Discussion over "Logan Lucky," Hell or High Water," and others, at the New Yorker Movie Facebook Club
After
"Hell or High Water" getting so much attention, and now with
"Logan Lucky"... and even perhaps with "Paterson," and even
"Logan" (and "Manchester by the Sea"?), we appear to have
the makings of an emerging pattern: people who've been long-ignored by society
and felt the burdens abandonment made for them, testing to see if it might now
be time for their re-evaluation. One of the things we take notice of in each of
these films, is not simply the humiliations they've incurred, the sense of
"smallness" they've had to suffer from, but a weighing to see if
their weight sufficient so if the finish of the film does break for them, does
weigh in heavily with them, for it to feel hedged against fallback. These films
are video, dramatizing that a call has sounded, and something in people we
haven't been much interested in lately is having them test themselves for the
possibilities of flight, after only concluding hiding and hibernation and
consolidating themselves as real options. Their not having cellphones, their
not being socially connected, is an asset, as society begins to decide the
creature of spoof... is not the retrograde but the twittering,
social-media-star, nincompoop. Their associations with the military, are
assets, deserving of deference, and keep them formidable when others lose what
had given them easy range, which was always fluff. Their being for Jesus, is a
sign of at least some effort to admonish themselves, however clumsily. Their
caring about Nascar, rural Texas, working-class Paterson N.J., is their caring
for quintessential America, that long neglected lovely. Their self-mockery,
speaks loudly for their modesty and against everyone who's pumped up. They're
all so... basic, and good; maybe with genuine promise. We see they've been
ignored, and how unjustly. Yet these are all "communities" that if
not Trump, still very deeply conservative, that we are being bidden to awaken
to, essentially give ground to, as they test their wings. They feel
patriarchal.
To
stop their gaining the staked high ground, which to me sounds like a very,
very, bad idea, is our role then to stop lauding these films, hefting them to
the top of the critical charts, and rather start applying stern critical
pressure? Do we need to insist that they take all these protagonists away, and
replace them with those forbidden flattering, fantastical covers? Not agree
when we see "ourselves" transposed into these films, that we are
ridiculous and deserve to be chased away or punched? I mean it was surely just
a few years ago when they could all be ascribed "deplorables,"
assuming we'd agree. Show at least one of these hopeful souls sounding
somewhere like Ann Coulter, and then we'll adjust our apperception, decide
whether we honestly think it's great we see them feeling warranted a turn for
the better... see their representing that a line has been crossed, and no more
damage will be allowed to take place, not just 'cause it's right but because
these are the people who may in the end be what'll save us--our reserve of
hope.
Sam D Levan I thought he'll or highwatsr was
very poor film making
Sam D Levan It had 100 percent on rotten
tomatoes and so did baby driver. both films perpetuate a narrative of a lone
white male who ultimately succeeds because of them self and themself alone.
Patrick McEvoy-Halston Sam D Levan It is made to seem as if
they succeed owing to a bit more than that, though. It feels like they are
allowed to succeed because of a whole amalgam of things they offer... they're
charitable to the waitress who was kind and made an effort to flirt with
them; the money is returned to the bank; the real money, the Las Vegas money
that keeps their oil-rich property in their hands, goes entirely to his kids,
and also perhaps because one of them, the brother who wasn't around to spend
time around their mother, to care for her, when she got really bad before she
died, dies: there is further sacrifice, a beloved brother. Also, it's made to
seem like they succeed because... the other townsfolk are with them, even as it
seems impossible to them that someone could get away with stealing money from a
bank these days, and because the bank managers are sickly evil. It's all of
this that FEELS, at least, why Chris Pine's character will come out okay, with
the money to his sons... that they get "lucky." Not just 'cause
alone, he's a badass. I believe that a vastly similar argument can be made
concerning "Logan Lucky."
Sanford Sharp I thought Hell or HW had a lot to
recommend it, but the politics were lacking in subtlety. And I suppose I'm
getting tired of Jeff Bridges playing Rooster Cogburn.
Lizzie Nicholson it was a good effort, on the
strength of the two lead actors, and yes it is a socially relevant film,
mirroring the plight of people who lose their homestead or house to greedy
people or bankers
Patrick McEvoy-Halston And why if FEELS like they get to be
lucky, in "Logan Lucky" (spoilers): incurred war wounds (that are,
absurdly, but apparently almost legitimately, open grounds for mockery); unfair
dismissal; lost wife to wealthy man; insecure parental rights over child; being
subject (regarding the sister) to repeated gross courtships by wealthy man,
deflected each time with sass but feeling uncertain nevertheless for his being
a winner in a land of very, very compromised losers; jail sentence, nearly
served (lots of lost life) rather than just begun; large nest-egg of money,
presumed safe but actually stolen day one, by girlfriend who absconded with
other man; trying to be loyal to Jesus; definitely loving Nascar; preferring
John Denver (and American country) and America the Beautiful over glitz; last
to new-tech fashion, thinking old has worth; heist privileges money as actual
bills, something dirty, shit that goes through the bowels... our familiar sense
of it, the American-loyal sense of it as something tangible but also dirty;
they keep small portion of total; Nascar loses nothing, owing to insurance;
money is given to everyone who was compromised by their actions; money is given
to everyone who facilitated them... and they willingly accept a stranger as
sheriff amongst them, that will confirm them in their evident preference: to do
nothing really showy with their incurred gains (lead protagonist will work at
"Loews," brother at bar... the sheriff is insurance to keep them
saintly; very welcome, not a downer, or harbinger of future ill-turn).
And for this, it feels like something huge like America decides for them, a judge vastly more vital than the one who in court also decided for them. And the gains are actually, secretly, huge -- battered into accommodation by her child choosing the father as a direct link to American saintliness ("Country roads..."), the arrogant ex-wife turns pliant as dramatically as the landlord did in Godfather 2; a woman with an education lets herself be drawn within the vortex of someone who represents those who were never going to amount to much after high-school... tables feel they're beginning to be turned against those who used to make fun of an older America, and they'll be caught out for not realizing the gods who were once all in with them have changed their minds. They're about to shine sustenance on someone else right now.
And for this, it feels like something huge like America decides for them, a judge vastly more vital than the one who in court also decided for them. And the gains are actually, secretly, huge -- battered into accommodation by her child choosing the father as a direct link to American saintliness ("Country roads..."), the arrogant ex-wife turns pliant as dramatically as the landlord did in Godfather 2; a woman with an education lets herself be drawn within the vortex of someone who represents those who were never going to amount to much after high-school... tables feel they're beginning to be turned against those who used to make fun of an older America, and they'll be caught out for not realizing the gods who were once all in with them have changed their minds. They're about to shine sustenance on someone else right now.
Karthik Purushothaman "Paterson" the film didn't
do any justice the town at all. I live here.
Lizzie Nicholson I don't think Paterson was supposed
to represent a town...
Lizzie Nicholson I mean you're talking Jarmusch's
universe here...
;)
;)
Scott Hartley The pattern you're defining emerged
a little earlier. Henry Fielding created "Tom Jones, published 1749,
taking the radical step of making a forgotten, ignored, denigrated, lower-class
person -- a "foundling, ie conceived out of wedlock and having no claim
to wealth -- making such a person the protagonist of a fiction, and
representing his efforts, often self-effacing and occasionally miscreant but
ultimately successful, to rise in the world.
Bill Randolph "Tom Jones" was not the
least bit radical in this respect: this style of novel originated in
16th-century Spain, and in English the first example is Thomas Nashe's The
Unfortunate Traveller (1594)
Mark Schaffer See Wind River, about Native
American humilitions. In some ways, better than Hell..
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