Confessions of a Flick Junkie

"The German police [in The Great Dictator] thinking [the Jewish barber] is Hitler and he has to address a large gathering.



There of course he delivers his big speech about the need of love, understanding between people, but there is a catch, even a double catch: people applaud exactly in the same way as they were applauding Hitler. The music that accompanies this great humanist finale, the overture to Wagner's opera Lohenngrin is the same music as the one we hear when Hitler is daydreaming about conquering the entire world and where he has a balloon in the shape of the globe, the music is the same.

This can be read as the ultimate redemption of music, that the same music which served evil purposes can be redeemed to served the good, or it can be read - and I think it should be read - in a much more ambiguous way, that with music we cannot ever be sure, insofar as it externalises our inner passion music is always potentially a threat."

- Slavoj Zizek in The Pervert's Guide To Cinema


I'll have to remember to give Zizek a hug if I see him. Not only are his film criticisms perhaps the most revealing ramblings I've ever encountered, but he seems like a sad guy and could probably use it.

I thought of this passage on my way home from last night's screening of The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly. I'd been trying to unify the film to explain to a certain anonymous friend who thought it was too long & simplistic. I argued that the simple plot was deceptive, and she called me out on it, saying it was incredibly obvious (even though I'd viewed the film at least 3 times before first noticing it). I'm not great when it comes to face-to-face criticism.



In the closing sequence of the film, Blondie hangs Tuco for the last time in the film. This time Tuco must balance his weight on a ramshackle wooden tombstone that just happens to bear the shape of a cross. The implication I didn't get the chance to express last night was this: that religion serves as a flimsy buffer against the bleak nothingness of death, a way of domesticating meaninglessness. This, I would say, is the principal core of the film, and it wasn't until last night's ride home that I really understood to a full extent how it runs throughout.

Which brings me back to Zizek's commentary on music in film. Morricone's score has longed ranked among my favorites, but it also plays one of the most active roles in the development of this theme. When Angel Eyes has Tuco tortured in a barrack at the Badderville prison camp, he uses soft, melancholic music to drown out his screams. This movement is the same which appears earlier in the film as a backdrop to another setting which uses music to drown out the horrors of the world, a church.

Both of these buildings house some of the most violent pre-Bonnie-and-Clyde imagery known to cinema (extremely mild by today's standards, but no less effective). The mission is populated by amputees and corpses, and houses two outstanding confrontations (neither at gunpoint).

As Blondie recovers from exhaustion, Tuco has an epiphany. Not to become a better person, but how to pervert the principals of Christianity to placate his greed and trick Blond into revealing the name on the gold-filled grave. The idea comes to him as he stands before a painting of a crucifixion, Jesus' halo glowing like a light bulb over Tuco's head. He seems to thank God for the assistance by signing the cross (whatever that's called) that way he does where his motions seem to slip into a slit throat gesture. He goes in and promises Blondie that he will die soon and that he should make one final gesture of honor by revealing the location of the gold. He even glosses over the fact that he caused Blondie's condition by mentioning it was he who saved him: "Think if you'd been on your own."

After it becomes clear that Blondie will not be deterred in his stoic silence, Tuco tries to embrace his brother, a priest. Instead of warm familial love, he finds cold judgement. He demands redemption but finds indifference. He confronts his brother's hypocrisy but finds swift violence. Only after Tuco runs off does Manuel apologize. Is it not plausible that Tuco, in an effort to distance himself from his own loneliness imagines, that apology to still retain some connection with his brother (and thus with God)?



But the film does not so much function as a criticism of faith as a meditation on its nature. In the opening shot we witness the creation of Man: First a landscape, still and silent in its endless deadness. A dog howls somewhere beyond our range of perception, calling into existence (and into frame) an ugly, twisted face which waits uncomfortably for some kind of conflict to develop. He is both greater than the landscape and dwarved by it, and we are introduced to Leone's greatest narrative tool, his immediate juxtaposition between ultrawide landscapes and closeups so tight you can almost taste the sweat on the characters' brow.

The plot sticks with the three banditos and their hunt for gold almost exclusively throughout the film, but the real drama comes from the world and characters around them, the things which the characters are blind to until they're directly under their noses.

Leone's universe of war, corruption, and greed remains one of my favorite backdrops to any film and presents its residents with the dilemma of how to deal with it. Most try to avoid its ugly side or improve it, like the priests at the mission or the gun store owner who becomes a victim after patronizing one of the bad men he's selling security against. However, our three heros choose instead to rise below its vulgarity by being unashamedly more corrupt than the world around them, trying to outshoot, outrob, outfuck, and outrun it every step of the way.

But even they can never quite escape the suffering around them, and although Morricone's score diffuses the threat presented by reality by perverting it from desperate to exhilerating, occasionally there is silence and the Civil War sneaks back into the frame. Eventually the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly all face death at each other's hands at the center of a gigantic cemetary, testament to an already forgotten battle. They confront each other in what remains the greatest shootout ever filmed, each completely content in his own greed even as the army of corpses beneath them remind us how petty their conflict truly is.



PS: Korey, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Because of your completely wrong opinion of this masterpiece, I was able to appreciate it with more depth and beauty than a mere big screen viewing could've provided. You have my thanks.

PPS: Victoria, happy birthday, but Tom Waits still kicks ass. I will not sway in this.