Movie/Cultural Review: Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Torino
Slumdog Millionaire just swept four Golden Globes. Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino is a film of the same calibre. These are movies you will see or at least should see. My creative writing teacher, Stan Whitehead, believes them to be the best movies since his death a few years ago.
Slumdog is organized around a television game show. It is a lower-caste Indian Forrest Gump. Slumdog has Wizard of Oz moments where fantasy becomes reality and black and white gives way to color. The surreal "color" is why Slumdog won the award. The film does not try to convince you that an uneducated slum-dweller can win a trivia contest. That is its charm. Instead, it suggests that all of us can dream, and that may be enough. Stan Whitehouse approves of this movie because it is not about some lucky contestant on a game show and contains passages of pure imagination.
Gran Torino is a story where Clint Eastwood plays a bitter, racist dying veteran just after the death of his wife. In one scene, Clint needs help from his scrawny neighbor to pull the empty freezer up the stairs and out of his basement. In another Gran Torino scene, Clint is playing tough guy, beating gang members into submission, just like in 1970's films. If this seems plausible, then you miss the point. In the end, Clint learns to find more commonality with the Hmong "gooks" next store than with his family. Because of the "made up" parts, Stan Whitehead gives thumbs up to this film. Great film and great writing must show the impossible.
Now, for the cultural part of the review. In both movies, key characters die. In Slumdog Millionaire, upon the death, the character says "God is Great." I will not reveal the Gran Torino death except to say that the sentiment is the same. It is not clear whether either movie has a happy ending; there is too much sacrifice. So, do these movies indicate that American culture is now the same as kamikaze Al Quaeda terrorist culture? Why do we assume that we were ever very different? Anyway, our ability to relate to others, to express ourselves and to imagine is what makes us human.
Slumdog is organized around a television game show. It is a lower-caste Indian Forrest Gump. Slumdog has Wizard of Oz moments where fantasy becomes reality and black and white gives way to color. The surreal "color" is why Slumdog won the award. The film does not try to convince you that an uneducated slum-dweller can win a trivia contest. That is its charm. Instead, it suggests that all of us can dream, and that may be enough. Stan Whitehouse approves of this movie because it is not about some lucky contestant on a game show and contains passages of pure imagination.
Gran Torino is a story where Clint Eastwood plays a bitter, racist dying veteran just after the death of his wife. In one scene, Clint needs help from his scrawny neighbor to pull the empty freezer up the stairs and out of his basement. In another Gran Torino scene, Clint is playing tough guy, beating gang members into submission, just like in 1970's films. If this seems plausible, then you miss the point. In the end, Clint learns to find more commonality with the Hmong "gooks" next store than with his family. Because of the "made up" parts, Stan Whitehead gives thumbs up to this film. Great film and great writing must show the impossible.
Now, for the cultural part of the review. In both movies, key characters die. In Slumdog Millionaire, upon the death, the character says "God is Great." I will not reveal the Gran Torino death except to say that the sentiment is the same. It is not clear whether either movie has a happy ending; there is too much sacrifice. So, do these movies indicate that American culture is now the same as kamikaze Al Quaeda terrorist culture? Why do we assume that we were ever very different? Anyway, our ability to relate to others, to express ourselves and to imagine is what makes us human.
Labels: movie review
posted by David Rasmussen at 10:20 AM
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