has abandoned her child (the result of a one night stand) to her parents to take care of, abandoned her faith, disdains the working people in her neighborhood, and satisfies her sexual needs but never finds love. While Peggy is to our 21st century eyes the most liberated woman compared to Betty who is a prisoner in her own home with a husband who doesn't understand or respect her, and Joanie the office slut who finally used her good looks and charm to land a husband but is seemingly unhappy with him as well, she is also still at heart unhappy. The show succeeds most as a study of the many characters in its ensemble cast, as well as its principle character Don Draper. It also asks a poignant question-why are the people that are so good at selling happiness bankrupt of it?

A PBS Mind in an MTV World

Hello interwebs!

I once saw a button that had this phrase written upon it and I feel that it suffices for this blog. Essentially I hope to unload the thoughts in my mind regarding all sorts of things that interest me from the usual suspects: politics and current events but also from other things from literature, cinema, television, theology, philosophy, sports, and even food and drink. I might also indulge in some personal reflections on life, love, family, friends, and may even post some original short stories, poetry, and essays I might come up with. I think those are the things a truly well rounded educated human being ought to comment on.

In my last year of college I hope to have some reflections on what I think education should be, opinions about culture, and hopefully stave off the beast of modernity and the dumbing down of America from all facets of life. I am a patriot who believes in his country by can question its direction, an educated person who also disdains unfounded elitism and pretension, and a christian of the catholic variety who has an open mind always willing to engage. Hopefully these musings will entertain and enlighten but I am sure they will in the least offer me a chance to share parts of me some of you might not be familiar with.