The Blind Side (John Lee Hancock, dir, 129 mins, 2009) is a feel-good film that leaves itself open to two obvious criticisms. First, in the vein of films like Grand Canyon and Remember the Titans (should we also include To Kill a Mockingbird?), it reduces systemic (socio-economic) racism to personal, private matters. That we feel good when we watch this film may salve our conscience on such issues and insure our secure isolation. The Tuohy family consists of caring conservatives, kinder, gentler Republicans who have a black son before they ever meet a Democrat. Those interested in such criticisms of this film can read the review by Joanne Laurier at http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/blin-m26.shtml or the essay on Remember the Titans in Erin Runion’s fine book, How Hysterical? If we wanted to take this level of criticism further, perhaps we should dwell on the fact that the Tuohy wealth is based on a series of fast food franchises (often critiqued as cardboard for the masses). Second, and of more aesthetic concern, the film repeatedly avoids (almost all) dramatic tension. It simply does not explore the kinds of problems that we would expect to arise in the mix of race and social class that is the new Tuohy family. Nor does it explore tensions between loyalty to family (the film’s great theme) and other loyalties. Perhaps, we should reread our Aeschylus or watch something like Before and After. Those interested in such criticisms can read the review by Dennis Schwartz at http://homepages.sover.net/~ozus/blindside.htm or that by Nick Da Costa at http://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/reviews.php?id=8866.
Having salved my critical conscience somewhat, I wish to confess that I thoroughly enjoyed The Blind Side. Join me in singing, “We Are Family.” It is this that the film is about, not football. In fact, given the premise of the film set out in the introductory voiceover by Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock), the football scenes are quite limited. The family, loyalty to the family, protecting your family members’ “blind sides” is everything. None of that is, I suppose, surprising in the film’s conservative ideology. What does surprise, however, is the film’s testimony to the constructed—that is, not natural or biological—nature of family. Family is something chosen, not given. Did someone—the original author or someone among the filmmakers—read De Beauvoir or Foucault?
Beyond that, like all hero(ine) films (Leigh Anne is the real heroine here), The Blind Side exhorts us to heroic virtues like honor and courage. Michael Oher, instructed by Sean Tuohy’s analysis of “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” has the final summation: “Courage is a hard thing to figure. You can have courage based on a dumb idea or mistake, but you're not supposed to question adults, or your coach or your teacher, because they make the rules. Maybe they know best, but maybe they don't. It all depends on who you are, where you come from. Didn't at least one of the six hundred guys think about giving up, and joining with the other side? I mean, valley of death that's pretty salty stuff. That's why courage it's tricky. Should you always do what others tell you to do? Sometimes you might not even know why you're doing something. I mean any fool can have courage. But honor, that's the real reason for you either do something or you don't. It's who you are and maybe who you want to be. If you die trying for something important, then you have both honor and courage, and that's pretty good. I think that's what the writer was saying, that you should hope for courage and try for honor. And maybe even pray that the people telling you what to do have some, too.”
Perhaps, I shouldn’t be, but I am a sucker for such.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Inception
Inception (Christopher Nolan, dir; 148 mins; 2010)
Is it real or is it Memorex? Not surprisingly, for a Christopher Nolan film, Inception begins near the end as Cobb awakes on a beach and is hauled before a powerful, aged Asian man. Later, we learn that we are in Cobb’s—or is it the collective—subconscious? Cobb leads a team that raids people’s dreams/subconscious for their secrets.
International corporations and powerful individuals pay well for this service and also for training in self-defense against such raids. Cobb also has a troubled past. He is wanted for his wife’s “murder” and, therefore, separated from his children. Quite simply, he can’t go home until a middle-aged Asian businessman offers to help clear up his legal problems in return for a service—the implanting of an idea in the son of the businessman’s greatest rival. That rival is dying and the heir will inherit everything. The idea is the breakup of the heir’s company.
