Hello readers,
Tonight is not really a movie review, but more an introspective examination of what makes a really good movie. I am not referring to "good" as in "high quality," "well developed," "artistically challenging," or any other of a myriad of definitions. I am referring to good in the moral sense, as opposed to evil, corrupt, neutral, or nice. Many of the movies we watch and enjoy may have redeeming qualities or present heroes facing impossible odds and triumphing, but it is very rare to find a modern movie which simply delights in goodness.
In the last six months, my grandfather has come to live with my family. Because he suffers from dementia, we end up watching a lot of the same movies over and over again with him. In particular, he loves the T.V. movie series Horatio Hornblower, created by A&E. Whenever we ask him what he wants to watch, he keeps coming back to this series. One day, a bit tired of the repetition of the same five stories every week, we asked him why he enjoyed watching those movies in particular. He said that it was because the characters had honor, and were forced to make hard choices to do their duty. This sense of honor stuck with him more than any special effects, any trick of story telling, any emotional manipulation. Characters who lived in a truly hard world, forced to make difficult decisions, and to live with the consequences of those decisions were the most compelling aspect of my grandfather's decision making paradigm.
While the ideals of honor and duty are still given lip service within the modern media, they have generally been replaced by a fascination with compromise and paradox. The average hero must confront the evil within himself in every film, and agonize over the fact that he is really not so different from the villain he is fighting. Often times, it is only by taking on the appearance of that evil that the character is able to accomplish the ultimate good; consider two very different movies, The Dark Knight and Wreck it Ralph. In The Dark Knight, Batman must allow himself to be seen as a horrible villain in order to provide Gotham city with the "hero it needed." He must compromise his public image as a hero in order to accomplish a greater good. Similarly, in Wreck it Ralph, Ralph must come to understand, "I am a bad guy... that is good." It is only by compromising his image, and his dream of being a hero, that Ralph is able to save his own game and those of his friends.
I think what is really missing in these characters is some form of external morality. Batman has a code that he follows, but no one else knows that. Wreck it Ralph is a hero according to his own standards of self actualization, but he does not answer to an external moral code. This is what is missing in the modern hero; the ability to act, not according to what the hero deems best, but according to an agreed upon societal good- to act with honor according to one's duty. I guess this is because society has become so focused on an existential view of morality, in which the individual makes his own good, that we have lost the value of values. To a man like my grandfather, or an old fashioned moralist like me, the sense that there must be some higher placement of morality than merely the individual is a value that is sadly being lost. Even if that value is merely obedience to the authority of a nation and service to that ideal, that value seems to me intrinsically worthy, and worth maintaining.
I do not know that there is an answer to the portrayal of modern heroes that derives morality from themselves rather than from a societal code of conduct. The problem with a proscribed morality is it tends to be dogmatic and boring, two values which do not lend to film-making. I guess what I want is a nod every once in a while from Hollywood to old fashioned values; where a character is encouraged to participate in a community instead of stand away from it, or where, ultimately, the good of the many does outweigh the good of the one. Then again, maybe I am just old fashioned crazy.
Ah well, enough philosophical ruminations. Keep an eye open for an upcoming review of the new Percy Jackson movie Sea of Monsters.
Back to reality.
