Five Films/TV Shows That Tackle “The Myth of Redemptive Violence”

The Myth of Redemptive Violence is something I’ve written about before, and even made a short film about, entitled A Tale of Two Potato Heads. However, I realized that while I am normally quick to criticize films that use violence as the only means of good overcoming evil, I am perhaps slower to recommend films and television shows which offer an alternative view. So here are five offerings (among many) which are willing to purport an alternative philosophy:

1. The Wire

Looking back over the five seasons of the show it is clear that the consequences of gang warfare of rarely positive for those sucked into that world. For every rival that is ‘taken care of’, another one quickly springs up apparently even more dangerous than the last. Even entirely reasonable and sensible truces across Balitmore can only last so long. Like City of God and Lord of the Flies, The Wire shows the consequences in making enemies in a place where the rest of the world is mostly ambivalent to your fate.

2. Gran Torino

It’s perhaps ironic that one of Hollywood’s few card-carrying Republicans is willing to challenge the NRA’s philosophy that “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Yet Gran Torino works as a nice juxtaposition to Eastwood’s maverick cop who always gets results in Dirty Harry.

3. Romeo and Juliet (any version, including West Side Story)

Shakespeare’s play is one of “if only’s”. The ones that stick in the audience’s mind mainly involve dagger and poison. Yet traced back, we can think of the violence committed by and to the Capulet’s and Montague’s and wonder what would have happened if someone chose not to take offense at the “biting of thumbs”. Regardless, the play’s ending serves as a powerful reminder that revenge is a dangerous and volatile thing

4. Doctor Who

This show rightly gains praise for its imagination and creativity. However, one aspect that is easily forgotten is that The Doctor is one of the few superheroes who makes a point of never carrying a weapon, despite almost always being surrounded by terrifying, violent villains. Instead, like Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes he relies on his intelligence and ability to read other people to get out of situations. As a side note it is perhaps entirely appropriate that Hollywood chose to make Downey’s Sherlock into an ass-kicking detective. One can only shudder at what they might do if they got their hands on The Doctor.

5. District 9

In many ways this film could only be set in South Africa, serving as very powerful allegory of life under apartheid. Yet one could easily imagine the prawns in Nazi Germany or The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Blomkamp’s sci-fi film serves as a powerful reminder of the consequences of de-humanising another race or ethnicity. The film shows us how easy it is to pin our troubles on those we view as most different to us. However, perhaps we are far more similar to them than we realize.

What I’ve Been Watching: Mud

Matthew McConaughey, or “Matthew Mahogany” as Mark Kermode prefers to call him, has undergone a rather startling transformation recently. The type normally reserved for teenage boys hanging round radioactive spiders. The actor formerly known for throwaway romantic leads in How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and Failure to Launch has started taking on proper acting roles in the form of Killer Joe; The Lincoln Lawyer; and now Mud.

It says a lot for an actor who is prepared to work hard at these smaller projects to try and re-establish his position in the market, rather than settle for a constant flow of paychecks for starring in films opposite Sandra-Bullock-a-likes.

Speaking of female rom-com leads, Reese Weatherspoon also stars in this film. And Michael Shannon, Sarah Paulson and Sam Shepherd. But none of these people play the main role, even McConaughey.

Instead it centers on Ellis and his friend Neckbone (the movie is set in the deep south) as they discover a mysterious, dishevelled man called Mud (Matthew McConaughey) who asks for their help in reuniting him with Juniper (Reese Weatherspoon).

As well as trying to help Mud, Ellis is also dealing with the separation of his parents; the prospect of losing his river houseboat; and trying to get the attention of a girl he likes.

In similar coming-of-age films (Super 8, Narnia, ET: The Extra Terrestrial) the fantastical is used as a way of giving the child protagonists more knowledge/power than the adults around them. However, Mud makes the conscious decision to make the world these boys inhabit a very adult one. This gives the film a startling realism which makes it easy to forget its certificate is only a “12A”.

What is striking is the way each of the character inhabits their own little world, which Ellis can only ever get glimpses of. Can he really trust Mud and his story? Does Juniper really want to get back together with? What are the real reasons for his parents’ divorce? Are his feelings for May Pearl reciprocated? How do Mud and his loner neighbour, Tom (Sam Shepherd) know each other?

The film manages to keep a good balance between characters and plot. In that, while there is a clear place the film wants to get, we are left to come up with our own conclusions about the motives or otherwise of most of the film’s main players.

This lends itself well to the idea that the characters are living, breathing characters and we are just happening to drop in on them at an interesting point in their life. Television shows like The Wire and Friday Night Lights are also experts at giving the impression that the characters live on regardless of whether there’s a camera pointed at them.

Allowing much of the plot to be character driven also allows gives the film a lot more depth and throwaway moments like a group of hitmen holding a prayer meeting for the death of their victim; or some beautiful underwater shots of Neckbone’s uncle (Michael Shannon) diving for oysters.

Overall Mud is a very enjoyable engaging film which manages to tell an engaging story in a well-realised, believable world.

What I’ve Been Watching: The Place Beyond The Pines

In 2010 Blue Valentine changed the direction of two careers. One Ryan Gosling managed to shake off The Notebook with a performance a film with genuine emotional depth. Likewise its director, Derek Cianfrance, seems to have had no problems getting films made, having spent the decade before making documentaries for television.