Accepting the job, Cobb goes three levels into the heir’s dream world, leaving a conscious member of his team behind at each of the first two levels. To return to reality, they have to coordinate a “kick” at each level at the same time. Failing at the crucial moment, his newest team member challenges him to go into the subconscious with her. They do and meet his dead wife. We learn the whole “truth” about Cobb’s past, and Cobb figuratively kills his wife by refusing her delusions and by refusing to stay with her in the subconscious. In short, he forgives himself for his part in his wife’s suicide. Cobb does stay behind as his associate leaves, however, to complete the job and to rescue his Asian employer who has been wounded in the heist and is now lost in the subconscious. This returns us to the opening beach and to the old Asian man (time passes more quickly at each successive dream level).
Successful, Cobb returns to his family cleared of all charges. But, in the film’s last scene, Cobb leaves a top spinning on a table. This top is Cobb’s talisman, the item that he carries with him so that he will be able to distinguish reality and dreams. In a dream world, the top will spin continuously. In the film’s last scene, the top slows and slows; it must stop; but before it does, the film fades to black. We have no talisman; we cannot distinguish reality and dreams. In fact, Cobb may not have one either. In the film’s climactic moments, when the truth comes out, we find out that Cobb’s talisman actually belongs to his dead wife. Or, is she?
The film is interesting on two counts. First, the play with dreams returns to the early days of film when filmmakers and theorists argued whether film should represent reality or whether should film should be the stuff of dreams. Mainstream Hollywood film largely chose the first option although the device of “this is just a dream” has a lengthy history in horror. In recent years, however, mainstream film has rediscovered the dream. This may have something to do with late capitalism or with what some theorists have referred to as the society of the spectacle or as the proliferation of simulations. Second, then, the film is a window into our culture’s uncertainty about truth and reality. We are no longer sure. We live in a simulated world.
Is it real or is it Memorex? Not surprisingly, for a Christopher Nolan film, Inception begins near the end as Cobb awakes on a beach and is hauled before a powerful, aged Asian man. Later, we learn that we are in Cobb’s—or is it the collective—subconscious? Cobb leads a team that raids people’s dreams/subconscious for their secrets.
International corporations and powerful individuals pay well for this service and also for training in self-defense against such raids. Cobb also has a troubled past. He is wanted for his wife’s “murder” and, therefore, separated from his children. Quite simply, he can’t go home until a middle-aged Asian businessman offers to help clear up his legal problems in return for a service—the implanting of an idea in the son of the businessman’s greatest rival. That rival is dying and the heir will inherit everything. The idea is the breakup of the heir’s company.
Accepting the job, Cobb goes three levels into the heir’s dream world, leaving a conscious member of his team behind at each of the first two levels. To return to reality, they have to coordinate a “kick” at each level at the same time. Failing at the crucial moment, his newest team member challenges him to go into the subconscious with her. They do and meet his dead wife. We learn the whole “truth” about Cobb’s past, and Cobb figuratively kills his wife by refusing her delusions and by refusing to stay with her in the subconscious. In short, he forgives himself for his part in his wife’s suicide. Cobb does stay behind as his associate leaves, however, to complete the job and to rescue his Asian employer who has been wounded in the heist and is now lost in the subconscious. This returns us to the opening beach and to the old Asian man (time passes more quickly at each successive dream level).
Successful, Cobb returns to his family cleared of all charges. But, in the film’s last scene, Cobb leaves a top spinning on a table. This top is Cobb’s talisman, the item that he carries with him so that he will be able to distinguish reality and dreams. In a dream world, the top will spin continuously. In the film’s last scene, the top slows and slows; it must stop; but before it does, the film fades to black. We have no talisman; we cannot distinguish reality and dreams. In fact, Cobb may not have one either. In the film’s climactic moments, when the truth comes out, we find out that Cobb’s talisman actually belongs to his dead wife. Or, is she?
The film is interesting on two counts. First, the play with dreams returns to the early days of film when filmmakers and theorists argued whether film should represent reality or whether should film should be the stuff of dreams. Mainstream Hollywood film largely chose the first option although the device of “this is just a dream” has a lengthy history in horror. In recent years, however, mainstream film has rediscovered the dream. This may have something to do with late capitalism or with what some theorists have referred to as the society of the spectacle or as the proliferation of simulations. Second, then, the film is a window into our culture’s uncertainty about truth and reality. We are no longer sure. We live in a simulated world.
