"grand torino" – A Reflection of Cinema
I had no idea how deeply this movie would affect me until the night I saw it, and then I couldn’t sleep until around 4 in the morning. And I had never suffered from insomnia before!
I’ve admired Clint Eastwood for a long time, ever since his days as Rowdy Yates on the TV show “Rawhide.” From “Hang ‘Em High” to “Unforgiven” to his days as Dirty Harry on the streets of San Francisco and New Orleans, Clint has always been as much a “man’s man” as he is a “lady’s man,” something he hasn’t it’s easy for an actor (or a director) to achieve. In his role as “Walt Kowalski,” a bigoted and recently widowed Korean War vet who is particular about Pabst beers and an endless supply of cigarettes, Clint embraces this Pole in such a way that the viewer is always pulling at him. . Even when you’re gasping at the racial slurs he hurls at his Hmong neighbors, you know he’s doing it out of emotional pain. The man has just lost his wife; On top of that, he’s a combat veteran, who’s probably been suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) since 1952 when he earned a Medal of Valor.
The movie was shot in Detroit, and from the moment “Gran Torino” began, I was thrust back into my childhood on family visits to my grandparents’ house. They lived in a neighborhood like Walt Kowalski’s, and in a very similar house. His garage was tucked away in the back of the backyard, like Walt’s. My grandfather and father spent 50 years together in the auto industry, and like Walt, my father always rejected the idea of any car that wasn’t “made in America.” The church where Walt and his family attend his wife’s funeral looks exactly like the one in downtown Detroit where my family used to go to midnight mass every Christmas Eve.
Walt has two children with whom he has nothing in common. His granddaughter (Dreama Walker) is a royal brat who texts her friends during Walt’s wife’s funeral, and later that day, when she catches her smoking a cigarette in the garage, she asks who she’s meeting. will remain with the Gran Torino when he dies. .
Walt’s “redemption” gets off to an inauspicious start when the young priest who praises Walt’s wife’s funeral (played by Christopher Carley), visits the grieving widower and discusses life and death with him. Father Jablonsky says that he promised Walt’s wife that she would ask to hear Walt’s confession. Their relationship is a real tug-of-war because Walt says he only went to church for his wife and now that she’s gone he has no interest in that, not even a 27-year-old priest who knows nothing about life or society. death. . Still, over the next few weeks, Father Jablonsky persists, and his verbal jousting propels the film forward.
One day, Walt is on his front porch to witness a local Hmong gang try to force the neighbor’s son, Thao (Bee Vang) to join them. There’s a fight on the lawn, and when the group crosses into Walt’s front yard, that’s it. Walt steps in and the trajectory of his life is subtly changed. She forms a bond with his precocious neighbor, “Sue” (Ahney Her), who knows how to stand up to him and charm him. (A few Pabsts under his belt help out on this.) Sue is the one who mediates between Walt and his brother, Thao, who had tried to steal Walt’s beloved Gran Torino as a gang rite of passage. Thao isn’t cut out for gang membership, and he soon slips into Walt’s shoes just like Sue has. At one point, after Sue has forced him to go to his family’s house for a Hmong party on Walt’s birthday, Walt notes that he has had more fun with these “gook neighbors” than with Walt’s own family. he.
What happens at the end isn’t entirely unexpected, and I won’t spoil it for those of you who haven’t seen the movie. But what a delight to watch as the neighbors you once loathed become your truest and most unexpected “comrades in arms.”
I collapsed in the last scene as the credits rolled. It was a view of Lakeshore Drive by the yacht club, a destination I used to cycle to as a child and where I would sit on the grass looking out at the lake and contemplating my future. It was my fervent wish to become a writer and live in California, where I would meet my soul mate. My dream became reality. Wow. I guess the magic of Clint is that he brought that realization to the forefront of my mind. Thanks, Clint Eastwood. Thanks, Walt Kowalski. Thanks Detroit. Thanks California.