What an interesting film this is. I just rewatched it this week, having not seen it for something like a decade. This must be one of the best prison films ever made. I'm sure most Chewers have seen it or at least know something about it, so I'll skip the synopsis.
What impressed me most was that this film seems expertly engineered to play with the audience's opinion of Luke. The film opens with the extremely drunken Luke beheading parking meters, and despite the childishness of that prank, it's still amusing and even endearingly so. It's also very similar to the opening of 1955's Rebel Without a Cause, which showed the extremely drunken Jim Stark playing with toys on the street, whose character is very similar. I wanted very much to like Luke, just because he acts so much cooler than everyone else; when I see someone who seems to know all the answers, I want to believe that they really do. Every unexpected action he took in the film brought new thoughts to mind, as I tried to understand Luke's philosophy. But at the turning point of this film, I found to my disdain that I was quite wrong about Luke, and that I had made the same mistake that the prisoners in the film did who had looked up to him.
--Most notably Dragline, who's played by George Kennedy. Kennedy got an Oscar for that performance, and he certainly deserved it. I was most familiar with him from Charade, so seeing him play a character that's so funny and so eager to please was a big change. He has a fantastic voice, and it's a joy just to listen to his line readings. "Anything so innocent and built like that just gotta be named Lucille. My Lord, whatever I done, don't strike me blind for another couple of minutes."
The religious references were also interesting to me. Harry Dean Stanton sings a number of hymns. There's no missing the Jesus Christ Pose that Luke strikes after eating all those eggs. But most pertinent to that theme, I think, is the "Plastic Jesus" song he sings. I doubt that the filmmakers were trying to aim at more than one target with this film, so I've momentarily concluded that this stuff must be present just to mirror Luke himself. Luke seems to be everyone's savior, but it turns out that he's rather fake and empty, too.
I know the Coen brothers love this film. It's near impossible to see The Man With No Eyes and not think of O Brother, Where Art Thou? And there's no doubt that Carr's "spends a night in the box" speech was the inspiration for Hudsucker's "and they dock ya" speech.
Anyway, it's an excellent film, and I know there are conflicting opinions about it around here. I'd like to read 'em.
What impressed me most was that this film seems expertly engineered to play with the audience's opinion of Luke. The film opens with the extremely drunken Luke beheading parking meters, and despite the childishness of that prank, it's still amusing and even endearingly so. It's also very similar to the opening of 1955's Rebel Without a Cause, which showed the extremely drunken Jim Stark playing with toys on the street, whose character is very similar. I wanted very much to like Luke, just because he acts so much cooler than everyone else; when I see someone who seems to know all the answers, I want to believe that they really do. Every unexpected action he took in the film brought new thoughts to mind, as I tried to understand Luke's philosophy. But at the turning point of this film, I found to my disdain that I was quite wrong about Luke, and that I had made the same mistake that the prisoners in the film did who had looked up to him.
--Most notably Dragline, who's played by George Kennedy. Kennedy got an Oscar for that performance, and he certainly deserved it. I was most familiar with him from Charade, so seeing him play a character that's so funny and so eager to please was a big change. He has a fantastic voice, and it's a joy just to listen to his line readings. "Anything so innocent and built like that just gotta be named Lucille. My Lord, whatever I done, don't strike me blind for another couple of minutes."
The religious references were also interesting to me. Harry Dean Stanton sings a number of hymns. There's no missing the Jesus Christ Pose that Luke strikes after eating all those eggs. But most pertinent to that theme, I think, is the "Plastic Jesus" song he sings. I doubt that the filmmakers were trying to aim at more than one target with this film, so I've momentarily concluded that this stuff must be present just to mirror Luke himself. Luke seems to be everyone's savior, but it turns out that he's rather fake and empty, too.
I know the Coen brothers love this film. It's near impossible to see The Man With No Eyes and not think of O Brother, Where Art Thou? And there's no doubt that Carr's "spends a night in the box" speech was the inspiration for Hudsucker's "and they dock ya" speech.
Anyway, it's an excellent film, and I know there are conflicting opinions about it around here. I'd like to read 'em.