The two are reunited in The Place Beyond The Pines which tells the stories of two men on opposing sides of the law. Luke (Ryan Gosling) is a young man who works as a motorbike stunt man for a traveling fair. He finds out early in the film he has a one-year old son, and makes the decision to quit his job to try and be make things work with his son’s mother Romina (Eva Mendes).

Luke soon realizes getting together enough money to look after them both is going to be a problem and decides to rob banks to get some cash together. This brings him to the attention of Avery (Bradley Cooper) a young police officer still to prove himself in the force.

If you have seen the film you will know it is difficult to talk about all the directions it pulls in without spoiling the experience if you have yet to see it. The rest of my review will contain no specific plot details, but I will not be offended if you stop reading now.

Still here?

Good, because I was just kidding about the not being offended bit. Glad I know who my real friends are.

Anyway The Place Beyond The Pines is an incredibly ambitious and sprawling film that almost feels like a first-time film. By that I mean Cianfrance seems to have condensed a million and one ideas into 150 minutes of cinema. In that way it reminded me of films like Magnolia or even Badlands, in that although it has great characters, the film seems to be reaching beyond them and serving themes, rather than story or characters.

Specifically the theme of violence and the impact it has on its perpetrators and victims. The myth of redemptive violence is something I’ve spoken about before on this blog, and it is obvious the director has an opinion on the way police officers and members of the armed forces are treated as super-human, despite committing acts that actually dehumanise them.

This means the people treated as ‘heroes’ see themselves as quite the opposite and have no outlet to express that imbalance of emotions.

Beyond that the film looks at the impact of poverty, the modern family unit, police corruption, and revenge to create a film which has a clear sense of direction even if it is not obvious until well into the third act.

If there is a flaw it is in this third act which seems to lose the momentum already established in the first two acts. In some ways the last half hour feels more like an epilogue rather than a stand out piece of cinema. Perhaps this is because it is left to the younger members of the cast to carry the movie at this point, and it is difficult for them to compete with standards set by Gosling and Cooper in the previous acts of the film.

Despite this, it is a film easy to recommend. It is of the type Hollywood used to make in its golden era of the 1970s. That is films with weighty characters, weighty stories, weighty themes and a kind of reluctant masculinity. The Place Beyond The Pines may be a little flawed, but I think it’s in a good way.

Podcast – Mr Freeze: The Great and Punnable

On this month’s podcast we review Oz The Great and Powerful, our “Best Worst Movie” is the oh-so-colourful Batman and Robin, and we take a look ahead to what we’re looking forward to over the coming months.

Listen to find out if Mark can mention all of Sam Raimi’s back catalogue; Dave can tell the difference between “Wonderland” and “Oz”; and whether Laura can find a way to get Steve back from the land of Oz;

Or if you want to save it for a rainy day, you can also download it if you Right click the link below and go to Save As:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8634900/ObserveALot201303.mp3

You can contact the podcast at observealot(at)gmail(dot)com

Bonus Features:
Mr Freeze’s Best Lines from Batman and Robin

What I’ve Been Watching: Cloud Atlas

The Wachowskis relationship with Hollywood has been a somewhat complicated one since finishing The Matrix trilogy. Having wrote and produced the moderately successful V For Vendetta, they went on to make Speed Racer which failed to find an audience.

Never ones to shy away from a challenge their latest film is co-directed with Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), and is an adaptation of the apparently unfilmable* Cloud Atlas, based on the book by David Mitchell**. Like films such as Babel, Magnolia and Crash it adopts a ‘network narrative’. That is, we follow six different sets of characters all around the world who at first seem completely unrelated.

Unlike those films, however, the characters are based in entirely different locations in entirely different time periods (past, present and future). In that way, it’s a little like The Fountain.

Also similar to The Fountain is the fact that the same actors play different characters in each narrative. So Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, and others are depicted in varying levels of prosthetics depending on the time period they find themselves in.

Each of the stories almost occupies a different genre, whether that be a mystery thriller; comedy; sci-fi; or post-apocalyptic Shakespearian romance. What ties them together are the themes of morality, duplicity and the impact an individual can have, even beyond their lifetime.

Despite its philosophical leanings, and in direct contrast to films interested in similar questions like The Fountain and Tree of Life, it is a surprisingly easy film to watch. With a run-in clocking in at almost three hours, this is no mean feat. Like in The Matrix, the Wachowskis show themselves to be experts at fusing frenetic action with musings on the fundamental questions of our existence.

The comparison with The Matrix is especially apt when one realizes that each of the six protagonists are searching for some truth in order to escape the reality they have been fed by those around them.

This is not the only comparison to be made between the stories. One can also consider the differences in personalities between each character a particular actor portrays; the nature of history and whether humanity is progressing, regressing or simply changing; and of course whether there is something bigger guiding us and connecting us.

The many questions that the films begs are its greatest strength and also its greatest weakness. Since, once it ends, it is not clear what we have just witnessed. Is it something profound and important; or merely something that is different for the sake of being so?

This is perhaps why critics are so divided over the piece, it is not a film for which clarity was ever a goal. It is a messy, muddled piece of art which forces the viewer to ponder and work through what they have just witnessed. What could be better?

*I hate the term unfilmable. If you can imagine it, you can film it.

**The author, not the star of Peep Show.