Monday, July 26, 2010
The Godfather
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, dir; 175 mins; 1972)
One of the great things about watching The Godfather again after all these years is the film’s memorable lines, many of which have become such a part of popular culture that one may have forgotten their place in this film. In fact, one may even think them the property of some inane romantic comedy. The lines, of course, are The Godfather and the sheer joy of hearing them again is much of the experience of this film (or something like Casablanca).
For me, the other memorable part of The Godfather is the wonderful scene near the end of the film which intercuts the baptism of Michael Corleone’s nephew and Michael’s acceptance of the role as this child’s godfather with the various vengeful reprisals that eliminate the Corleone family’s enemies. Those acts are, of course, also what makes Michael Corleone into the Godfather.
That the film begins to intercut this violence with the moment in the baptism when Michael renounces Satan is a wonderful touch, for Michael has done no such thing. Instead, these intercut scenes display the climax of Michael’s degradation (can there be a climax to degradation?). As the film begins, Michael is a returning war hero, and his father isolates him from the family’s business so that Michael can be a more legitimate, powerful figure—a senator or a governor. Violent attacks on the family because Don Corleone will not participate in the burgeoning drug trade and the ineptness of Michael’s two brothers eventually force Michael into the family business as the new Don. It is a slow, but seemingly inevitable process.
It is also a process that implicates us as viewers. It is difficult not to sympathize with the Corleone family (although the older Don is a more sympathetic character than Michael). It is difficult not to share their desire for vengeance after their family is assaulted. The FBI and the local police are ineffectual. The politicians and judges are for sale. By contrast, the family has a code, and that code is not drastically different from that of many cinematic heroes and, therefore, from the code to which many of us may aspire. The film, then, is not simply about Michael’s degradation. It is about the degradation of all of us (after WW2?). It also, like Aeschylus and more modern revenge tragedies, is also about the horror of vengeance. It raises the question whether vengeance preserves or destroys the family and us all.
Accordingly, the film is also about our fascination with evil. In films from the period of The Godfather’s setting, titillation with evil eventually gave way to an endorsement of contemporary public mores. The evil were judged, even if the good did not triumph. The Godfather is a degradation of a different color. In the film’s final scene, Michael has come of age, he has taken his (God)father’s place. His enemies have been routed. His wife, who represents naiveté, if not innocence or the good, is completely in the dark. She is pathetic, little more than a fool (and not a holy fool at that). We are left with evil.
One of the great things about watching The Godfather again after all these years is the film’s memorable lines, many of which have become such a part of popular culture that one may have forgotten their place in this film. In fact, one may even think them the property of some inane romantic comedy. The lines, of course, are The Godfather and the sheer joy of hearing them again is much of the experience of this film (or something like Casablanca).
For me, the other memorable part of The Godfather is the wonderful scene near the end of the film which intercuts the baptism of Michael Corleone’s nephew and Michael’s acceptance of the role as this child’s godfather with the various vengeful reprisals that eliminate the Corleone family’s enemies. Those acts are, of course, also what makes Michael Corleone into the Godfather.
That the film begins to intercut this violence with the moment in the baptism when Michael renounces Satan is a wonderful touch, for Michael has done no such thing. Instead, these intercut scenes display the climax of Michael’s degradation (can there be a climax to degradation?). As the film begins, Michael is a returning war hero, and his father isolates him from the family’s business so that Michael can be a more legitimate, powerful figure—a senator or a governor. Violent attacks on the family because Don Corleone will not participate in the burgeoning drug trade and the ineptness of Michael’s two brothers eventually force Michael into the family business as the new Don. It is a slow, but seemingly inevitable process.
It is also a process that implicates us as viewers. It is difficult not to sympathize with the Corleone family (although the older Don is a more sympathetic character than Michael). It is difficult not to share their desire for vengeance after their family is assaulted. The FBI and the local police are ineffectual. The politicians and judges are for sale. By contrast, the family has a code, and that code is not drastically different from that of many cinematic heroes and, therefore, from the code to which many of us may aspire. The film, then, is not simply about Michael’s degradation. It is about the degradation of all of us (after WW2?). It also, like Aeschylus and more modern revenge tragedies, is also about the horror of vengeance. It raises the question whether vengeance preserves or destroys the family and us all.
