Go Out With a Bang

To end this year and our film class, I decided to share my favorite film, Midnight Cowboy, with my friends. We sat in my house and watched that fantastic film from start to finish and everyone was enraptured by it. It is such a different experience watching the film in it's entirety instead of broken up by a few days in class. I felt myself much more emotionally invested even though I knew exactly what was going to happen. Every moment of the film felt exciting and new, and i couldn't help but tear up at the end when Rizzo passed away. I peppered the entire viewing experience with the tidbits of information you have imparted unto us throughout the film, Mr. Bennett, and my friends enjoyed the film even more for it. They're actually excited to get into the film class next year! Thank you for giving me a wonderful and memorable experience for my last semester of high school. I'll never forget this class and the amazing man who made it possible.

My Favorite Film Thus Far

Out of all the films we've been watching throughout the year, one has stood out to me as the best by far. It has existentialist themes, a kickass soundtrack, and engaging characters that really draw you in to the story. That film is Midnight Cowboy. The underdog that is Joe Buck resonated with me from the start. I was amused by the way he dressed, enthralled by his accent, and enraptured by his quirky, unbeatable attitude. Joe's story, from start to finish, made me laugh, cry, and everything in between. The music in the beginning really set the tone for the rest of the film. The guitar in "Everybody's Talking" brings the lighthearted but powerful mood to the audience, while the lyrics really paint the picture of a man who thinks beyond the expectations of others. By pairing Joe Buck with "Ratso" Rizzo, the director shows us the ultimate contrast: one is a cocksure young gigolo-to-be, while the other is a crippled street rat looking to score enough dough to escape his awful life in the Big Apple. Rizzo spends his entire life under the scrutinizing eye of others, mostly from his disability. By meeting Joe Buck, he is finally shown that there are some people who can love you beyond your appearance, even if your appearance is that of a sleazy crippled con artist. The ending of Midnight Cowboy was one of the few to actually leave me feeling the emotions that radiated from the screen. Joe sacrificed everything he wanted in life out of love for his only true friend, and Rizzo was given his paradise long before ever reaching Florida. To make the audience truly feel is the hallmark of any great film, and Midnight Cowboy does just that. This is a movie that will stick with me for a long time, and I'm grateful I was able to see it.

Ambiguous Train

The concept or moral ambiguity is one made use of in many great works of film, but especially so in Runaway Train. This film follows the "protagonist", known criminal Manny, and his rapist sidekick Buck, two escaped cons on the lam. The story begins with Manny being glorified as the hero of the prison. Every inmate loves him, the people are trying to free him from solitary, and we have not seen anything that should tell us we cannot grow to love this man. On the other hand, the prison warden, Rankin, is the exact opposite of what we look for in a hero. He is mean, uncompromising, unfeeling, and ruthless. He keeps ourn potential hero locked up in solitary confinement for three years after all! Though he is so rough around the edges, society sees him as a protector, keeping the "scum" locked up and our families safe. What twe come to see as the film progresses is that not everything is as black and white as we think it is. Manny's dark, animalistic nature is slowly revealed to us through his actions and references to his past and Buck's quirky horndog nature is soon revealed to be the guise of a sadistic rapist. Rankin's guardian status is even challenged as we see it is more of an obsession with Manny and his animal nature. Rankin puts himself above all of the people he keeps in his prison, "ranking" them as such: God, himself, the prison guards, the dogs, human feces, and then the prisoners. He breaks the golden rule of the universe by putting himself above another. This is when the ambiguity of this film really hits home, leaving the audience confused and not really sure who to root for. On the one hand, Manny is the obvious protagonist, though he is a gruff criminal with a bad temper and a dark soul. Rankin is the hardass prison warden who thinks he is better than everyone else and will stop at nothing to prove it, yet he is trying to keep the streets clean of criminals and the inherent danger they carry with them. The hallmark of a truly powerful film with morally ambiguous themes is keeping the audience on their toes in terms of who they choose to sympathize with. In this respect, Runaway Train is the epitome of the morally ambiguous theme.

Who's Driving My Train?

