Gran Torino - 2

A friend of mine wrote a fine review of this film: click HERE.

Gran Torino

“Gran Torino,” directed by and starring Clint Eastwood and a host of unknowns (we will be seeing more of them) portraying the Hmong family next door and the members of a Hmong gang, is a remarkable story and a very good film.

It’s a story about redemption!

Filmed in the Detroit area, it was fun for me (having lived there 16 years) to see the homes and streets so typical of this workingman’s city, and a few remarks about the cold weather uttered by Walt (Eastwood) – weather that ought to keep the foreigners out.

Which brings me to the heart of the story: Walt is a retired autoworker who put the steering column into his pride and joy, a mint-condition, 1972 Gran Torino. His is the story of Detroit – the auto industry waning, the population flux overwhelming, and the world Walt knew is no more – he’s a stranger in a strange land, right in his own neighborhood.

His wife of many years died, his children don’t understand him, and he sits on his porch, guns ready, drinking gallons of beer and smoking, grumbling and mumbling to himself about the “slopes” next door and the general condition of the world he no longer understands.

The story is really very funny much of the time as the script unloads virtually ever racial and ethnic slur in the American vocabulary (with the exception of the “n” word, for which I was grateful). Walt doesn’t know how to talk about anyone different than him other than in crude ways. Even his barber who’s been cutting his hair for years is greeted with a string of ethnic epithets and curses, and gladly returned by the barber. As Eastwood delivers these lines, the audience is heartily laughing, though guardedly, I noticed.

As Eastwood grudgingly gets to know the family next door, and grumpily befriends the young man, they both go to the barber shop where Eastwood is going to school him in the fine art of man-talk. It’s comedic energy reminded me of the scene in “The Bird Cage,” when Robin Williams tries to teach Nathan Lane how to walk like a man. Enough said. It’s great and full of belly laughs.

But Eastwood is doing more than an Archie Bunker routine; Eastwood captures the alienation of an American workingman who sees his world fading away. It’s a lonely, angry, time.

The Hmong family next door and their traditions is a highlight of the film – there are other cultures and other worlds, and these days, the borders between are growing thin. What will we do?

Religion plays an interesting role here. Fr. Janovich (Cristopher Carley) is young and “just-outta-priest-school” befriended by Walt’s wife in her dying days. She made the young priest promise to get Walt to confession, and he works at it with considerable pastoral skill. Though collared and liturgically garbed some of the time, much of time the young priest is dressed casually. Does this young priest represent a new world as well?

Being a pastor myself, I’m sensitive to the stereotypes that mostly show up on the tube and the silver screen – no stereotypes here – a well-done job by the writers and Eastood.

The most striking feature of the story is the ending, and I won’t give it away, other than to say it’s a real surprise – a moment of redemption and love, and as every religion knows, redemption and love are costly! But the price is worth it!

An entertaining film with a very good story – the price of seeing this film is worth it.

The Changeling

An amazing film detailing multiple tragic stories, paralleling them for a while, making the audience wonder what's up, and in the end, like a mighty crescendo, bringing them together.

Thanks to Clint Eastwood, director and composer - for this remarkable piece - not an "enjoyable" film - but an important story being retold, and as in all such stories, themes and ideas that remain relevant: power and its abuses, women and men of conscience and courage, determination and a positive role for a Presbyterian pastor taking on the city of LA (I'm a Presbyterian pastor in LA, so it resonated well for me).

Angelina Jolie is the missing boy's mother - she's good much of the time, but I felt her performance lacked convincing depth at some critical moments. Hard to put into words, but not serious enough to detract from an over-all fine performance in a very large story with many characters.

John Malkovich portrays the Rev. Gustave Briegleb who's taking on the city's corruption through a radio program - he captures the passion and danger of social criticism. Briegleb is a semi-fictional character, an amalgam of two pastors ( who were companions in their effort to clean up the city.

In the film, several real life characters are merged for the sake of the story. In the film Briegleb is depicted as a radio preacher, though none of the 176 times mentions of him between 1921 and 1943 in the Los Angeles Times cite that ministry. Briegleb was a colleague and friend of Methodist minister R.P. Shuler, who did conduct a radio ministry.

Briegleb and Shuler were community activists and partners in challenging the vice and crime of the city and the corruption of the police and city officials (from a review by Ed McNulty)

Jason Butler Harner portrays a serial killer - a powerful role that reminded me of Jarvier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.

The story is sweeping, almost epic, in size, but driven by a very simple theme - a mother's love and a mother's hope.

Her boy kidnapped. A police investigation. A gala moment at the train station when her "son" returns from DeKalb, Illinois. But he's not her boy. The police, already embarrassed by numerous scandals, hush her up, finally arranging for her commitment to a mental institution as she continues to protest.

The film had me feeling her despair - will no one listen? Am I crazy? What's going on here?

An involved story with plenty of twists and turns, it reminds the audience: Don't give up!

The story ends on a sad note (though all the evidence points to her son's death, she remains hopeful that he's alive somewhere).

A movie for thought - not for pleasure, though Eastwood's film-making is a pleasure to watch.