Accordingly, the film is also about our fascination with evil. In films from the period of The Godfather’s setting, titillation with evil eventually gave way to an endorsement of contemporary public mores. The evil were judged, even if the good did not triumph. The Godfather is a degradation of a different color. In the film’s final scene, Michael has come of age, he has taken his (God)father’s place. His enemies have been routed. His wife, who represents naiveté, if not innocence or the good, is completely in the dark. She is pathetic, little more than a fool (and not a holy fool at that). We are left with evil.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The Lovely Bones
The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, dir.; 2009)
One would think the image in The Lovely Bones would be those bones or, failing that, the Beyond that narrator/protagonist Susie Salmon inhabits as she tells the story of her murder and its effects upon her family. Jackson and his crew do lavish attention on that Beyond. For me, however, the film’s image is the sinkhole the Salmon family visits early in the film to dispose of a derelict refrigerator. It is a family outing because the sinkhole is something fascinating to see. And, for me, The Lovely Bones is really about those fascinating depths.
In the first place, the world of The Lovely Bones is a place where bad things or the earth itself can swallow you up in an instant and without warning. In the scene after the sinkhole, Susie’s younger brother almost dies. Only her quick thinking saves his life. Unfortunately, in the world of The Lovely Bones, sometimes no one is around to help. Thus, Susie finds her own figurative sinkhole in an encounter with the friendly neighborhood pedophile, George Harvey. He meets her in a desolate cornfield between her school and home, lures her into the dugout he’s built there for the purpose, and rapes and murders her (although we see none of this). The film’s climax offers a more literal sinkhole because George, fearing detection, dumps Susie’s bones, already interred in a safe, into the sinkhole from the film’s beginning. The earth literally swallows Susie, then, although she provides the voiceover that describes it all.
In the second place, The Lovely Bones is about our voyeuristic attraction to these sinkholes. Susie comes to her end because the dugout fascinates her. Her family almost comes apart after Susie goes missing because of her Dad’s fascination with the mystery of her disappearance. In the last third of the film, Susie’s sister flirts with her own fascinating sinkhole by entering George Harvey’s house through a broken basement window in a hunt for evidence. Of course, we are the ultimate voyeurs, and it is our fascination with terrible events like those The Lovely Bones only hints at that is the film’s reason to be.
The penguin snow globe, which is the film’s opening shot and its other enduring image, is something of a comment on the narrator’s perspective and the audience’s fascination. A very young Susie peeks over the top of a table to look at snow globe and to worry about the penguin’s isolation. Dad, trying to comfort her, says that the penguin is trapped in her own perfect world. That, of course, is Susie’s place in the Beyond as she narrates the film (and that of the audience as well?). While she tries to interact with the story’s plot and characters, and succeeds to a minimal degree (most memorably, finally getting that missed first kiss), her real interaction is with the audience.
Perhaps, it is this isolation, which allows the film to say something significant about vengeance (is it justice?). The film plays with our desires for vengeance/justice from its inception. We, the narrator, and various characters want to see vengeance/justice done. The father seeks vengeance/justice by a relentless pursuit of evidence, but never finds it. Late in the film, he takes up arms (a baseball bat) to exact vengeance personally and is beaten and hospitalized. Susie’s sister enters the demon’s lair to find evidence and succeeds, but we never see her give it to the authorities (although the police arrive at Harvey’s house too late to arrest him). Finally, Susie herself returns to earth, possessing a young girl who is sensitive to things others are not. As this occurs while George is trundling the safe with Susie’s bones to the sinkhole, we might think that Susie has returned to out her killer. She has not. Instead, she has come back for that first kiss.
