 |
| Children singing in an early scene of M |
These guilty men ought to be brought, by accusers kindly rather than angry, to justice, as patients to a doctor, that their disease of crime may be checked by punishment.
~Boethius, Consolation of PhilosophyM (1931), directed by Fritz Lang and brilliantly acted by Peter Lorre tracks the events surrounding a serial killer of children (and sexual abuse before the killings is strongly implied). It's a chilling account, with a suprising number of unexpected turns driving the movement of the plot forward. The film eventually leads us to questions of philosophy and justice, the nature of responsibility and punishment and with an abrupt ending, leaves us to consider our own role in the fabric of society.
The How:
I don't have a coherent structure for talking about form with this one. So, I'm just going to make a series of random comments of things I noticed and we'll get there eventually.
The use of sound in this was fascinating. Sparing, which made even the early scenes harrowing and there was a lot of silence. In contrast we have the killer whistling from, "In the Hall of the Mountain King" (thanks Karen) as Lang creates a theme metonymically connected with the murderer Hans Beckert. That's eventually the connection that snares him.
Peter Lorre was phenomenal. Beyond the expression of his giant eyes, we have his empassioned plea before the "criminal" court and if we don't actively pity him, he had me hesitating in my own summary judgment at least. He really communicated a lot of dark complexity here, with the compulsion, the whistling, the kindness as a lure (making his crimes even worse) and his cathartic confession / speech / plea for mercy and help.
Google informs me that this was early on in the era of the talkies, when film made the jump to use of recorded sound and that was Lang's first use of sound of this type in his films. Genius.
The back and forth scenes between the police / political influences scheming how to catch the killer while simultaneously the criminal underworld was meeting to also talk about catching the killer was an interesting twist that I didn't see coming. I was expecting a more straight forward episode of Law and Order (or whatever it is this week) where the really clever investigators outwit through little clues the really clever and scary criminal.
That's not what happened.
Across the stata of society this level of violence and abuse for the children simply could not be tolerated. The criminal world was further motivated by the dramatic increase of pressure from the police and other organizations which made the lockdown of the city really bad for business. So the criminals decide to go after him with all of their resources as well.
The sequence of the blind man identifying Beckert, followed by something like the guild of beggars tracking him through the city streets led to the title sequence of Beckert being marked with a chalk "M" on the back of his coat. It was stereotypically efficient and clever of the German beggars to get that done, while notifying the other criminals that they had him trapped in an office complex.
Without the constraint of search warrants, they systematically dismantle the building door by door and room by room until they have him.
One of the most chilling shots I've ever seen was the slow panning across the hundreds of "criminal" participants in Beckert's "trial" in the warehouse as they all are just waiting, patiently, silently, in quiet judgment. Beckert's response is to scream in panic and run. Of course it is, what other response could you possibly have to that? It seemed really clear that he would not be getting off on a technicality, even before a word was uttered.
The leader of the German criminals was pretty intimidating. I kept telling myself that this was pre-Hitler, but with his hat, coat and leather gloves and prosecutorial style, he had an SS sensibility that was hard for me to set aside.
Last note here. The ending was abrupt to the point that I thought my streaming had malfunctioned. I actually backed it up and ran it to that point again. I wondered, did he do that intentionally? Of course he did!
Then I doubted myself, looked it up (again, thanks Google) and yes, it was intentional. The abrupt ending was one more way to throw us off of our expectations. A quick review of my own suprises at the narrative flow:
- I was expecting the story to start quickly, but the early pace really languished
- I did not expect the criminals to get involved
- I was expecting the police to get him through their surprisingly good 1931 forensics
- I wasn't looking for him to get "spotted" by the blind guy
- I didn't expect the criminals to catch him, I thought he would elude them
- I didn't expect any of the criminals to defend him, but they did
- I didn't him to leave that room alive, but the police got there in time
- I was expecting a more normal courtroom scene, at least a verdict
- I wasn't expecting the movie to end so abruptly
I love not knowing what's going to happen next.
The What:
This film was about the nature of evil and our responsibility to oppose it.
Regardless of political affiliation, preference for paper or plastic, liberal, moderate, conservative or whether you like vanilla or chocolate, pretty much everyone agrees that molesting and murdering children is out of bounds. It's wrong and evil and we shouldn't do that.
Further, we shouldn't allow other people to do that, regardless of their motives, reasons, compulsions and the like - it truly doesn't matter in this case. Not allowed.
In the scene where he's captured I was reminded of Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy where Lady Philosophy argues (with great logic) that criminals and evildoers are to be pitied above all men. The argument goes something like this (vastly over-simplified):
- to be the victim of a crime is bad
- to be in a place in your life where you are capable of committing that crime is worse
- it isn't good to allow someone to be the victim of a crime if you can stop it
- it is even less good to allow the perpetrator of a crime to continue being criminal, because that is bad for future victims and even worse for the offender
- therefore, punishment that prevents further crime is good for the criminal and society at large
And the motive isn't revenge against the individual, but the good of the individual criminal. In the case where the criminal can't help himself (to whatever degree) it falls on us to take more extreme measures, and this is actually a good thing. The removal of someone's ability to further damage their own humanity is the kindest, most loving thing we can do.
Yes, that's counter-intuitive and yes, if someone hurt my little girl, my immediate response might not be to kill them... but I would certainly lean towards making them wish they were dead. That's why it's important to have these things decided by a court, with a judge, and not by an angry dad - as much as we might sympathize with the parent in any given case.
