Into the Wild with Tricky Dick and John Wayne

In 1973, The Statler Brothers recorded a song called "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott?" bemoaning the relatively recent lack of uncomplicated heroes in American movies. By then the western genre was in its twilight. John Wayne, its biggest star and most profound actor, made his last film in 1976 and died in 1979. The twenty-five years since have seen few attempts at a classic western, mostly notably Unforgiven, and its mutation into a variety of other genres - Die Hard, the Bourne films, Pitch Black, Star Wars and the recent and delightful Serenity all follow the conventions of the western. However, the neo-western hero hasn't returned to his pre-neurotic state. The lead men in all of those movies are driven as much by their emotional complications as by any real threat. However, they do also fight an outside enemy, a plot twist that Christopher McCandless, hero of Sean Penn's Into the Wild, doesn't indulge in.

McCandless (played by the remarkable Emile Hirsch) does indulge in his obsession with finding freedom from the constraints of society, a quaint idea last seen hereabouts in, say, 1973, and one any even slightly cynical person would question. The enemies that spur McCandless on are "hypocrites and politicians", the emotional turmoil of his parent's marriage, and his own personality. His journey ends with his death by starvation, presented by Penn as a spiritual victory. Like a classic western, the movie presents this obsession and journey without irony; the audience is not asked to question the validity of McCandless's motives but to watch as he fulfills them.

The most wrenching parts of this sincere but slamhandedly manipulative film show how much McCandless takes from other people and how little he gives back. The movie's climax, and its most brazenly cliched moment, is McCandless's deathbed realization that he might have been more open to others. (I hear the voice of Gomer Pyle saying "Golly Sarge, really?") The triteness of McCandless's realization doesn't hinder the drama, but emphasizes it - anyone could have those thoughts but the tragedy of his story is how long it took and how much it cost.

The oddest facets of the movie are how kind and friendly - with one exception - everyone McCandless meets on the road is, and how the two obsessions of American culture - sex and religion - are almost completely ignored. McCandless seems almost neuter. One character asks him if he's Jesus (a personage famously uninterested in nooky) - and his one encounter with the opposite sex is unconsummated. I kept wondering if maybe McCandless was gay, but then I always wonder about that - and it's a good thing to wonder, I might add. Ask about unexplained or invisible sexual desires and you'll be asking all sorts of el wrongo questions before too long.

Drawbacks to the film? The acting is uniformly powerful, but also relentless, like the direction, The Eddie Vedder songs are monotonous and inevitable - but inspire gratitude that I missed the grunge thing. Some fancy-pants cinematography - we get to watch Hirsch take a backlit outdoor shower, ludicrously akin to shampoo commercials and as dramatically relevant. The running time is about twenty minutes too long. The narrative queasiness - Penn uses a variety of narrators, on-screen chapter titles, and McCandless's own writings to move the plot along. The drawbacks are all balanced by the forcefulness and sincerity of the film.

Into the Wild brought up memories of a early 1970s Werner Herzog film called Strozsek, which concerns a German social outcast named Bruno and his search for freedom in Wisconsin. The end of the film features a most remarkable dancing chicken, an image not easily forgotten. Herzog called the chicken "a great metaphor". For what, who knows?

And if you need to know who Randolph Scott is, hie thee to Netflix and rent Seven Men from Now or Ride the High Country, both westerns and both almost Greek in their dramatic ruthlessness. Scott started out as a startlingly handsome second lead and matured into a stone-faced but empathetic actor, and he made several classic westerns. He was also Cary Grant's housemate for about ten years, which has spurred all sorts of innuendo.

And about Tricky Dick - did the western die because Mr. Nixon's cavalry came to town and turned out to be crooks? Or was it the realization that the comic-relief crook had usurped the hero? When the deputies are Haldeman and Erlichman...

(http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/w/whateverhappenedtorandolphscott.shtml)

Die Young, Stay Significant

There’s a certain type of “significant” movie (Babel, Crash, Philadelphia, Schindler’s List, et al) about an important subject (war, AIDS, racism) that I’m suspicious of. The directors and producers of these movies pat themselves on the back(s), show up on lots of magazine covers, get awards, but people keep blowing each other up, dying of AIDS or being otherwise put upon by life. And what is the moviegoer's response? I can’t think of a movie, or a series of movies on the same topic, that changed public opinion about a cause. One could argue that the cumulative effect of seeing gay people or black people portrayed in the media has altered our public consciousness for the better, but that’s only if we ignore Hurricane Katrina and the gay marriage brouhaha. If only disasters could happen after the movie - then everything would work out just fine.

An acquaintance saw United 93, and I asked her why. Her response - the movie was “cathartic”. I suppose that’s good for my acquaintance, but what about the people on the planes? I’m left with the unfortunate conclusion that these movies are cheats, exploitative reenactments of real suffering served as entertainment for those lucky enough not to be suffering.

Significant movies don’t age well, resistance to or transformation through aging being an arguable potential indication of quality. (A favorite example of mine is Petulia, a 1968 drama about marital infidelity. It didn’t cause much of a stir at the time of its release, but it has acquired a gemlike perfection due to its burnished visual style and its acquired identity as a time capsule.) However, I acknowledge that dreck sometimes lives forever, The Sound of Music and It’s a Wonderful Life being the archetypes.* Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (topic: racism) won a lot of awards in 1968. Now it’s seems like a simpleminded puppet show - “Look, children, black people have feelings too! One of them might even want to marry our lilywhite daughter!” In Philadelphia, Tom Hanks’ character never shows any physical affection to his boyfriend. This was was widely remarked upon at the time of its release. Ten years later it looks worse, since I’ve had time to wonder why, if the moviemakers were so “brave” about the subject, were they so cowardly about showing it?

Most of these movies have no sense of humor, either about the subject or about being a movie on that subject, and Pan’s Labyrinth is an egregious example of that. No one ever smiles or laughs or tells a joke, martyrs being notoriously dreary company. Having lived through a couple of disasters I can attest that I still found time to laugh occasionally.

The middle-aged and very crotchety Kingsley Amis once claimed “I won’t read any book that doesn’t start with ‘And then a shot rang out!” I’m inclined to agree. I like movies that are pure entertainment. I don’t need to know that the world is a difficult place. After all, I ride the subway every day.

*Please feel free to insert moans of dismay.