Good Neighbors
Written: Jan 19 '09 (Updated Jan 19 '09)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Sympathetically portrayed ethnic neighbors.
Cons: Marginal acting ability in secondary characters.
The Bottom Line: A moving story, with some flawed acting, but Clint Eastwood's character delivers.
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| topreviewerman's Full Review: Gran Torino |
"Bittersweet." That's how parish priest Father Jay (Christopher Carley) describes the funeral of Walt (Clint Eastwood) Kowalski's wife Dorothy in the opening scene of Gran Torino. Dorothy was a "peach." The family that's come to her funeral is an unlikely mixture: bittersweet. Fr Jay meant it in the way of pain at their loss while compensated by shared memories. We the audience perceive it as an incompatible mixture of the generations attending.
The church is supposed to be sacred ground, to be attended reverentially. Walt's grandsons dutifully cross themselves while chiming the mnemonic: spectacles-testicles-bulletin-watch denoting the directions to move their hands. Fr Jay does seem to take seriously his promise to Dorothy to look after Walt, but his young freckle faced Irish appearance only reinforces Walt's assessment of him as an "overeducated 27 year old virgin" who knows little of "life and death". Later at the wake in Walt's home, his granddaughter does express interest in his mint 1972 Gran Torino fastback but otherwise is disenchanted by the whole business: "This ghetto is a dead zone for my cell, and I'm bored." Walt's grown sons make a forced effort to get along with their old man, while Walt would just as soon be rid of the "damn barbarians." In fact Walt has little good to say about anybody including the "rice [n-word]s" who live next door.
A lot has been made of Walt's bad attitude and language, but it seems to me that there is a generalized lack of respect from several quarters in this film; it's just that Walt stands out because he is behind the times and politically incorrect. While not completely defending him, I'd still like the opportunity to encourage the viewers to lighten up on him a bit when you see this movie. I saw it on a Saturday after completing a week of my sales job (Walt thinks his salesman son is a crook). On Friday I had my sales table set up at a busy location near the University when a friend (of the female persuasion) joined me for lack of anything better to do. Our conversation naturally turned to the upcoming MLK Day on Monday to be followed by the inauguration of Barack Obama on Tuesday. Me, I like to feel connected to my roots just like the next guy. My forebears on my father's side had settled in Virginia, so I want to honor Robert E. Lee Day the third Monday of January. As for my mother's side, why, I'm Sarah Palin's second cousin. And she lost the election, and the whole town is celebrating MLK Day. Naturally, I am feeling a little angst, just enough that I think I can appreciate Walt's seeming isolation in an alien world.
When I spoke to my friend of the effect of Obama's presidency on the Negroes, she objected to my use of that term because of something in her past. We had to choose a different word. Paradoxically, she doesn't object to another "n" word which some use disparagingly, and while I rarely use it—and then only historically, as in quoting Mark Twain, or else as a familiar form of address for my brother-in-law—, I'm flexible enough to substitute it for the one she objected to. Unfortunately, that would be a bad business decision possibly repelling customers. But I myself had had a bad experience once with Black when I thought I was inviting a pastor to a play with ethnic humor in it when something else had been meant by "black humor" causing me great embarrassment. As for African American, President Eisenhower once remarked that there should be no hyphenated Americans, and while I wouldn't mind referring to Obama that way, I'd avoid using it to refer to natural born Americans descended from slaves. We settled on "colored people" and went on with our conversation.
Then there were the free samples of my product. I didn't mind her taking one for herself, but I made her wait till the end of my sales day to take any extra samples left over for her friends. My point here is that it takes effort to make even friendships work, how much more so when one is trying to make a family work where one can't choose his family the way he chooses his friends. The tension between Walt and his family had to do mostly with his attitudes and language concerning different minorities as well as his family's need for patience before they inherited anything from him. Walt was all too aware of his failure to spend the required time and effort to make his family work right, so I believe we should be sympathetic to him. Who among us doesn't have unresolved family issues? I don't even have a family per se, and I still have to manage to get along with my girlfriend's friends.
