Sunday 1 February 2009

Do you feel lucky?

From time to time I stumble on a website and it keeps me going for days. Last year it was the satirical website Newsbiscuit from which I now get a daily e-mail with the story of the day. Newsbiscuit is a spoof e-news site. The best "Stories" are those which are patently a fiction but close enough to some of the absurdities of everyday life to  strike a chord of recognition. Yesterday's headline - "Government announces improvement in daylight hours" - was spot on.
This week I have stumbled across something better - and I trust and hope - legal. The site streams current movie releases and after enjoying  Frost/Nixon last week, I hit on another I would have taken in had the local cinema not closed down.
Its a Clint Eastwood piece called Gran Torino. Eastwood is the central character, Walt Kolowski, a former Korean War  veteran, recently widowed and aware now that the world is very different to the one in which he worked, married and raised a family.  The Eastwood persona at the start of the film is very much an older and angrier version of Harry Callahan from Dirty Harry. He is racially intolerant - not  a great advantage in a neighbourhood dominated by immigrants - but the story focuses on the  unlikely relationship between Eastwood and his neighbour's son, Thao,  who is part of a sizeable Hmong immigrant community where he lives. 
At one level the film is about racial tolerance - although not delivered with the power of the very wonderful Crash. But its real power is as a story of individual redemption. Eastwood's character - supported more than he thought he would ever need  by a young Catholic priest - puts his anger to one side and focuses on giving  Thao a chance in life that would otherwise have been denied him.  In turn the anger that consumes Walt is replaced by a real sense of purpose and, I would guess, inner peace.  Eastwood is now nearly 80 so he may not have too many more films in him. But this is a wonderful piece of story-telling and one with a spiritual dimension sadly missing from so much of what turns up in the cinema these days.


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