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Movie Reviews
Women in Prison
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Cool Hand Luke (1967) |
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| Paul Newman in one of his greatest roles as "Cool Hand" Luke. |
An American classic, Cool Hand Luke (1967) is as much a product of its time as any important movie ever made. CHL marks the beginning of the end of the cycle of American movies about rebels standing up to authority. In many ways it is the apotheosis of such movies, providing in one fell swoop both one of the most appealing of the rebels, while at the same time fundamentally questioning whether the "establishment" is at all vulnerable to rebellion. It is, at its core, a pessimistic film... pessimistic about the possibility of justice, of reform, and of individualism. In the end Luke dies for his sins, and to an outside observer, his reification as a folk legend among a small band of convicts seems like a hollow victory at best. (Although obviously, the parallel to the founding of Christianity is striking.)
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| Clearing weeds on a dusty road. |
Compared to James Dean's whiny Jim Shark (Rebel Without a Cause (1955)), Marlon Brando's moronic Johnny (The Wild One (1954)), and Dustin's Hoffman's proto-slacker Benjamin Braddock (The Graduate (1967)), Paul Newman's Lucas (Luke) Jackson is a more fully-formed and appealing character. A war hero, Luke is sentenced to two years in prison for cutting the heads off parking meters. This minor act of rebellion lands him on a chain-gang, consigned to hard-labor on dusty southern roads. Why does Luke engage in petty destruction? Well, he's drunk at the time, but that isn't a sufficient explanation. We're told later in the movie that Luke has always been a non-conformist, and the movie seems to feel that is enough. Personally, I suspect that the Luke is working through issues related to his wartime service (and, indeed, at one point Luke apologizes to God for killing during the war). In any case, whatever the reason for his behavior, he ends up in prison.
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| The Captain, communicating just fine for now welcomes the new inmates. |
At first, the other prisoners are suspicious of Luke. They see him as a glib con-man. The top-dog, Dragline (George Kennedy), warns him and the other new prisoners to learn the rules, thus echoing the instructions of the warden (Strother Martin) and barracks guard (Clifton James). The rules include obeying all instructions, asking for permission to do virtually anything, and, of course, not trying to escape. The warden, who goes by "Captain," succinctly warns, "Now, it's all up to you. Now I can be a good guy, or I can be one real mean son-of-a-bitch. It's all up to you."
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| Though beaten, Luke refuses to stay down. |
Slowly, though, Luke's infectious spirit wins over the other inmates. He faces off against Dragline in a weekend boxing match which is the guards' way of allowing inmates to settle disputes among themselves. Dragline beats him to a pulp, but despite the entreaties of the other prisoners and ultimately Dragline himself, Luke refuses to stay down. (Eddie Murphy pays homage to this scene in Life (1999).) Finally Dragline is too disgusted to continue. He walks away, leaving the ring to the battered and wobbly Luke. This is the turning point of the movie, and ostensibly demonstrates its main theme, that spirit can overcome material adversity.
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| Luke and a huge pile of eggs. Kids, do not try this at home! |
Later on, Luke turns himself in a prison idol. First he coolly bluffs another prisoner out of a big hand at poker, thus earning his nickname. He later leads a revolt of sorts by spurring the men to pave a road faster than the guards could imagine (thus robbing the guards of the satisfaction of seeing the men suffer through a particularly brutal job). Finally in a famous sequence, to pass the time on a rainy day, Luke bets that he can eat 50 hardboiled eggs in an hour. As the seconds tick down, a sickly-looking Luke manages to choke down the last egg to win the bet. Again, Luke's indomitable spirit seems to triumph.
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| The symbol of authority. |
But this is just a prelude to the main dramatic portion of the movie. Luke's popularity with the prisoners makes him unpopular with the guards who see his effect on the men. The guards are an interesting mix. Some are clearly time servers, in many ways as much prisoners as the inmates themselves. Others are portrayed as more sadistic, deriving pleasure from seeing the men broken and suffering. Ultimately, however, Luke runs into problems with Boss Godfrey (Morgan Woodward). Godfrey doesn't speak at all throughout the movie, and he always appears either in shadows or with his eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses. He is a crack shot, however, a skill he demonstrates on several occasions. Godfrey represents the silent, immutable, repressive (and deadly) power of the establishment.
