Cool Hand Luke (1967)

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No Zihuatenejo

I can't help but compare this film to The Shawshank Redemption. It's not because they're similar; they share little other than the themes common to most prison films. In recent years, Shawshank has become the prison movie of record: everyone's seen it, almost everyone likes it, and it inexplicably floats to the top of populist best-of lists. But I don't like it, and Cool Hand Luke illustrates why.

The Shawshank Redemption is a decent film, there's no doubt about that; it's just overrated. It's "deep" enough to be more profound than than most of Hollywood's output, but it's neither complex nor subtle. A series of clumsy scenes play the viewer's heartstrings like those of a lute: horrible things happen to a sympathetic protagonist, but he finds a happy end; Brooks, tragically, was here; the villains are brought to justice. The audience goes home happy.

What sets Cool Hand Luke above The Shawshank Redemption is that, when Andy plays The Marriage of Figaro over the PA system, Red's voice-over tells us:

It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away...and for the briefest of moments -- every last man at Shawshank felt free.

It's because it was made clear that Andy was innocent; because he had to be raped to be broken; because Hadley had to be a monster to be dehumanized and dehumanizing. No interpretation is necessary; it's all there, delivered, via voice-over, direct to the ears. With a spoonful of sadness and more than a dash of smug self-satisfaction, it goes down well.

Cool Hand Luke covers some of the same ground. Brutal guards, and a small, petty man cowering behind them. A dehumanizing system, but one made all the more horrifying by its lack of malice: Hadley was cruel; here, they just don't care. And it's a paean to freedom, and to the sort of man who, like Andy, just isn't meant to be caged.

But at the end of The Shawshank Redemption, the audience gets its vicarious escape, its vicarious victory. Andy's gone from cold fish to folk hero. If Luke goes any which way, by contrast, it's the opposite. He goes from odd-smiling, egg-eating iconoclast to desperate anti-hero. He escapes, but it's not for us, nor for anyone else. Like he says: "Oh come on. Stop beatin' it. Get out there yourself. Stop feedin' off me."

Unlike Shawshank, Luke isn't a free ride. And you get what you pay for.

- Sam - 2006-08-21 07:46:35