While the film titillates our desires for vengeance, it puts them off repeatedly in order to value other matterss—that first kiss, the family’s continuance, etc. Perhaps, that’s why Susie’s boyfriend is starring in the production of Othello near the film’s beginning. What better source than a revenge tragedy to teach the ultimate emptiness of vengeance? As Don Corleone says in The Godfather, “Will vengeance bring your son back? Or mine?” In the book, on which the film is based, the protagonist says that she had to learn to forgive her attacker. The film does not go so far. In fact, in something which seems remarkably like an added postscript, a strange series of coincidences finally dispatches George Harvey, sending him falling into his own sinkhole. While that postscript, like the film’s Beyond, may comfort some, it does not seem at home in the film’s sinkhole world (it may be, of course, commiserate with our voyeuristic fascination with sinkholes).
One would think the image in The Lovely Bones would be those bones or, failing that, the Beyond that narrator/protagonist Susie Salmon inhabits as she tells the story of her murder and its effects upon her family. Jackson and his crew do lavish attention on that Beyond. For me, however, the film’s image is the sinkhole the Salmon family visits early in the film to dispose of a derelict refrigerator. It is a family outing because the sinkhole is something fascinating to see. And, for me, The Lovely Bones is really about those fascinating depths.
In the first place, the world of The Lovely Bones is a place where bad things or the earth itself can swallow you up in an instant and without warning. In the scene after the sinkhole, Susie’s younger brother almost dies. Only her quick thinking saves his life. Unfortunately, in the world of The Lovely Bones, sometimes no one is around to help. Thus, Susie finds her own figurative sinkhole in an encounter with the friendly neighborhood pedophile, George Harvey. He meets her in a desolate cornfield between her school and home, lures her into the dugout he’s built there for the purpose, and rapes and murders her (although we see none of this). The film’s climax offers a more literal sinkhole because George, fearing detection, dumps Susie’s bones, already interred in a safe, into the sinkhole from the film’s beginning. The earth literally swallows Susie, then, although she provides the voiceover that describes it all.
In the second place, The Lovely Bones is about our voyeuristic attraction to these sinkholes. Susie comes to her end because the dugout fascinates her. Her family almost comes apart after Susie goes missing because of her Dad’s fascination with the mystery of her disappearance. In the last third of the film, Susie’s sister flirts with her own fascinating sinkhole by entering George Harvey’s house through a broken basement window in a hunt for evidence. Of course, we are the ultimate voyeurs, and it is our fascination with terrible events like those The Lovely Bones only hints at that is the film’s reason to be.
The penguin snow globe, which is the film’s opening shot and its other enduring image, is something of a comment on the narrator’s perspective and the audience’s fascination. A very young Susie peeks over the top of a table to look at snow globe and to worry about the penguin’s isolation. Dad, trying to comfort her, says that the penguin is trapped in her own perfect world. That, of course, is Susie’s place in the Beyond as she narrates the film (and that of the audience as well?). While she tries to interact with the story’s plot and characters, and succeeds to a minimal degree (most memorably, finally getting that missed first kiss), her real interaction is with the audience.
Perhaps, it is this isolation, which allows the film to say something significant about vengeance (is it justice?). The film plays with our desires for vengeance/justice from its inception. We, the narrator, and various characters want to see vengeance/justice done. The father seeks vengeance/justice by a relentless pursuit of evidence, but never finds it. Late in the film, he takes up arms (a baseball bat) to exact vengeance personally and is beaten and hospitalized. Susie’s sister enters the demon’s lair to find evidence and succeeds, but we never see her give it to the authorities (although the police arrive at Harvey’s house too late to arrest him). Finally, Susie herself returns to earth, possessing a young girl who is sensitive to things others are not. As this occurs while George is trundling the safe with Susie’s bones to the sinkhole, we might think that Susie has returned to out her killer. She has not. Instead, she has come back for that first kiss.
While the film titillates our desires for vengeance, it puts them off repeatedly in order to value other matterss—that first kiss, the family’s continuance, etc. Perhaps, that’s why Susie’s boyfriend is starring in the production of Othello near the film’s beginning. What better source than a revenge tragedy to teach the ultimate emptiness of vengeance? As Don Corleone says in The Godfather, “Will vengeance bring your son back? Or mine?” In the book, on which the film is based, the protagonist says that she had to learn to forgive her attacker. The film does not go so far. In fact, in something which seems remarkably like an added postscript, a strange series of coincidences finally dispatches George Harvey, sending him falling into his own sinkhole. While that postscript, like the film’s Beyond, may comfort some, it does not seem at home in the film’s sinkhole world (it may be, of course, commiserate with our voyeuristic fascination with sinkholes).
