When Gran Torino (2008) ended, I knew I’d seen one of the best films of the year, and I soon began wondering why more people didn’t agree. Gradually, I realized that older folks liked it but younger folks were more critical. Gran Torino would have had a wider following if it had provided younger viewers with the background information older viewers possessed.
Let’s try. Over the last half century, what year were Americans in general most happy? (Yes, we have university professors who actually study this.) There is a great temptation to pick a recent year because as believers in progress we know that things are getting better and better—the new Blackberry is just out! But Americans were most happy in 1957, prime time for the protagonist Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood). This does not mean that everything was great, for, as Walt said, he’d had to go to Korea and kill. There was racism, particularly of whites against blacks, but people were hopeful it would end. When Little Rock, Arkansas, schools denied blacks entrance to schools, Republican President Eisenhower called in the army to enforce the desegregation law. There was a cold war with the Russians, but Americans knew beyond a doubt that theirs was the best way of life on the planet. The Russians launched Sputnik and caused America to question the quality of its school system, but Americans were confident they knew how to make the system better, and “structure of the discipline” courses started taking over the curriculum. In 1957, Betty Freidan surveyed other women who had graduated from Smith and found that if the wives and mothers had outside interests they were generally happy but if they focused relentlessly on being wives and mothers, they were disgruntled. Although Walt Kowalski’s prime was not an idyllic time, many people say it’s the best we’ve had, and we have to know something about it to appreciate its attraction and understand Walt.
Walt’s transformation from angry racist pig to dedicated friend of the Hmong neighbours is quite believable for a host of reasons. One: Walt is basically a fine man. This comes out when he bares his soul in confession, and the priest says, “Is that all!?” Two: While Walt is a racist, he is not as bad as he seems. It’s his way of talking. When Walt goes for a haircut, he and barber sling outrageous insults at each other because they are sort of buddies. In our era of political correctness, we can hardly imagine such a way of speaking. Three: the death of Walt’s wife opens Walt to the possibility of big changes. It reminds me of the university professor who went to India to confer with the Dalai Lama on scientific topics. An interviewer for a Buddhist journal asked the scientist what it was about the Dalai Lama that had such a big impact on him. He replied, not much. If you take someone who has recently retired from his life’s work and whose spouse has just died (or divorced), it doesn’t take very much influence to affect a huge change, such as going in with no interest in religion and coming out a Buddhist.
Four: Walt is lonely--wife dead, both son’s estranged, friends from the Ford plant long gone, and the old neighbourhood full of immigrants—so, if given half a chance, he is going to do something besides sit on the porch and drink Pabst Blue Label. Five: The opportunity presents itself when the charming teenager, Sue, from next door stands up to Walt and welcomes him, at the same time the Hmong in the neighbourhood shower Walt with gifts of flowers and food for his stand against the Hmong gang. Six: Walt slowly and reluctantly decides to mentor the Hmong boy from next door, Thao (Bee Vang). Although not a popular topic of conversation, research shows that a lot of men at or near the end of their career want to mentor someone up and coming. Walt has additional motivation because he wants badly to resurrect the old way of life. So he helps the kid get a construction job and develops the kid’s interest in mechanic’s tools—when we all know what is happening with the housing market and with the auto makers today. Seven: Because Walt’s biggest regret is the huge distance between him and his two sons, he wants to have another try at raising a young man. Walt still is not great at it, but good enough. Eight: Walt is coughing blood, needs every medical test under the sun, and is staring death in the face, so he wants to get serious, do something worthwhile, and not worry too much about the physical consequences.
For me, that is enough to understand where Walt is coming from and why he changes the way he does. Gran Torino is a good movie that packs a powerful punch.