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| Singing for his dead mother, Luke shows his human side. |
One day Luke receives a telegram that his mother has died. Captain takes this as an opportunity to break Luke, locking him in the "box" until after the funeral to prevent Luke from trying to escape. He portrays this preventive punishment as routine, but clearly he is responding to Luke's temperament and personality as much as anything else. Of course, being a rebel, Luke's confinement encourages him to try to escape. Luke doesn't have much on the outside and he seems relatively content to serve out his time in prison until his punishment gets him in a rebellious mood.
Luke saws his way through the barracks floor, and manages to elude his pursuers for a day. As he's running, he is constantly smiling, enjoying the adventure of it all. Finally, though, he is recaptured. Upon his return, Captain has him fitted with leg irons telling Luke it is for his own good. Luke's reply, "I wish you'd stop bein' so good to me, Captain," enrages the warden who cracks him with his whip and then observes, "What we've got here is failure to communicate," thus triggering a couple of generations of bad Strother Martin impersonations.
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| A happy Luke enjoys the thrill of the chase, even if he is the prey. |
Almost immediately, Luke escapes again. This time he manages to avoid the law for several days... long enough to send a picture of himself with a gorgeous woman on each arm to Dragline. Naturally, this seals his status as prison idol. Unfortunately, Luke is soon recaptured. He is brought back to the barracks, brutally beaten and bloody. The inmates crowd around him, hoping to hear about his adventures on the outside. But Luke is no longer able or willing to sustain the hopes and imaginations of 49 other men. Instead, he confesses that the picture was a fake, and that all he did on the outside was work a couple of menial jobs. The process of disillusioning the other inmates continues as Captain and the guards wage a brutal campaign to break Luke's spirit. He's worked nearly to death and beaten when he pauses. Finally, he collapses and begs for mercy. Satisfied, the guards return Luke to the barracks where the other prisoners now shun him. In many ways, this is the most scathing scene in the movie, as his former idolaters now turn their backs on him when he shows he is human after all.
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| A skeptical Luke asks for guidance from above. |
Still, Luke is not completely beaten. Although acting the toady, his spirit soon revives. One day on road detail, he manages to escape in a truck having stolen the keys from all of the other trucks first to prevent pursuit. As he's escaping, Dragline hails him down and climbs aboard. The two drive away and hide the truck. Dragline is exuberant about their escape at first, but Luke is still a loner at heart. He suggest they split up. At first, Dragline is crestfallen and wonders what he'll do without Luke, but he manages to put a brave face on things and he heads in one direction while Luke approaches an empty church. Inside the church, Luke launches into a soliloquy where he asks God for guidance. But God's answer when it comes is an abandonment in the form of police cars surrounding the church and Dragline appearing to talk Luke into surrendering in exchange for preferential treatment. Dragline seems almost relieved to be recaptured, and it isn't difficult to understand why. Inside the camp, Dragline is a big man, while on the outside he is a poor, illiterate farm boy with no status or future. Luke seemingly realizes he is doomed whether or not he surrenders peacefully. He approaches a window and shouts out, "What we have here is a failure to communicate," mocking Captain's earlier comment. Boss Godfrey responds by shooting him through the throat. It isn't actually clear what Captain and the other guards think of this. They seem surprised by the shots, but Captain is not obviously angry.
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| Dragline tells to story of Luke to his apostles near the church where Luke was killed. |
The local police want to take Luke an nearby hospital, but Captain loads him into a car and insists on driving him over an hour back to the prison infirmary. It is a death sentence, of course, but as the car pulls away we see Luke grinning, either in victory because his spirit remains intact or in relief for his impending death. I think the scene can be read either way frankly. The final scene has Dragline telling the story of Luke to a group of inmates by the side of the road. In this sense, Luke's spirit lives even after his death.