On top of everything else, some girl came along and plopped down on my table a nicely done poster for Martin Luther King Jr Day. She asked if I'd mind displaying it. I've got nothing against civil rights as such, but MLK was part of that same general lack of respect, in his case lack of respect for the civil law in his methodology, which he justified by "the imperative of NOW" which hasn't been borne out historically as I mentioned in my review of Eagle Eye. I was so flummoxed by that poster that I couldn't form a coherent sentence, but there must have been something in my expression and mumbling to cause the girl to go seek greener pastures, because she took her poster and politely excused herself. Hasn't there ever been something someone wanted of you which you just didn't want to do but couldn't quite verbalize your objection? I feel like offering sympathy for all Walt's scowling and growling rather than criticizing him for being behind the times or politically incorrect.
Having said all that, I want to tackle his developing relations with his Hmong neighbors which was the main thrust of the movie. You know, the Master once addressed a question of "who is my neighbor?"—whom good religion requires one to love—in a parable involving a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. To the Jews he was addressing, the priests and Levites were the religious big shots while the Samaritans were a despised ethnic group. A Jew gets robbed and beaten up and left for dead. The priest passes him by because he doesn't want to get his hands dirty. A Levite passes him by because he is too busy to get involved. The good Samaritan, however, stops and gives him all the help he needs. Which of the three was his neighbor? See Luke 10:29-37 where Jesus says, "Go, and do thou likewise."
The Hmong are experiencing troubles from a belligerent gang. Who do you think helps them? Is it the Lutherans who brought them over to the Midwest and left them there? Is it the police who have higher priorities? Or is it that sourpuss anglo neighbor of theirs who doesn't know any better than to stay in his old neighborhood rather than move out with his own kind? Well, Walt and I are doing our best.
My neighbors at my sales table location would be the students lining up at the ATM machine next to me, getting the cash they need for their weekend, while Walt's neighbors are those Hmong piling into the next door house with their pot luck dishes for their own celebration. As that diverse line snaked past my table, borrowing my pens that I may or may not ever see again, blocking the traffic I needed to make any sales, I suppose I could have experienced a bit of frustration. I may not have formulated my thoughts quite as sharply as Walt expressed his, but they could have been headed that direction: "How many swamp rats can you get in one room?" Probably we were not being quite as charitable as the Lord had in mind.
Next came the transgression. A bit of a gang tussle spilled over onto Walt's lawn, and they found themselves looking down the barrel of Walt's M-16 rifle which he'd kept from his stint fighting in Korea. The ATM crowd also caused me a problem. The machine broke down and people would leave muttering their frustration which wasn't a good attractor of business. So I decided to take a look at that machine. The screen was blank.
Now, you would think that in a plot of escalating gang conflict, "Dirty Harry" would eventually have to do a Rambo number on that gang putting them in their place, but though he's an experienced soldier, this isn't Korea and he might do well to reflect on his actions beforehand. Like me and that ATM machine. True, I've got a degree in electrical engineering, and true, I used to work for a manufacturer of oscilloscopes, but I couldn't very well move my table over, set up some test equipment, and dismantle the ATM machine to find out what's wrong. This isn't Korea where you just load up from your Rambo armory and come out blasting. Fortunately, Walt is a minimalist if need be. Though he has a whole garage full of every tool imaginable, Mr Fixit points out that most problems can be fixed with some WD 40, vice grips, and duct tape.
I thought it over about that machine. Their ATM cards went in just fine. Then they saw nothing on the screen, hit cancel, and got their card back. Suppose the rest of the machine works fine and it's just the video display tube that's broken? I noticed there was a little phone jack with a message that one could plug in his headphones and receive audio instructions. I also noticed that half the students seemed to have headphones plugged into their Ipods and the rest probably had phones in their packs somewhere. No need to dismantle the machine. I suggested to them that they plug in their headphones and follow the audio instructions. Finally, this one oriental girl took my suggestion and it worked just fine, and we were in business.
You can imagine what happened. I became the hero of the street corner and Walt became the block hero. Furthermore, when we started talking to these people, we ended up relating to them and even liking them. Walt said, "I have more in common with these gooks than with my own rotten family."
Part of the value of this film is we learn about another culture. The students and I learned something about the blind. The audio instructions repeated twice and spelled out in inches where to retrieve the money. I had never before really thought about the difficulties in little tasks the blind must face. I'll mention just one Hmong cultural perspective: They show their appreciation by giving many gifts and offering many courses for a meal. It is a real difference. I remember reading in China Life about an American who invited a Chinaman over for dinner with him and his father whom he was seeing off to the airport. The meal had only one course. The Chinaman thought it over, that the man couldn't be insulting his own father, so it must be simply a cultural difference to offer only one course and not an insult. Perhaps, he concluded, the Chinese need not serve quite so many courses to show their respect. Walt seemed to find it a bit of a nuisance at first until he saw they were insisting and the food was really good.
