Okay, I just finished watching One Eight Seven.
A great film -- I went into it expecting a fluffy action flick, and got the wind knocked out of me.
I read the remarks above and was struck by the notable lack of comments about one of the defining qualities of this film -- it is a modern, Hollywood treatment of an old, old story-- A story that was already ancient when it was packaged a couple millennia ago as the "New Testament."
(Uh, I guess I should mention that some spoilers will follow, although I doubt that any significant details that folks won't see coming themselves will be given up.)
This is the story of a Good Teacher who is moved by compassion to sacrifice his own life in order to demonstrate the folly and absurdity of man's inhumanity to man.
This story has been told and retold again and again, with varying degrees of success. (The Green Mile is at one end of the spectrum, and Cool Hand Luke is at the other. "Which end is up" is, I suppose, a subjective thing.)
What makes this a good movie is it's subtlety and ambiguity.
Okay, it's not always -that- subtle. The introductions were a bit of a groaner--
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Childress: Roosevelt high? Isn't that where that teacher got stabbed to death? Garfield: Actually, he survived. Childress: No, there was this gang-banger, had a ten-penny nail, he stabbed him about a dozen times in a hallway, and.... (LONG PAUSE) ...you're him. Jesus Christ. You're him. It was you.
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But at least his initials weren't J.C. Giving him the surname of an assassinated president is a little more elegant, although points come off for finding it necessary to reinforce the synchronicity of it by having him glance up at the list of "AMERICAN <dead> PRESIDENTS" when he realizes he's accidently walked into Childress's American History class.
One thing's for sure, Samuel L. Jackson sure knows how to "Give to Cezar what is Cezar's." (Not a misspelling of Caesar -- Cezar is the name of a "Severely Emotionally Disturbed" student.)
A great screenplay, brilliantly photographed, excellent sound design.
The ambiguity of Garfield's moral character is interesting to me-- He is never *shown* to do anything wrong, (with the exception of yelling at someone in a road-rage incident,) but there are some *implications* of wrongful behaviour. (Don't wanna give anything away, so I'm treading carefully.) Even these *implied* actions are ambiguous-- Do the circumstances justify them? The writer clearly wants us to think about it. Hard.
A great film -- I went into it expecting a fluffy action flick, and got the wind knocked out of me.
I read the remarks above and was struck by the notable lack of comments about one of the defining qualities of this film -- it is a modern, Hollywood treatment of an old, old story-- A story that was already ancient when it was packaged a couple millennia ago as the "New Testament."
(Uh, I guess I should mention that some spoilers will follow, although I doubt that any significant details that folks won't see coming themselves will be given up.)
This is the story of a Good Teacher who is moved by compassion to sacrifice his own life in order to demonstrate the folly and absurdity of man's inhumanity to man.
This story has been told and retold again and again, with varying degrees of success. (The Green Mile is at one end of the spectrum, and Cool Hand Luke is at the other. "Which end is up" is, I suppose, a subjective thing.)
What makes this a good movie is it's subtlety and ambiguity.
Okay, it's not always -that- subtle. The introductions were a bit of a groaner--
----------------------------
Childress: Roosevelt high? Isn't that where that teacher got stabbed to death? Garfield: Actually, he survived. Childress: No, there was this gang-banger, had a ten-penny nail, he stabbed him about a dozen times in a hallway, and.... (LONG PAUSE) ...you're him. Jesus Christ. You're him. It was you.
-----------------------------
But at least his initials weren't J.C. Giving him the surname of an assassinated president is a little more elegant, although points come off for finding it necessary to reinforce the synchronicity of it by having him glance up at the list of "AMERICAN <dead> PRESIDENTS" when he realizes he's accidently walked into Childress's American History class.
One thing's for sure, Samuel L. Jackson sure knows how to "Give to Cezar what is Cezar's." (Not a misspelling of Caesar -- Cezar is the name of a "Severely Emotionally Disturbed" student.)
A great screenplay, brilliantly photographed, excellent sound design.
The ambiguity of Garfield's moral character is interesting to me-- He is never *shown* to do anything wrong, (with the exception of yelling at someone in a road-rage incident,) but there are some *implications* of wrongful behaviour. (Don't wanna give anything away, so I'm treading carefully.) Even these *implied* actions are ambiguous-- Do the circumstances justify them? The writer clearly wants us to think about it. Hard.