An Easter Message About Movies and Human Destiny
No one trusts a happy ending anymore. A denouement—unless it’s sudden and violent or distinctly miserable—no longer works to round out a narrative. I first noticed this when, years ago, I saw the film House of Dark Shadows (1970), which was based on the TV series Dark Shadows. I don’t recall anything notable about the film other than that it was the first film I’d seen where at the end, Evil—in this case represented by a vampire—triumphed. I was 10 and it put into a state of philosophical normlessness. For if Evil triumphs in one context, then all ideas of Good are potentially disposable.
As time went on, this became the norm, reflecting a social sea-change. Fewer films gave the message that Good wins out in the end, or if it does, it’s always mitigated. Taxi Driver, The Godfather—any serious film conveyed this message. Others, like Rocky or Christopher Reeve’s Superman, were understood as pure fantasy and accepted as such.
I recently saw a couple of films by the Hong Kong director John Woo (A Better Tomorrow and The Killer). I hadn’t seen them in the 1980s and was curious. They present images of noble character traits, honest women, lasting bonds of friendship, and the battle of good and evil. If the same films were produced in Hollywood, they’d have zero credibility. The cultural distance allows us to accept it within the frame of its narrative. In the West, even superhero films, to be believable, have to mix up Good and Evil to stand a chance at the box office. Consider the Dark Knight Batman films, or the Superman films, where Clark Kent seems like he just walked out of an outpatient ward.
The same skepticism that affects fictional heroes eventually spreads to public life. Who can believe in an honest cop? A doctor who cares about their patients and not the bill? A politician who works diligently for their constituency? Imagine a story about honest politicians trying to create positive change rather than serving the interests of their career. Who could believe it? It’d have the same false ring as the Socialist Realism films produced in Soviet Russia which dealt with successful Five-Year Plans.
The message is clear: any adult knows that life is dark, miserable and hopeless. Believing anything else would be naive. Hence expressions like “get real” or “I wonder what he’s hiding!” Look at the Jeffrey Epstein case. Who’d have thought that the real end of successful adult male behavior is to have sex with 14yearold girls? That once the billions are made and deposited, the goal is to drunkenly roll around on the floor with underage sex slaves.
And long before Epstein, there was the case of the upstanding Louisiana U.S. Representative Bob Livingston, who righteously called for Bill Clinton’s resignation over the Monica Lewinsky affair. Later—thanks to the efforts of Hustler publisher Larry Flynt, who offered a million dollars to anyone with sexual dirt on Livingston—he resigned his post after an ex-mistress revealed they’d had an affair.
When public figures collapse, historical narratives soon follow. Take Christopher Columbus. In the course of my lifetime, he’s gone from a bold, far-seeing explorer who risked his life to prove a theory to a genocidal gold-chasing psychopath.
People aren’t simple. As John Huston’s character says in Polanski’s Chinatown when trying to justify raping and impregnating his own daughter, “Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything.”
It’s the message of 2000 years of Christianity. The question is how a person deals selfish and unreasonable behavior. You can accept it, “make terms with it” as Rita Hayworth says at the end of The Lady from Shanghai, or try to consciously recognize and fight against it. This is the message of Christ, that there’s a way out. It’s simple: our nature must be replaced with a higher form of morality. Once accomplished, human freedom is no longer equated with inescapable darkness or social and moral chaos.