A
PERFECT WORLD (Nov 1993)
Director: Clint Eastwood.
Writers: John Lee Hancock.
Starring: Kevin
Costner, Clint Eastwood, Laura Dern, T.J. Lowther, Keith Szarabajka,
Leo Burmester, Bradley Whitford, Ray McKinnon, Bruce McGill,
Gabriel Folse, Dennis Letts, John M. Jackson, Connie Cooper,
Jennifer Griffin.
Nature
versus nurture. Fathers versus sons. Justice versus The Law.
T-bones versus tater tots.
The
power of Clint Eastwood's films has always come from Eastwood's
bravado in addressing moral ambiguity. (Even his death-dealing
avenger films - the DOLAR trilogy, JOSEY WALES, the DIRTY HARRY series, etc. - are so powerful not
because of his avengers' acts of righteousness, wrath or
revenge, but because the camera never shies away from revealing
the darkness of its "heroes.")
Of
all the films Eastwood has directed and/or starred in, A PERFECT WORLD is the first where he has consciously
and willfully removed his domineering presence from the
limelight of the leading role, thereby allowing a clearer
vision of the themes so often obscured by his camera-hogging
avengers.
Set
in the '60s, when it was still feasible to escape prison
via a fashionable hole-in-the-wall, the story follows escapee
Butch Haynes (Kevin Costner) and his young hostage, Philip
(7-year-old T.J. Lowther), keeping one step ahead of a manhunt
across Texas helmed by Sheriff Red Garnett (Eastwood).
As
the story follows both hunter and hunted alternately, we
realize that each is not a cut-and-dried representation
of "good" or "evil" and by movie's end,
director Eastwood and writer John Lee Hancock, as well as
superbly nuanced performances by the cast, make us doubt
exactly who the bad guy is, or whether this movie had
any "bad guys" at all.
As
implied from his rap sheet, Butch seems to possess the genes
for his profession - but the question arises (via Laura
Dern's criminologist, Sally Gerber, saddled on Red's manhunt
for political reasons) as to whether Butch's broken home,
prostitute mother or abusive, criminal father nurtured the
low road.
Like
every psychotic who tries to assuage an unquenchable emptiness,
Butch, "raised in a dime-a-dance whorehouse,"
with an ingrained suspicion for father figures due to his
"old man not being worth a damn," develops a paternal
instinct for his hostage, unconsciously becoming the father
that he himself wished he had. When they steal a picnicking
family's car, Butch chastises Philip for laughing at the
father for surrendering the car so quickly, saying the protective father was "a fine family man - that's about the best thing a fella
can hope to be."
In
his direct street vernacular, Butch schools Philip on the
morals of stealing, the futility of religion, even reassuring
him on his "puny pecker."
It
is scenes like this last one where Eastwood shows his mettle.
He has never shied from "anti-social" elements
(indeed, most of his characters are "anti"-heroes),
yet in an over-sensitive society which pules at the slightest
innuendo that imperils children physically or psychologically,
Eastwood lets his camera play over scenes which would make
a less talented director quake in his boots over the ensuing
public outcry: non-violence lobbyists could have targeted
the scenes of mistreated children; gun-control noisemakers
could have a field day over the scenes of children wielding
guns; and the child-porn doomsayers might easily have taken
issue with Philip's superhero-small underpants (in which
he spends the whole first act) and the fact that his pecker
is peeked at by grown men, one who insults him and the other
who reassures him. Eastwood never plays these scenes for
prurience, gratuitousness or advocacy - they are integral
to the power of the story, and it must have taken an immeasurable
force of will to convince the blockheaded MPAA not to perfunctorily
excise these aspects.
It's
good to be The Clint.
A PERFECT DAY moves at a rapid pace (though its actual "action" scenes are no more than nominal car-chases and threatening behavior), the writing so sharp that
Butch's psyche is revealed in almost every line of seemingly
innocent dialog, one astounding scene establishing him as
both didactic and insane, when he elucidates to his escape
partner, the ignorant and volatile Pugh (Keith Szarabajka),
the difference between "threat" and "fact"
in a nose-shattering lesson. When Pugh hisses, "I'm
gonna kill you for that!" Butch replies: "And
that's a threat."
Pugh:
"You're crazy!" Butch: "And that's a fact."
Young hostage Philip,
whose father "ain't around," bonds with Butch
as the powerful, albeit unbalanced, father that he finds
he needs to segue into manhood. Lowther, in a heavily emotional
role which would be burdensome for an actor of any age,
is nothing short of brilliant, retaining a sad and trusting
ingenuousness, thankfully never stooping to insufferably
precocious or ingratiatingly cute. The film might have degenerated to the cliché of both protagonists
finding in each other what was missing from their lives,
but the resolution of their relationship is as far from Disney
as Clint Eastwood is from Ryan Seacrest.
We
discover that Red Garnett may have inadvertently been responsible
for Butch's low road, as he confesses to Sally that when
Butch was still a juvenile, it was Garnett who "bought
that judge a t-bone and told him to send the boy up"
for four years for a small crime, believing it would curb
young Butch's criminal leanings. He was wrong. The ineffectuality
of the criminal justice system is obvious (rehabilitation
simply being a taxpayers' black hole, serving as delayed
recidivism), working against the very people it supposedly
serves - the cops and the robbers. Red, like Butch,
would have been damned either way.
The
Perfect World of the title may refer to nothing more than
Butch's dim idea of a goal - Alaska - which he bases on
a lone postcard from his no-good dad; one perfect picture
representing a life Butch will never attain. But it may
also refer to the kind of life Butch tries to make for himself
in the present. Even though his paternal instincts eventually
flare up into psychosis, which proves his undoing, for one
brief moment, Butch seemed to have a perfect world of his
own design: he got the chance to impose his notions of parenthood
on parents who took their influential roles for granted,
played the role of a father himself and, most importantly,
gained the unconditional love of a child who made him feel
like his "parenting" was a success.
The
final scenes, involving the gaff-taped family and Philip's
wrenching decisions and devotion to Butch are as disturbing
as they are moving. And as the stirring score of Clint regular,
Lennie Niehaus, accompanies Clint's trademark final camera
pan over the landscape, Butch's unflappable last moments
may signify that he has realized a final perfect wish in
this imperfect world - to die a free man.
A
PERFECT WORLD (Nov 1993)
Director: Clint Eastwood.
Writers: John Lee Hancock.
Starring: Kevin
Costner, Clint Eastwood, Laura Dern, T.J. Lowther, Keith Szarabajka,
Leo Burmester, Bradley Whitford, Ray McKinnon, Bruce McGill,
Gabriel Folse, Dennis Letts, John M. Jackson, Connie Cooper,
Jennifer Griffin.