Monday, July 19, 2010
The Escapist
The Escapist (2008, dir. Rupert Wyatt, 102 mins.) is an intriguing prison escape film for two reasons. First, the filmmakers intercut the prison break with its preparations. From the beginning, then, we see the characters breaking out of prison. As we do not see the result of the prison break until near the film’s end, there is typical prison break suspense, but we ultimately learn that the film is only partly interested in the escape, which takes up the bulk of the film’s running time. We learn this because of the film’s second break with the prison escape genre. Second, we learn near the film’s end that the main character, the prisoner who masterminded the escape (played by Brian Cox) did not escape, even though we have seen him fleeing with the escapees throughout the film. Instead, he has sacrificed himself in order to liberate his young cell mate and, as he dies at the hands of the prison’s criminal boss, he imagines the escape we have seen (cf. Train of Life).
The shift from “reality” to dream/imagination is more common in the horror genre than the prison escape. The surprise, then, will infuriate some viewers and entrance others. The emphasis upon imagined escape does, however, make the film an intriguing dialogue partner for Stanley Cohen and Laurie Taylor’s Escape Attempts: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Everyday Life (Routledge, 2nd ed., 1992). Their work grew out of interviews with convicts concerning the methods convicts used to manage captivity. Cohen and Taylor soon realized that people outside prison use similar techniques to avoid feeling trapped by the institutions and worldview that dominates culture. They also quickly learned that all such attempts at escape were doomed to failure. There was only, then, the struggle to escape.
Many would see religion as the ultimate escape attempt. The only other random religious comment that I have to make about The Escapist is the use of the prison chapel/confessional as the site for the escape’s origin and, of course, the use of the chapel crucifix to batter through the wall to freedom (cf. the use of the Bible in The Shawshank Redemption).
The shift from “reality” to dream/imagination is more common in the horror genre than the prison escape. The surprise, then, will infuriate some viewers and entrance others. The emphasis upon imagined escape does, however, make the film an intriguing dialogue partner for Stanley Cohen and Laurie Taylor’s Escape Attempts: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Everyday Life (Routledge, 2nd ed., 1992). Their work grew out of interviews with convicts concerning the methods convicts used to manage captivity. Cohen and Taylor soon realized that people outside prison use similar techniques to avoid feeling trapped by the institutions and worldview that dominates culture. They also quickly learned that all such attempts at escape were doomed to failure. There was only, then, the struggle to escape.
Many would see religion as the ultimate escape attempt. The only other random religious comment that I have to make about The Escapist is the use of the prison chapel/confessional as the site for the escape’s origin and, of course, the use of the chapel crucifix to batter through the wall to freedom (cf. the use of the Bible in The Shawshank Redemption).
The Punisher War Zone
Punisher: War Zone (2008, Lexi Alexander, dir., 103 min) is yet another cinematizing of a comic book franchise. It seems like a comic book. I have no defense for watching it. It happened to be on while I was doing other things. For my religion and film purposes, however, the film had three sterling moments.
First, at the funeral of a “good guy” killed accidentally by the Punisher in one of his many killing sprees, the minister intones, “The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy. He does not treat us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our faults. As parents have compassion on their children, the Lord has pity on those who fear him for he knows of what we are made. He remembers that we are but dust. As for us, our days are like grass …” The scene stands out in the film’s gruesome violence and fascination with vengeance. It is the ideology that the film and the film’s violent genres deliberately, polemically reject. The Punisher’s killing spree stems from the mob’s slaughter of his family. We see the sobbing Punisher at the grave of his family, and a replay of his family disaster, immediately after the “good guy” funeral. At the “good guy’s” funeral, a special agent promises the “good guy’s” widow that he will get the Punisher. Of course, he does not. Ultimately, he joins forces with the Punisher.
