Cool Hand Luke: An Appreciation

Man, Paul Newman is one cool guy.

As I'm getting older, I'm beginning to appreciate the past more and more. The music I'm listening to is a pretty straight diet of old blues, country, blue grass and spirituals, the books I'm reading are, for the most part, history, and the films I'm watching haven't been on the New Release shelf at Blockbuster for months. Sure, I still see new films, and I appreciate them, but they're rarely the big studio pictures. I'd rather see one Primer than ten different Ashley Judd movies that somehow all have the same plot.

So, when I do go to the flicker shows, It's usually for some behemoth of a film that really demands a viewing on the big screen. I'm seeing Hitchhiker's Guide at the Ziegfeld tomorrow, and I think that's going to be fantastic.

But, when it comes to what I'm renting from the store these days, I'm finding myself reaching back instead of contiuing forward. I'm tempted to go all crotchety-old-man, and say that the past was better than the present. But that's not true. We tend to lionize the past, and there were just as many lousy films made back in the day as there were good ones.

Still, there's something about older dramas that just seems more intimate, more affecting, than most of what we see from the Studios these days.

Example numero Uno:

Cool Hand Luke

A few months back I rented Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. I liked it a lot, despite the neo-psychedelic Burt Bachrach moments. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. A pretty damn fine Western is galloping along on the backs of two madly charasmatic lead actors (Newman and Redford), and then suddenly, the forever 70's sound of Bachrach is invading from all sides, turning said Western into something the Beatles might have approved of in the Sitar strumming, Opium smokin' days. There's a loooong choral number in the middle of the film that seems like it goes on for ten minutes. And it's maddening.

I liked Newman in the film so much that I decided to try another one he's famous for. Cool Hand Luke is a fairly traditional old school drama. At moments, its a little too traditional. Older films can have a stiff, stagey quality to them, with over the top acting and false notes. They also tend to move along a lot slower. It's hard not to notice these things. For the most part, though, the movie is still very watchable.

The story's not dissimilar to the Shawshank Redemption. Lucas Jackson (Newman) gets sent to a chain gang camp for cutting the heads off parking meters in a drunken stupor. He's got two years in the clink for this (and causes me to wonder about the penal system. He cuts the heads off of parking meters and gets two YEARS?), and its evident from the start that Jackson's a different cat than the other cons serving their time. He is, like Tim Robbins' Andy Dufresne, a bit of a troublemaker.

But this isn't the Shawshank Redemption. Its a darker, more complicated film. Yes, there's some over acting. Yes, its slow in parts. But Cool Hand Luke tells some pretty devastating truths in some pretty understated ways. It's closest kin that I can think of might be Nicholson's One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest.

And there's some pretty sharp funny bits, too. Carl the Floorwalker's speech to the inmates on their first night in the bunks (Anyone who gets up without askin' goes in the box, anyone who doesn't remember their number goes in the box, anyone who doesn't remember a ridiculously complicated laundry system goes in the box, etc, etc) is like a precursor to the Simpsons, or Family Guy. THose shows both pushed joke times far beyond what could be considered funny, yet that somehow made the joke funnier (See: Peter Griffen rocking and holding his knee for what feels like a full minute) , and that's what this film does. It starts out as kind of funny in its repetition, then becomes monotonous, and then pushes out beyond that, becoming hysterical in its sheer length.

There's also the famous egg eating scene, which is fun, though again, much more subdued than anything you'd see today.

But ultimately, Cool Hand Luke is a good, solid older film because its unsettling. What, exactly, is the message of the film? If you haven't seen the film, I recommend that you do. I don't want to spoil the end for you, and I won't. Needless to say, Luke doesn't end up quite like Robbins at the end of Shawshank. No sunny field and Wise Old Morgan Freeman for him.

Can people escape themselves? Can they escape society? Can they change?

I'd say yes. Cool Hand Luke says no.