Ned Fleming (ned@cjnetworks.com)
Tue, 15 Jun 1999 00:45:49 GMT
Frederick Zackel wrote:
>Part of the lone wolf mythology is he is willing to
sacrifice himself to the
>good of the community. Yes, all heroes do that;
soldiers, firemen,
>policemen. But the lone wolf is making all the right
choices and stands
>alone when he acts. He risks all. His most powerful
weapon is that he can
>walk down these mean streets. At night. Alone.
Against the shadows and
>all the evil they contain.
[snip]
>My favorite Indiana Jones movie is the one where Indy
sails up the River of
>Death. Oh, you don't remember seeing it? But that
plotline--the hero sails
>up the river of death; will he return?--is the basic
quest story.
>
>What the lady dicks have introduced to the genre is a
sense of community.
>They have extended families. For better or for worse
they have changed the
>genre.
>
>Is that family connection a bad thing? No, I don't
think it has to be. In
>the Odyssey Ullyses sails up the river of death
(i.e., goes to Hades) and
>meets . . . his mother. She hung herself out of
despair of ever seeing her
>son come home.
[snip]
>It seems to me the essence of hard-boiled is a
willingness to sacrifice all,
>even life itself. To consciously and deliberately
sail up the river of
>death, knowing you might not come back. That's why
there are so few heroes
>and so many of the rest of us.
Such is the power of suggestion that Frederick's post colored
my third viewing of the movie "Lone Star" this past weekend.
I think the movie qualifies as hardboiled and noir. But, then
again, I've read enough definitions of "hardboiled" and
"noir" in the last year that I'm wandering around in some
kind of pre-Alzheimers fog.
If you haven't seen the movie, you might want to skip reading
the rest of this.
The movie fits Frederick's paradigm fairly well: A skeleton
is dug up on an abandoned artillery range of a doomed
(soon-to-close) army base -- next to a sheriff's (Charlie
Wade's) badge. And the current sheriff (Sam Deeds) must
travel backwards in time to solve the mystery.
Sheriff Deed's own father (Buddy Deeds) succeeded Charlie
Wade. In effect, Sheriff Sam Deeds must go to the abode of
the dead (hell) to solve his quest, for he fears his own
father killed Charlie Wade. In doing so he must figuratively
exhume the body of his own dead father and re-animate him
from the memories of those who knew Charlie Wade and Buddy
Deeds. Sam Deeds is the lone wolf -- the lone star -- who
alone opposes building the new jail, who might not run for
sheriff again, who alone digs up the past to find out the
truth. The technique director John Sayles uses to
juxtaposition the living and the dead in the same
scene/setting isn't hokey at all.
The long-dead and buried "secret" of the movie is slickly
done and revealed, and even if you know it the movie is still
enjoyable, perhaps more so, for then you can concentrate on
the build-up and the journey through hell itself.
Kris Kristofferson, who can hardly act and can't sing at all,
gives the performance of a lifetime, playing Charlie Wade as
one of the baddest dudes in films of the last 10 years.
The movie ends on a forlorn note, though forlorn isn't quite
the thing.
(I wanted to say "ennui," but then I looked it up and it
doesn't mesh at all. What's the word for that weird feeling
in your gut when you're both relieved and sad that something
ends the way it does?)
I've short-changed the movie quite a bit here. There are
cross-currents and counterpoise that give the movie a good
deal of depth.
Oh, and "O is for . . . Ovulation"
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