In life, we spend most of our time worrying about our decisions and the repercussions from them. We worry and worry and think back to what could have been and what should have been done. This is all done without asking the golden question: Did we have a choice in the first place? In the film Runaway Train, the film's protagonist, Manny, spends three years welded into a cell in maximum security prison for his crimes. Many believed that was his course in life, to sit there rotting away in his cell. After a chance of fate, Manny is freed from the hole and subsequently escapes prison, taking his fate into his own hands and paving the way to freedom. At the end of the film, Manny achieves what he believes to be true "freedom" by choosing to end both the prison warden's and his own life. Now if it is true that we have full control over our lives and the directions they go in, Manny is a hero. He took life by the reins and charted his own course through her troubled waters. The real problem lies in the fact that none of us know whether we have any control or not, which is a major point of the film. Some supernatural stroke of insight caused Manny to choose the train that was destined to become a runaway. He could have picked any train, he could have chosen any path, but some unseen force guided him towards that very engine. Moments after getting on the train the conductor has a heart attack and sends Manny and his companion, Buck, careening down the tracks. The unstoppable nature of the train is meant to parallel the indomitable force of God and nature. For all of man's knowledge and technology, he still can't stop one train that ran away. There are still things outside of his control.
Taking the message from this film, I can draw parallels to my own life. Every day I wake up to my blaring alarm clock, go through my morning routine, and end up in the social prison known as high school. I don't have any say in the matter and my only respite is weekends, holidays, and the occasional sick day. Hour after hour I sit in the same classes in the same seat learning the same things. My life is on a set of rails that society and government says I cannot deviate from. Any choice I make follows the strict pattern that the world has laid out for me. Truly the only way to be free is to commit suicide, right? The answer to that question is noone knows. Manny went on that train seeking freedom and believed he found it in death, but who is to say that wasn't his fate all along? His incarceration, his escape, his stumbling upon the train that would ultimately spell his doom, all of these are just stops on the railway that is his life. Runaway Train gives us the opportunity to look at the world in a different light and truly stop and think about whether or not our decisions hold any weight whatsoever.

Brokeback Cowboy

Midnight Cowboy is a fantastic film following the exploits of young Joe Buck, a Texan looking to make it in the Big Apple as a hustler. Throughout the film we see Joe as the epitome of man: he's young, strong, tall, handsome, polite, and sexually charged. This view of Joe is given to reinforce his decision to screw his way through life, but it also serves to show another side of him. Joe is a naive man, thinking he is a sex god and every woman he meets is longing to be with him. From very early in the film we see that every encounter Joe has with women is unpleasant and usually at a detriment to him. His first foray into the world of New York women left him with disdainful looks and cold shoulders, and once he finally got into bed with one she manipulated him into paying her instead. These awful experiences with the women of the city are mirrored by Joe's experiences with the men. Desperate for money, Joe resorted to performing homosexual acts on more than one occasion. These are coupled with the numerous flashbacks to joe's sexual past. We see Joe and a woman, revealed to be "Crazy" Annie, making love in both a bedroom and later a car. Joe uses these memories to help "perform" during a scene in which Joe allows a young man to perform oral sex upon him in a movie theater for money. At first he is not able to stand at attention, but after thinking back to his time with Annie, Joe is able to go through with it. As these flashbacks progress we see that they are not all sweet and loving, but also filled with terror. Annie was the town bicycle, but renounced her loose ways after she fell in love with Joe. The other men in town did not like that, so they captured Joe and Annie while theyw ere in the middle of the act and proceeded to gang rape the both of them. This is an emotionally scarring event, one that can completely change a person's world view. The fact that Joe thinks back to this moment while being with both men and women tells the viewer that there may be more to this man than just being a stud. We are given even more insight into Joe's potential latent homosexual feelings when a woman goads him into sex after he is unable to perform by accusing him of being homosexual. This throws Joe into a rage that gives him the ability to seal the deal. Probably the most telling aspect of the story comes from the least sexual part of it. Joe eventually finds happiness at the end of his journey with Rico "Ratso" Rizzo, the man he has been living with throughout his foray into New York's sex scene. Eventually, Joe takes Ratso to Florida, Rizzo's dream place, forsaking everything he had and everything he could be just to make his sick friend happy. Eventually Joe realizes that the life of a hustler is not for him, and he comes to this realization out of love for Rizzo. Though Joe Buck sure is one hell of a stud, there is more to him than meets the eye.

Citizen Vain

Citizen Kane is an excellent and stimulating film. I believe the story is social commentary on the human condition and it's innate vanity. Charles Foster Kane spent his life trying to garner the attention and "love" of others. Every action he took was in the pursuit of this cause. For some, this paints a picture of a man deprived of affection and compassion. I see it as a man too concerned with himself. He starts his career with a newspaper, something that has great sway over the people who read it. His next venture was to become governor, another position of higher power. Finally, after losing it all, he opens Xanadu in the hopes that he can influence even more people to come stay it his resort. Each position Charlie sought was one of great power. He didn't want love or adoration, he wanted control. This was even more apparent in his relationship with Susan Alexander. Every second of their relationship was guided by his hand, following his principles and his goals. Susan was more of a statue being moved to and fro, so it is fitting that she spent a majority of their relationship in Xanadu surrounded by Kane's multitude of other statues, symbolic of the people he lost sway over. All he had left was those statues, silent and stationary. Kane was a vain man, and the story of his life reflected that.

Overdramatic on the Western Front?

What caught me most about AQotWF was the acting of the time. Though Mr. Bennet found it to be over the top and hard to identify with, I found it refreshing and fascinating. Seeing how people acted in the 1920's, when film was first really taking off, was like looking through a window (see what I did there?) to the past. In today's society of top-notch actors turning the most mundane character into one we could actually believe through years of learning and practice, it was thoroughly interesting to see how these people took acting to the next level by bringing their own styles on what was believable and moving instead of following the preconceived guidelines of modern Hollywood. I give AQotWF, as well as it's excellent actors, 5 stars out of 5!

T minus five, four, three...

...two, one. Houston, we have a blog.