That said, I think the optimistic reading on the Luke story is fundamentally misguided. Luke's victory at the end is hollow. Unlike Jim in Rebel Without a Cause and Johnny in The Wild One, the final message is not one of acceptance and breakthrough, but rather of nihilistic surrender. Indeed, Luke's story is paralleled in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) which is unmistakably grim in tone. That is why I think Cool Hand Luke marks a transition in the rebellious loner movie. After Luke we get characters like Randle Patrick McMurphy in Cuckoo's Nest and the doomed protagonists of Easy Rider (1969). Why is that I wonder? Cool Hand Luke preceded the "summer of love" by one year and Altamont by two. And yet, it's pessimistic theme would seem more at home in the 1970s than in the mid-1960s.
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| The ultimate in brushless car wash. |
Still, the movie really is ambiguous in many ways. There are a lot of very funny scenes, including Luke's initial assault on the parking meters, the lengthy sequence where a luscious blond exhibitionist lathers up her car as the inmates look on, and of course the scenes described above where Luke wins over the other inmates. Still, I don't see how anyone can walk out of this movie optimistic about reform or change or the ability of individualism to triumph over the "establishment."
The "establishment" is also portraying ambiguously. Not all the guards are bad guys. As Luke is put into the "box" following his mother's death, one of the guards uses the Nuremberg defense: "Sorry, Luke. Just doin' my job. You gotta appreciate that." Luke replies, "Aw, callin' it your job don't make it right, boss." But as portrayed in the movie, we understand the guard is himself constrained. Captain is also a mixed character. We get the sense that he really thinks that he is doing what is best for the prisoners. Only Godfrey is pure, mute malevolence. And among the prisoners, several dissent from the prevailing opinion about Luke. Society Red (an educated prisoner played by J.D. Cannon) notes that Luke has "got more guts than brain," a sentiment that many in the audience might echo. This is not a straight-forward call for prison reform by any stretch, and indeed, the movie barely comments on the severity of Luke's sentence for what seems like a petty crime.
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| Not exactly the kind of shower scene most of you were looking for... still, that's Dennis Hopper in the back middle, so we know he bathed at least once during the 1960s. |
In short, although ostensibly the movie is about the triumph of a unique spirit, it has a much more complicated, darker, and more ambiguous subtext. Cool Hand Luke is fundamentally a sympathetic but fair character study, and would have been difficult to make at any other time. In the 1930s, Luke would have been reformed by the end. In the 1950s, Luke might have managed to win over the warden in the end. In the 1970s, the story would have been sublimated in either an adventure tale (like "Papillon" (1973)) or been turned into a more straight-forward good versus evil narrative (like Cuckoo's Nest and director Stuart Rosenberg's other prison movie, Brubaker (1980)). I am not sure what the movie would have been like had it been made in the 1980s or 1990s. It would need either a happy ending, or a self-referential, ironic tone. As a character study, it works beautifully, carried along by Paul Newman's brilliant acting, and a strong supporting cast. Interestingly enough, 27 years later, Newman played a character would could pass for an older (grown-up) version of Luke in 1994's Nobody's Fool. If Luke had lived, he might have become Sully.
On another note, it is interesting to note the influence of Cool Hand on the prison movie genre. Life (1999) borrows heavily from Cool Hand Luke, and we can see its influences in movies as diverse as Caged Heat (1974), "Papillon" (1973), and the Shawshank Redemption (1994).
Although not a perfect movie, Cool Hand Luke is a bona fide classic. Beautifully acted (especially by Newman and Kennedy) and intellectually challenging, it rewards multiple viewings. On a final note, according to IMDb, Telly Savalas was originally cast as Luke, which seems hard to believe. The 1960s were apparently a stranger time than I realized if Telly Savalas and Paul Newman were ever considered interchangable.
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