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The
Hurricane
viewed January 23, 2000 at the UA Alexandria
For full
information about this film, click
here
Sometimes I
forget the sadness of going to a movie. That
sadness usually emerges when I go alone, normally under the
pretense that I had no other choice but to head off into
the world of dreams unaccompanied, except by the people sitting in isolated spots around
me. Perhaps for a moment those people will serve
as my mirror and I'll panic slightly about my life, how
uninspired it may be that I have to resort to movies to
fulfill my existence, before the
projectionist directs my attention back to the screen,
to more blissful moments of identification. And
lately I have been spared of this routine with trips to
the cinema with my brother, back for winter break, my
mom, a friend or two, and on this particular blessed
weekend, my girlfriend. There is nothing like
having a girlfriend in the theater to make one feel like
he's not one of the weird people.
And so,
after a Sunday dinner of burritos in the Castro, my
girlfriend and I decided to watch The Hurricane, both of us being
deep admirers of Denzel Washington and all he stands
for: basically, really admirable things like justice and
dignity. We went
to the Alexandria on Geary, a slightly decrepit theater
whose days are numbered thanks to the stadium-seat
megaplexes across town. We squeezed our legs into
our seats and tried to lose ourselves in the injustices
suffered by "Hurricane" Rubin Carter, when the
lone man sitting in the row in front of me, two seats to
the left, turns and hisses, "You've been rocking
your knees into my back. Say sorry!" Before I
had a chance to say a word he persisted: "Say
sorry! Now!" I just clammed up, shifted
my legs and stared at the screen. Eventually he turned
away, but the damage had been done. The magic of
the place was lost. My girlfriend and I were now
in the presence of a weird loner.
Fortunately my girlfriend is very good at caressing,
but another half hour had to pass before I could really
concentrate on the film. It wasn't just the
unpleasantness of the man's outburst; it was the fact
that he was alone that troubled me. I pondered how alone he
might be to act so unsociably, the persecution he must feel to have to blow up
at me because he felt my knees distending his personal
space. I felt a mix of pity,
disgust, and fear not just for him but for myself, that I
would see so much of myself in him.
If I were to use the old metaphor of life being a
prison, I wonder to what extent I am incarcerated.
Going to movies is one of the most liberating feelings I
get these days, because it is one of the rare moments
that I feel that I am doing something that I really want
to do, the experience completely controlled by me, to
subject myself to an alternative reality. The rest
of the time I am just working, primarily to earn income,
or living at home, mostly to fulfill extraordinary
filial obligations for a peculiar family situation that
ends up stifling my social life. I go through a
lot of my life not unlike The Beatles in A Hard Day's
Night, barely fulfilling obligations while looking
around for an escape to song and dance. That kind
of release, of life set to music, visual as well as
aural, is what movies are to me.
And yet, these painful shocks of recognition recur,
when I see a sad, solitary figure keeping his eyes to
himself as he hunches in his seat, and I wonder if my
life is really being well-spent, devoted to dwelling in
the Platonic cave, shutting myself out from the rest of
living. These were where my thoughts stood as the
imprisonment of Rubin Carter continued to play out on
the wall facing me.
The most compelling moments in The Hurricane,
a movie which otherwise is a conventional set of plot
points strung by ideas of black liberation as told by
white storytellers, occur when Carter ponders what in
his own self, his hopes and desires, are actually
contributing to his imprisonment. Having been
disappointed repeatedly by the failed appeals of his
lawyers and supporters, not a few of which include major
celebrities, he reaches a point where the most desirable
option is to give up on physical freedom for the sake of
concentrating on mentally transcending his
confinement. And yet a black boy whose mind has
been expanded by Carter's memoirs insists on entering
his life and pushing him to want freedom. Carter
now must struggle against his own supporters, wondering whether to
let them torment him with hope.
Compared to this genuine dilemma of vulnerability in
the face of promise, the rest of the film is flat and
predictable. (Even Washington's proud performance
is somewhat derivative of his brilliant work as Malcolm
X). In the face of Carter's struggles, my own
dilemmas seemed slight -- especially since I am very
comfortable submitting myself to the prison of film; in
the face of the larger prison my life has become, the
nature of my solitary confinement is preferable.
But every so often, there will be that lonely-looking
person sitting a few rows away to shake me out of my
satisfaction and wonder about possibilities.
Except on this particular occasion, I had someone else
beside me, whose presence in my life offers
possibilities that seem very promising indeed. And
like what Rubin Carter realizes in the film, if such
people are around, the walls start to come
down.
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