M strikes to the heart of this idea in the criminal kangeroo court scene. The criminals are crying out for him to be killed, as retribution for what he's done. His defense and his own plea point towards his mental illness and his inability to not do what he's doing. For the criminals, that's even more reason to end him. But his "defense" advocate says that his sickness makes it necessary that he be treated as ill, not as a reponsible for his crimes. The mob is raising to a fever pitch when the police arrive and he is transferred to the German authority.
So we're presented with two possible paths to justice. One is the quick death of the guy with the M on his coat, without room for appeal, or insanity pleas or temporary stays in the sanitorium resulting in other opportunities for the predatory behavior.
The other is to be turned over to the authorities and the incarceration / treatment of our killer as someone who is insane and in some sense, not completely responsible for the things he has done.
Side note: for Boethius (and maybe for our film makers), it doesn't matter which one you choose, both just punishment or treatment for mental illness could be considered a kindness. The critical piece would be ensuring he is not able to commit this sort of crime again, which life in prison would accomplish.
Lang does a good job of exploring both sides of the issue, in a short amount of time. I was nodding in agreement when the criminals get him, knowing that he would get blasted without pity or appeal. I was hesitating with the notion that he might not be truly responsible for his crimes... and I was really interested to see where the tribunal would go with this - we see them seated without hearing the verdict.
Where Lang turns it back onto us is with the final sequence, with one of the mother's of the slain children telling us to watch our kids and be vigilant. That the lesson to be learned here is that we need to play a better part in the safety of the kids in our influence. The movement from the court of criminals to the police intervention to the judges being seated to the mothers happens so quickly that we're forced to back up and mentally recreate the narrative to engage it. I think that's what the film makers intended here.
 |
| Yvonne from The Exiles |
The Exiles (1961) was painful to watch. I believe the running time was 1:12, but it seemed a lot longer than that with the emotionally engaging and draining narration and events of the day that came into play. Sometimes a shared experience will create the background for an inside joke, where you immediately "get" what the other person is saying on a level not immediately apparent. For Cole to suggest this film to me, is similar to that experience, except instead of an inside joke, it's an inside sorrow, or a shared appreciation of poignancy.
Cole, this had exactly the impact on me you thought it would.
We grew up in a little cow town called Apache in Oklahoma, with a strong population of Native Americans, Choctaw, Kiowa, Apache... among others. This film was made before I was born and the young adults it portrays belonged to a different generation. Still, I could almost see my friends from junior high and high school being thrust into this black and white downtown LA and the sadness the movie expresses hit me harder than I was expecting.
The How:
This was beautifully shot. Very dark and minimalistic, but the close-ups and cinematography were both top drawer. It starts with a series of still photographs of American Indians that all convey a deep sense of sadness and loss.
If you think about that for a minute, it makes sense. The Indians of the Great Plains weren't doing a lot of camera work in the 1700s... it was only when the white man came with all of his cataclysmic cultural influence that we start seeing photographs. The very nature of photography for these people came with a lot of other manifest destiny evil, so it shouldn't be surprising that the photos reflect the sadness they were living firsthand.
I don't know where to put this film in terms of category. Sort of a documentary, but with elements of narrative without a real sense of movement or plot... material clearly coming from interviews and scripting and maybe improvisational sequences that happened to be filmed.
The mannerisms, the dialogue, the playful mischief and give and take all rang way too authentic to me to have been written, learned and acted in a traditional sense. Somehow MacKenzie was capturing ineffable qualities of interaction that I grew up with and witnessed that seemed accurate beyond belief.
The film ends without a resolution, which is the point. It isn't quite Limbo in the classical sense, but more of a group of people who are thoroughly and fundamentally lost, caught in between shifts of culture without any clear path forward... and the dull sense of lives that are unhappy, getting by and trapped in amber.
The What:
This movie was about the damage done to individuals who lose their own culture.
It wasn't exactly hopeless, but it was close. If you put yourself in Homer's shoes, as an example - what are your realistic options here? How do you stop drifting aimlessly in the gaps between two cultures?
1) Go back to the reservation, with your pregnant wife in tow, take a vow of poverty but get a good amount of support from your social base. Try to resist the change that has been forced on your tribe to be a dull shadow of it's previous self, but you'll never quite get there. And never leave.
2) Turn your back completely (in some sense) on your parents and your tribe that has stretched back for generations... and pretend you're a white guy. Go get a job, pay your bills and get ready to be poor and abused until you can acquire education or skill to be successful in a white man's world, on white man's terms. That will take years by the way and you might not ever really get there.
He joined the Navy, which was a bewildering and negative experience and as a first step to getting a foothold in this new cultural reality, it didn't work.
There might be other options, but those choices seem pretty hopeless.
Is it any wonder he wants to get away from that menu? So option 3 becomes, Do the least amount you have to in trying to survive... drink and spend time with your friends. Rinse and repeat.
Yvonne talks about starting a different kind of life, where she could raise her child in a way to give them "things she never had" (the heart of almost any parent), but you get the sense that this is unlikely. It's almost like she's an immigrant, but without the realistic hope for her children as part of that cycle. How do you become an immigrant to your own country?
The solace they take is the escape through alcohol, and the fascinating gathering on Hill X, overlooking Los Angeles. It wasn't exactly a pow wow, but the drums, singing, dancing and occasional fight was very much a longing to return to a time when things were different.
That return isn't possible and while as a viewer, I hope that over a generational span the equation will change for their children and grandchildren, The Exiles portrays a world where this isn't a given.
No comments:
Post a Comment