BY ADAM M. SCHENCK
“Hell or High Water,” a Western-heist film combination starring Jeff Bridges and Chris Pine, stands out in the midst of Hollywood’s cautious, ho-hum summer releases. While the movie does not expand the film form in terms of narrative or production, this well-crafted work does instruct us about our particular cultural moment.
The film begins with a panning shot of a dusty, forgotten West Texas small town with a surprise piece of graffiti on a building: “Three tours in Iraq and no bailout for me.” From there we see brothers Toby and Tanner Howard begin their high-risk plan to save their family’s ranch: They will go on a bank-robbing spree until they’ve stolen and laundered enough cash to ensure that Toby’s sons can earn the monthly income from the oil discovered on the land.
We know there will be a showdown at high noon. But for whom shall we root: Robin Hood (Pine) stealing from the rich bankers, or the caustic, soon-to-retire lawman (Bridges)? Although the Occupy movement sits years behind us, “Hell or High Water” introduces characters who live the “inequality for all” political moment we see daily.
A scene with Henry Fonda, in 1940’s “Grapes of Wrath,” another story about dusty Okie-Texans placed in dire straits by, you guessed it, the inevitably exploitative laws of capitalism, is similar to a scene in “Hell or High Water.”
In “Grapes,” the Joads refuse to leave their farm even as a local threatens their shack of a home with a bulldozer that will level the building. The man on the dozer says he works for the bankers: “Three dollars a day. I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner … I got a wife and kids.”
In “Hell,” an exhausted and spiritually spent Toby stands in a banker’s office with payment to save the ranch—the day the bank will foreclose. A man with a customer service smile tells Toby that the payment will give him ownership outright, including back taxes, which the bank has paid “as a courtesy.” Of course, the bank paid the taxes in order to gain legal power over the family in order to make foreclosure a sure thing.
Both scenes show the conflict into which an exploitative system places the common man. In “Grapes,” the working man has no honest living to make other than as the mechanized tool of the capitalist, destroying the homes of his neighbors.
In “Hell,” exploitation and force of law appear with a smile; however, in the latter, Toby has found a way to keep his property—but only through a scheme that killed his brother and his neighbors. Both films do not flinch.
It was little surprise to me that recent demographic data showed that the U.S.’s fastest-dropping age of mortality was for white working-class men, who commit suicide and abuse drugs and alcohol at steeply growing rates. The same group forms the backbone of support for the new racist-authoritarian version of the Grand Old Party.
Indeed, we are still putting the Joads and Tanner and Toby Howard into desperate situations. That more people blame themselves and die young instead of taking their anger out on “foreign” people should surprise us. What is the more heartless: to rob a bank, or for a society to disregard an entire class of honest working people?
Film, like the poor, will always be with us. Film is the realm of mood and affect; television orients toward plot and event. Hollywood worried in the late 1960s and early 1970s that the industry was dying a slow death. Then came “The Godfather” and many stories whose scale and social commentary could not be held by the smaller screen.
We stand at a similar cultural moment, and the Bible tells us again and again that there are no new stories. The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son. Lose not hope, ye of little faith—as long as we labor in craft and art, our art will match the gravity of our times.
The recently released “Hell or High Water” is now showing at the Grandview, St. Anthony Main, the Lagoon and other local theaters.
Adam M. Schenck can be reached at [email protected].
