So Bummed....

I was really hyped up to write about a great movie: "Cool Hand Luke". We have a DVR (digital video recorder, like Tivo--if you have never tried using one, it's AWESOME and addictive)--every time the following movies come on, I record them: Cool Hand Luke, Rudy, Tommy Boy, Run Lola Run.

About 2 years ago, I spent about 10 days working out of town at a workshop with a guy from California. We got along really well--he was a very sharp guy and a hard worker. We got around to talking about Cool Hand Luke and I told him that I thought it was a parallel story, obviously about a guy who builds himself up to fellow prisoners--entertaining enough in itself. The second dimension is that Luke is wide eyed and searching for God with all his heart. This part is somewhat easy to ignore and still take the movie at face value, but I think you miss something if you don't examine it (By the way, this is not BS like my Napoleon Dynamite and Hippo posts). My new friend was kind of blown away and had not seen that dimension to the movie at all, so I thought I had been gifted with super-keen insight.

Briefly, here are some scenes that reinforce this view of this theme in the movie:

1) Cutting the heads of parking meters, which is the offense which sends him to jail: Luke describes it as "Just Settling and old Score"--metaphorically, he is aimlessly rebelling agsint authority--laughing at God and daring him to punish him to prove his existence.

2) The device is skilfully embedded. Different people in authority periodically symbolize God as hard-line auhority and a distant, aloof, unresponsive being. Dragline punching Luke and Luke keeps getting up and coming back--this represents the human spirit, which overcomes adversity. The Big Boss breaks Luke down through senseless tedium of digging a hole and filling it back in. Once Luke sees no purpose, his spirit crumbles.

3) When his mother dies, Luke sings a song including the lines: "I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got that plastic Jesus, sitting on the dashboard in my car..."It reduces faith to an object and trivializes deep feelings to a superstitous talisman.

4) The guys are out on highway duty and it starts to lightning outside--everyone scrambles into the truck, but Luke stands in the rain and looks toward the sky. Dragline asks "Ain't ya scared, Luke?" and Luke shouts at the clouds "Come on, old-timer, here I am! Love me, hate me, just let me know you're there!" I think sometimes I know just how he feels. He wants to have faith, but he needs proof that it isn't useless.

5) One of the great lines of the movie is "What we have here is failure to communicate." In light of the spiritual interpretation, the double meaning is obvious. It is a sad, deep statement that man can't communicate with God.

6) When Luke eats 50 eggs for the enjoyment of his friends, he takes on the role of Christ, sacrificing himself for their entertainment. I've never seen this referred to anywhere: As he is finished and the guys are walking away from him, Luke is laid out on the table with arms outstretched, half-naked, and posed just like a crucifix.

So, I thought I was this wonderful, insightful, philosophical person and I was planning this well thought out blog entry on this (instead of this entry which was just written off the cuff in 15 minutes). I started researching it and found a guy wrote an excellent, scholastically-worded essay on this topic with some better examples than I came up with. Oh, well...jerk.

I mentioned to Fran how I was going to write something about Cool Hand Luke and she says, "Oh, about how Luke is Jesus?" So...maybe I wasn't onto something so obscure after all...