“You should watch more movies,” a workmate told me. “Have you ever seen Goodfellas?”
“No,” I said, “I haven’t seen most movies.”
“Watch Goodfellas,” he said. So, last night, I did.
Not sure how I got to be a non-movie guy. Short attention span, maybe, or maybe because movies are shown in the dark, so I go to sleep. It might be because movies tend to go light on substance and long on violence, which makes me feel ill. Whatever the case, I am a movie illiterate, a cenophobe, which, according to my workmate, is not good.
Hence Goodfellas.
It did not start well. The opening scene consists of three gangster stabbing a bound and gagged man to death in the trunk of a car. The guy screams in terror, blood spatters everywhere, and they finish the job by shooting him multiple times until he is motionless. The thugs appear satisfied with themselves.
My workmate told me that this was a classic movie, a blockbuster etc etc, so I didn’t shut it off right away. It has to get better, I thought. Millions of people can’t be wrong; there’s gotta be more.
There was more. Character development, for instance. Beside the non-stop blood-spattering, there was some character development, primarily featuring a teenager progressing from innocence to the most reprehensible, sociopathic criminal imaginable. A couple of females progressed (or regressed) from innocent to complicit in crime to I’m not sure what. Dead mostly. You wouldn’t want any of the male characters for your neighbor; if they did change at all, it wasn’t for the better. As for movement towards enlightenment or maturity or any of that good stuff, there wasn’t much, unless you understand cynical nihilism as enlightenment.
Then there was some plot. I think. In a nutshell, various relationships/alliances were formed, most of which ended in betrayal and murder. As I remember, one thug’s mother didn’t get killed, and maybe a few others, but most did. And, if they didn’t die, their lives were shattered by the goings on in gang land. Mostly, plot consisted of a relentless, bloody descent into darkness. At least that’s what I got out of it.
“So why is Goodfellas so widely acclaimed?” I asked my movie aficionado workmate.
“Lots of things,” he said. “Great acting. Great cinematography. Great realism. Everything good art should be.”
“But it’s nihilistic,” I protested. “ There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s just darkness and violence and despair and then the end. There’s no point to it.”
“It ain’t for everybody,” my workmate allowed. I tried the same line on my son, who is about the same age, and he said, “ maybe that is the point. For millions of people, that’s their reality.”
Well, I guess so. But how about other aspects of reality; truth and beauty, for instance? I know they don’t sell as well, but doesn’t a steady diet of violence in art produce a steady practice of violence in society ? Isn’t there something wrong with stoking the bloodlust for profit? Life copying art and all of that…
After a brisk discussion of these issues, my workmate suggested I try “Driving Miss Daisy” next. Maybe he thinks it will be less offensive to my delicate senior sensitivities. One thing’s for sure: if it opens with carnage and butchery like the last one, I’m gonna switch channels. That stuff makes me want to puke, literally.
In the meanwhile, thanks to my workmate for the free movie education. Never too old to learn….
Comments