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davesteele-milwaukee
Reviews
Gran Torino (2008)
Overly Didactic and Not Terribly Realistic
I'm from the industrial Midwest, and I've known a lot of Walt Kowalskis. Grizzled, white ethnic old-timers who are not PC, whose cars are their first love, and who bemoan the loss of "their" neighborhoods, and "their" city. I've also known a fair number of kids like Thao, Hmong-American kids trying to make it in a world their parents do not understand. I've known neighborhoods like Walt's: neighborhoods in transition that show signs of decay, but are still lived in and tended to by hard working old timers like Walt and their hard-working immigrant neighbors, whom they don't understand and paint with a broad brush as "the other." I was excited to watch Gran Torino because of the rave reviews and its portrayal of this world of which I am so familiar. Sadly, while I appreciated the premise, and was happy to see so many Hmong actors in Hmong roles (rather than "professional" non-Hmong Asian actors playing these roles), the movie came up short. I found the dialogue and characters to lack credibility, and the plot too cliché-ridden to be taken seriously.
The theme of death and rebirth, brought to us mainly through the fraught relationship of Walt and the young priest, had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer(Did Walt HAVE to come to rest in a Christ-like pose after the shooting in the last scene?! Puh-leeeze.) The "death-as-sad-and-happy" thing just never really connected with the larger message of the movie of "learning to love thy neighbor."
I will cite one example of a relatively minor scene that illustrates this movie's larger problems: In real life, white boys who try to be "down with the 'hood," don't say "it's all good, bro!" to some gangbanger they don't know after said gangbanger hits on their girlfriend. Maybe in a movie like "Strait Outta Malibu" could that scene have worked, but in this context it was ridiculous and totally not-believable. This seemingly minor miscue threw so much of the movie off, because we're forced to conclude from it that Sue's boyfriend is mentally ill, and if that's the case, what does that say about Sue herself, who is one the most important drivers of the plot? Overall, this film suffers from too many cliché characters and too many cliché plot points to really be anything more than an average movie. Which is a shame, because it could have been so much more, and was a great opportunity for the wider world to get to know the Hmong people and their story.
Workingman's Death (2005)
It's a Living...
I recently saw this film at the 2006 Milwaukee International Film Festival. It's a moving testament to the strength and resiliency of human beings, who manage to find a sense of purpose, and even pride, in the sheer act of survival under the most difficult circumstances.
"Workingman's Death" is an eye-opening experience that takes the viewer into some of the worst working conditions in the world: an illegal coal mine in Ukraine, a slaughterhouse in Nigeria, a sulfur mine in Indonesia, and a shipbreaking yard in Pakistan. The film starkly portrays these harsh settings and the (mostly) men who toil within them. There is no "expert" testimony, no voiceovers, no narrator, only the men themselves who do the work. The camera follows them as they carry out their tasks, take breaks and go home after a hard day. The only commentary is from the workers themselves, talking about their jobs.
The film is an intimate portrait of how these workers keep their spirits intact through all of this back breaking labor. The Ukrainian coal miners see themselves as heroes, carrying on the legacy of the once-great Soviet coal machine. In Indonesia, a rabble-rouser comes to the sulfur mine for work, and, amidst his dangerous and physically grueling work, shoots the breeze with his coworkers about prostitutes and bar brawls. A worker in the Nigerian slaughterhouse says that his job cleaning the severed heads of cows makes him special, because he has skills that other workers don't have. The workers at the shipbreaking yard in Pakistan consider themselves part of a brotherhood; they look out for the fellow workers and pull together to help a friend in trouble.
In "Workingman's Death," we see the will of people to carry on. The workers in this film are oppressed people, but they refuse to think of themselves as slaves. They find pride, brotherhood and even humor in their work, no matter how dire the circumstances. The cinematography is beautiful, the music haunting. Never before has hard work been more artfully portrayed.
The film features graphic footage of animal slaughter, and the segment on the Nigerian slaughterhouse will be especially disturbing to many people. Unfortunately, it's the graphic nature of this film that will probably prevent from getting wide release, at least in the US. This is a shame, because this is a film that can remind us all of our common humanity.