So, I just had a pile of bricks dropped on my head. Not all at once, mind you, brick by skull crushing brick. By the end of the film, The Changeling, I felt not so much catharsis, not so much some hard won wisdom, as much as complete numbness, and then I saw why, as the writer and director’s name flashed on the screen. Life sucks. It really really sucks. Apparently that hadn’t registered well enough with me and Clint Eastwood thought he’d correct that problem. While critics and Hollywood insiders praise his brave, incisive films and his tireless work ethic, I find his movies…well, what? Indulgent? Annoying? His reputation seems almost unassailable in Hollywood circles, talk shows, and trade rags. He treats important themes, fair enough. One might even say he treats difficult themes, war, child abduction, euthanasia, homicide, corruption, cover ups, injustice writ large. His films are roundly lauded: Unforgiven, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Sands of Iwo Jima, The Changeling, each of them making noise in their respective Oscar seasons. But after all these well packaged let-downs, each and every one overhyped and underwhelming, I will not likely pay to see his late-life crisis-inspired Gran Torino. I myself have a fondness for tragic drama, but I prefer mine to move toward or through some kind of catharsis or at least some kind of wisdom, some kind of subtle insight into the human soul, not just a monochromatic fecal shade of brown. The message, repeatedly, seems to be, “life really sucks, and oh, I don’t really care for satisfying character arcs.” An apologist might call his films “an unflinching look at the underbelly of the human experience.” (That’s about as Leonard Maltin as I can get for now). In a satisfying drama, however, moments of despair are counterbalanced by moments of some lightness, of buoyancy, not merely lesser or greater moments of despair. We must see and feel, not only have it implied, in the story that existence is worthwhile. Futility seems to be at the heart of Clint’s films. One is left with a sense not so much of the triumph of hope or humanity in the face of overwhelming despair, one only feels the despair. It’s like the screamo teenager who wants us to wake up and realize, life just plain sucks and there’s nothing you can do about it. It is the equivalent of watching a dog get run over by a car, repeatedly, for two hours, in a monochromatic close-up. And when a character shows up who might suggest that, this time, the dog might not get run over, they keep getting interrupted, until, at long last…the dog gets run over again, and then, just when we might find out why the dog got run over, there’s a slow motion tracking shot of the precise moment when the tires crush Fluffy’s furry throat. And yet, by this time, we know it’s coming, we’ve seen it 73 times already, and we’re numb to it. And precisely then, Eastwood lingers. In an Eastwood film, every bit of characterization serves not to actually flesh out a believable, relatable character, not to counterbalance the soul crushing weight of the dead dog, but only to drive home how crappy it is that dogs get run over, just how disgusting it really is, and that probably, it happens all the time and that’s just the way it is. In, say, a Spielberg film that also treats tragic themes, Saving Private Ryan, or The Color Purple, it is the warmth of human relationship that underscores and counterbalances the tragedy. For Eastwood, human relationships are perpetually distant, strained, even the oldest of friends, and things seem truly pointless, futile, as saith Ecclesiastes. But even the writer of Ecclesiastes knew there is a time to laugh and a time to cry. That’s also what makes for enduring cinema, say, Shawshank Redemption (ok, maybe a bit too hopeful at the end), or even this year’s Slumdog (ok, so it’s supposed to be a fairy tale) and Milk (ok, so that’s another movie Eastwood couldn’t have ever possibly pulled off...you gotta give 'em hope Mr. Eastwood). His movies may be unswerving, unflinching, but they lack something essential: a heart. And maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t have it. Eastwood has been noted for his swiftness, cranking out films in a relatively short amount of time. One element that certainly receives short shrift from Eastwood are moments of connection between characters, moments that allow the viewer to feel connected to the characters. This must be revealed, must be part of the performance, yet his characters lack specificity. In "A Mighty Heart" Jolie’s character and her husband are both fleshed out, one sees them at home together, their ease, their love, it is not merely a wife and her husband, who ends up being beheaded (this is a film which Eastwood would have absolutely butchered). In The Changeling, in which Jolie’s character is in a similar situation, she comes across as a type; she is simply “a mother.” It is axiomatic in writing that we experience the general through the specific. For Eastwood, we experience the general through the generic, as long as we take it and beat the living crap out of it. There is no real tenderness, just numbness, bleakness. For each Eastwood film, there is at least one inexplicable moment of absolutely crappy acting. In Mystic River it is the voice acting of the anonymous callers that could have used several more takes, if not altogether different casting. The police chief in The Changeling might have also warranted a few more readings before the camera started rolling. I did not see Million Dollar Baby and am unqualified to comment, but Sands of Iwo Jima took what could have been a solid film in safer hands and made it overwrought, oversaturated, and, again, numbing. He is like a music producer who overcompresses all their tracks out of habit. The music sounds lifeless, because it can’t breathe. There is no sense of scope, breadth, depth, dimension, just violence, such that Flannery O’Connor’s age old phrase “regeneration through violence” might be turned on its head. In Eastwood, we have only degeneration through violence. Please become a producer.
