Shawshank Redemption & Cool Hand Luke

[Paul Mackin]

Hag deftly enough exposes the essential sillyness of this type of
movie.

What would be wrong with adopting the practice of, at a certain point
in the proceedings, having a character pop out to announce: OK you 
folks have suffered through this long enough. Here's the happy ending
you've all been waiting for. You paid your money. You deserve at least
a few uplifting thoughts to leave the theatre with.

Bertold Brecht used to do something like this. Supposedly
for a revolutionary purpose no less.

That old system-works-or-doesn't-work-message formulation bothers
me. The system works if the film makes a whole shitload of money.
That's the kind of system it is. Often enough the system _doesn't_
work as well as some would like. (Nobody need bother pointing out the
fallacy in this last brilliant argument (unless they really want to). 
Already see it and so will everybody else.)

More to the point, it doesn't seem to me your average movieviewer is much 
tuned-in to messages concerning the efficacy of the System one way or
the other. Being a clever and practical fellow he (or she) knows there's 
really not much to be done with the information.

But who am I? Never go to movies anymore (hardly ever).

Do remember that line in the uncool Luke movie about "What we have
here is a clear case of missunderstanding", or something like that.
Hope it doesn't apply here.	
				P.


On Sun, 28 Jul 1996, Hartwin Alfred Gebhardt wrote:

> Bob, grinning, sez:
> 
> >                                    I recently went on
> > a court-sponsored tour of San Quentin (as a federal court employee) and was
> > told by a prison guard that the Shawshank Redemption was the most realistic
> > depiction of prison life that he had ever seen on film.  But maybe he hadn't
> > seen Cool Hand Luke. <grin>
> > 
> > Bob
> 
> Of course, a prison guard _would_ say that. <grin> 
> 
> My 'putdown' of the Sh/Redemption was "despite [it] trying hard to 'ring 
> true' to the hardships of prison life". The obligatory guard brutality and 
> male rape stuff is there, but any criticism of the system itself is 
> greatly watered down. In the end, Morgan Freeman is released by the 
> very people he criticises, rendering his critique worthless (message: 
> "see? the system works!") - before that, the warden and captain are punished, 
> showing that they do not represent the authorities after all 
> (message: "see? the system works!") - and worst of all, Tim Robbins 
> turns out to be 'innocent' (message: "see? even if the system does not 
> work on occasion, an individual's hard work and perseverance etc. can 
> right what's wrong - so there's some other system behind the system 
> which corrects it should it misfire") Summary: Rule 1. The system 
> always works. Rule 2. Should it on occasion not work, refer to rule 1.
> A society which deems it necessary to surgically remove parts of 
> itself and put them behind bars is affirmed, it is not acknowledged 
> that the forces operating inside are the same as the forces operating 
> outside the prison, the categories 'innocent' and 'gulty' are not 
> even questioned but maintained as they are, and so is the fiction of 
> individual agency. 
> Compare this approach with, oh, of the top of my head, say, that guy 
> Thomas Pynchon's material. Or, to be fair to the genre, Cool Hand 
> Luke. A little prissy for our jaded palates, maybe, but to quote from 
> my previous post, "despite its obeisance to sexual propriety and other 
> cliches of its time, [it] is still the prison film that rings most true to 
> me". 
> 
> IMHO.
> hg
> hag at iafrica.com
> 
>