[lit-ideas] Re: Literature as a reflection of life
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2006 23:47:53 -0700 (PDT)
--- Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Instead, American movies gave them the impression
> that Americans are timid, bureaucratic, passive,
> lacking conviction, and obsessed with laws and
> permission.
>
> "Huh? What about Dirty Harry and the Die Hard guy?"
>
> "Oh, those are the exceptions," they told me. "In
> every movie, the hero has to break all the laws
> and go it alone. The entire American bureaucracy
> is against the lone hero. His friends start to
> hate him and won't help. Usually he becomes a
> hunted criminal too, or has to turn in his badge.
> All the other Americans in the movies are too
> afraid of breaking rules to solve the problem."
*Actually "Dirty Hary" might be a prototype of a
neo-conservative. He is the guy who essentially
defends the system by using more aggressive and brutal
means than the system has traditionally been willing
to employ. (Steven Siegal's films are pretty much like
that, too.) As long as you are on the side of the
system, everything is permitted, seems to be the idea.
However, not all Clint's Eastwood's films exhibit the
rigid neo-conservative 'morality.' There is a
Westerner (directed by himself, I believe) where he
plays a hired assassin. In passing through a small
provincial town, he gets badly beaten by the local
sheriff. Eastwood runs away and goes on to to do his
job, i.e. to kill the guy whom he was hired to kill,
but in the meanwhile the sheriff cathes his best
friend and tortures him to death trying to make him
tell him where Eastwood is. Eastwood, having been
informed about this by some decent prostitutes, comes
back to revenge his friend. In the final scene, the
sheriff is laid on the floor wounded, his pals already
dead, and Eastwood is holding a heavy rifle to his
head.
"I didn't deserve to die like this." - argues the
sheriff - "I was building a town."
"That doesn't go with whether you deserved it." says
Eastwood, and pulls the trigger.
O.K.
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