The main thrust of the film is about teenage Thao (Bee Vang) next door who has the potential to be a man of the house some day, but he lacks any role model and is seen reading, doing women's work, and becoming a target for gang recruitment. Walt steps into the position of mentor to "man him up." From my own experience, I couldn't get the students to use the headphones until they saw it working for someone else. There probably is something to this role model business.
Walt, the ornery cuss, has the bright idea to show Thao how men talk by taking him to his barber shop. How do Walt and his barber talk to each other? Very expressively, calling each other a Polack and a Dago. No, these aren't insults so much as male bonding. They're obviously fond of each other. Walt's done business with the same barber for years though he promises never to return nor does the barber invite him to. Walt complains of the prices—which haven't changed in years—and then tells him to keep the change. Just men's talk although Walt does qualify to Thao that such talk would be fighting words addressed to a stranger. To start out it's better to criticize a third party who isn't there and perhaps doesn't even exist.
We are forced by these scenes to re-evaluate our thinking on ethnic/racial slurs, ugliness as well as beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Although we're aware of one group getting a lot of press objecting to being called "you people," the Hmong's preferred designation is "Hill People." As I learned with my friend at my table, respectful words must take into account the person one is actually speaking with—her experiences—as well as whether or not it is a public or private conversation, not just a one-size-fits-all politically correct formula.
Walt's tutelage, surprisingly, coincides with that of John Gray, Ph.D. in his book Mars and Venus In Touch (New York: HarperCollins, 1st ed.) p. 99, where he lists Ways a Man Can Nurture His Masculine Side, number 12 being "Talk about feelings with male friends, or create a male support group." Walt helping Thao find a girl and a job is supported by George F. Gilder in Sexual Suicide (New York: Quadrangle, 1973) pp. 94f, 105: "A man's socialization—his productivity and his sense of community—will be shaped, perhaps for a lifetime, by the nature of his job and sexual opportunities in the late teens or early twenties, when the question of marriage and career arises. The outcome is set by work and women. If he finds work that affirms his manhood and a girl who demands that his sexuality be submitted to hers—submitted to love and family—he is likely to become a valuable and constructive citizen. ¶"Single males—and married ones whose socialization fails—constitute our major social problem. They are the murderers, the rapists, the burglars, the suicides, the assailants, the psychopaths." Thao was on his way to becoming a burglar in a gang of assailants before Walt got hold of him.
One of the good things about "Gran Torino" is in a movie showcasing the Hmong culture, they knew when to call it quits. I think our sympathy for them would have been destroyed had their traditional courtship practices been displayed which would have seemed alien to a Western audience. Instead, they are shown to have assimilated dating which is a good American invention stemming from our frontier days when men and women were separated from families who could arrange suitable matches and needed some way to sort out potential mates on their own. (See my review of One Night With the King.) Dating is also a good way for a man to develop leadership abilities, to learn how to be the head of his home. (See my review of Mr Woodcock.)
There is one major though understandable failing to this movie. Just because real Hmong were used to portray their characters didn't mean they would be real actors, and the movie suffers in places. The elder Hmong do just fine. Thao's sister Sue is good at times and lacking at other times. I think she would have done better starting with a smaller role and working her way up to a major character. "Yum Yum," however, is a natural; she can go places. Thao, though, his acting sucks, I'm sorry to say, although the script is good, and it saves us from the worst. We can probably figure that real Hmong were used to avoid cultural insensitivity in their portrayal. Since I live in a University town where I can talk and interact with students from many countries, many of them open to American friendships, I can learn about other cultures apart from the movies so can forgive the occasional screen blunder for the sake of good acting, but others who might want to learn about a culture more from a movie might have a different set of priorities, so this movie might work better for them.
The end of the movie is moving where Walt finally finds a way to expunge the demons from his past.
Besides being a touching film, I think it has social value for men according to Dr Gray's number 2. "Go to action movies. It is healthy for adult males to experience violence on the big screen, particularly if it is expressed skillfully and ultimately to protect others."
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Guy Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Cast
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Epinions.com ID:
topreviewerman
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Member: Earl Gosnell
Location: Eugene, OR
Reviews written: 83
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
BSEE, U. of Cincinnati. Ordained minister, United Congregation of Friends. Poet Laureate, Longfellow, Colorado.
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