Second, two-thirds of the way through the film, the Punisher visits the priest, also his friend, who officiated at his family’s funeral. The priest tells the Punisher that he is a long way from the seminary and asks him why he’s taken this tact. The Punisher’s response is that someone must punish the corrupt. The priest responds that we will be judged by the same measure with which we judge. The Punisher recognizes the reference (Matt. 7:2) and accepts his fate laconically. He has chosen a suicidal path, rather than life. In fact, he admits that sometimes he’d like to get his hands on God. Incidentally, it is in this same church that the Punisher and the special agent hunting him join forces to save the widow and daughter of the “good guy.”
Third, in the film’s epilogue, the Punisher departs the climactic shoot out, which saves the “good guy’s” family, with another (comically ineffective) policeman. As they leave, they pass in front of a church with a flickering, cruciform neon sign that says “Jesus Saves.” While the bumbling policeman talks about his opposition to the death penalty and his belief that even bad guys can change, the Punisher disappears. Almost immediately, a thug mugs the policeman who cries out to the Punisher for help. As the mugger threatens to kill the policeman, we see the armed Punisher standing beneath the “Jesus Saves” sign. “Jesus” flickers out, the Punisher pulls his weapon, the screen darkens, and we see simply “Saves” as we hear one gunshot. While the screen remains black, the bumbling police man says, “Oh God, now I’ve got brain splatter all over me.”
The credits roll. The music is Rob Zombie’s “War Zone.” The message is complete. God/Jesus/religion are ineffectual against contemporary violence and evil. Today’s evil calls for dark, violent heroes (cf. The Dark Knight). The move, not incidentally, is exactly the opposite of that executed in End of Days, where Jericho Cane learns that faith, not guns, defeats (supernatural) evil.
First, at the funeral of a “good guy” killed accidentally by the Punisher in one of his many killing sprees, the minister intones, “The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy. He does not treat us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our faults. As parents have compassion on their children, the Lord has pity on those who fear him for he knows of what we are made. He remembers that we are but dust. As for us, our days are like grass …” The scene stands out in the film’s gruesome violence and fascination with vengeance. It is the ideology that the film and the film’s violent genres deliberately, polemically reject. The Punisher’s killing spree stems from the mob’s slaughter of his family. We see the sobbing Punisher at the grave of his family, and a replay of his family disaster, immediately after the “good guy” funeral. At the “good guy’s” funeral, a special agent promises the “good guy’s” widow that he will get the Punisher. Of course, he does not. Ultimately, he joins forces with the Punisher.
Second, two-thirds of the way through the film, the Punisher visits the priest, also his friend, who officiated at his family’s funeral. The priest tells the Punisher that he is a long way from the seminary and asks him why he’s taken this tact. The Punisher’s response is that someone must punish the corrupt. The priest responds that we will be judged by the same measure with which we judge. The Punisher recognizes the reference (Matt. 7:2) and accepts his fate laconically. He has chosen a suicidal path, rather than life. In fact, he admits that sometimes he’d like to get his hands on God. Incidentally, it is in this same church that the Punisher and the special agent hunting him join forces to save the widow and daughter of the “good guy.”
Third, in the film’s epilogue, the Punisher departs the climactic shoot out, which saves the “good guy’s” family, with another (comically ineffective) policeman. As they leave, they pass in front of a church with a flickering, cruciform neon sign that says “Jesus Saves.” While the bumbling policeman talks about his opposition to the death penalty and his belief that even bad guys can change, the Punisher disappears. Almost immediately, a thug mugs the policeman who cries out to the Punisher for help. As the mugger threatens to kill the policeman, we see the armed Punisher standing beneath the “Jesus Saves” sign. “Jesus” flickers out, the Punisher pulls his weapon, the screen darkens, and we see simply “Saves” as we hear one gunshot. While the screen remains black, the bumbling police man says, “Oh God, now I’ve got brain splatter all over me.”
The credits roll. The music is Rob Zombie’s “War Zone.” The message is complete. God/Jesus/religion are ineffectual against contemporary violence and evil. Today’s evil calls for dark, violent heroes (cf. The Dark Knight). The move, not incidentally, is exactly the opposite of that executed in End of Days, where Jericho Cane learns that faith, not guns, defeats (supernatural) evil.
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