I had posted this back in March on my Facebook notes.  Here’s a repost:

Probably a good month, month-and-a-half ago, a handful of people asked what my thoughts on Gran Torino are. By a handful of people, I really mean (remember) John and Jon…

Anyways, I finally got around to watching it today.

A lot of my Asian friends had commented on how much of the film was Clint Eastwood muttering racial slurs under his breath. True. (I was far more impressed by his “old man” grumblings and sighs of annoyance. “GrrMmmmmmMMMMhhhh, no more, no more!…-sniff- Oh okay, bring it in, bring it in…”) But I think the source of much upset regarding these racial slurs is really from the audience reaction. How the audience reacts to Eastwood’s character’s dialogue and sometimes monologues affected how I felt, at least, not towards the film, but towards the jerks sitting behind me.

Now…these guys behind me were big boys. Big in every way. Hefty men, rotund. They’d put their feet up, and shake the entire row of chairs in ways I’ve never felt before (I think the guy kept grinding one of his shoes against the other as he’d drop one foot from the top of the chair to the ground from time to time). Gargantuan noises. Eating. Talking. Unnecessary comments. These guys were nightmares to sit in front of. I don’t recall ever having such rude, unpleasant theater companions before.

Anyways, these guys seemed to be there more for the actual racial banter and jokes, rather than to watch an enlightening film about race, class, and age relations. [SPOILER ALERT] At the serenely violent end, the most vocal of the herd shouted out “I WASN’T EXPECTING THAT KIND OF ENDING!” Surely he was expecting something far more along the lines of Dirty Harry or The Good The Bad and The Ugly. Clint Eastwood really disappointed this guy.

But during the film, each time Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowalski, would spit out some sort of racial comment, these guys would be busting their sides with laughter. Sure, many of these moments were meant to be funny…but not really so much in the beginning…

I thought the film, however, was a fair shot at a socially conscious film. It had the feel of Boyz n the Hood plus a little western/war nostalgia that Eastwood’s presence alone brings to the screen. It’s a warm film about aging, death, and discovering the meaning of life. Certainly a socially significant film, not only because it examines cultural differences and socioeconomic struggles, but because it approaches issues that are essentially human.

When Kowalski uses the racial slurs, he does so not entirely out of hate. Or at all out of hate, even in the beginning. He echoes language that he grew up with, perhaps hyperbolically, but he uses it out of his ignorance towards his neighbors, or as a tool of intimidation before he has to resort to whipping out his pistol. Yet he subtly shifts his tone, though his language remains unchanged, to use slurs as terms of endearment, light teasing to which his neighbors take little offense. No one actually corrects Kowalski’s speech to tell him that it is deeply offensive, so his character, in character, makes no adjustments.

Granted, those hard, harsh words are hurtful to many. But taken in context, the point is a bit…null.

But the sad thing is that the subtle tone shift, the endearment and appreciation for the Hmong culture, and Kowalski’s new understanding of life itself, is likely lost on many of the…less perceptive audience members like my corpulent pals behind me.

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Other thoughts:

For the most part, the film has a sort of Italian neorealism essence about it. Non-professional actors, representing the lower-class lifestyle (think Slumdog Millionaire as a very recognizable modern example). However, it (like Slumdog) is a bit too tidy in the end to be neorealism. I think that’s more of a trend among American movies, though, rather than a specific fault of the film. Americans, especially now, really need that picker-upper. Europeans and Asians really seem to not mind that depressing, yet real-life ending. There’s always a ray of hope though…ambiguously… but in American films, we have a hard, tangible, but plastic-y happier-than-expected ending. And darn, does it feel good.

It was nice to see some Asian American representation in there. Sure, the Hmong actors weren’t fantastic, but keep in mind, they’re not professionally trained. At least they’re really Hmong, not *ahem* Chinese substituting as usual *coughmemoirsofageishacough*. It certainly worked to address some of the social difficulties Hmong communities face, and lower income Asians as well: gangs, poverty, familial pressures, etc. I’m sure it barely brushed the surface of many other problems, but save it for another film.

Just last week, I took a walk through the muggy Los Angeles air.  It was the kind of air that hangs thickly about you, and doesn’t quite suffocate more than it makes you forget to breathe.

That’s how I realized, I forgot how it feels to be alive.

Not that I am dead (“Are we the dining dead?”), just that I’ve forgotten how to live.

There’s that mechanical cycle. Work. Sleep. Eat. Bathe. Play. Sleep. Work. Write. Read. Simon says.

That all gets to you too.  You forget so easily how to breathe.  It gets to you. Los Angeles, the city, it wears down on you.  And before you realize, you’re old. Your lungs are black. You’re tired, and on the verge of discovering nothing new except more ugly truths about how cruel and shallow people are.

The City of Angels, though, is not entirely bleak.  There’s inspiration in that ugliness. It is cliche to say, but there is always beauty in violence.  Beauty in death, art in crime.

Director Harry Kim followed L.A. local artist David Choe around for 7 years with a camera, documenting the ups and downs, the ins and outs of his artistic and personal experiences.  Why David Choe?  Why not. Choe struggles-and so openly, and candidly- with much of what we are usually too ashamed to speak of.

Choe’s art is not limited to his canvas, it is his very life.  From a search for a dinosaur in the Congo to three months in a Japanese prison, Choe creates and experiences art, pain, love, sexual addiction, loneliness, insanity, depression, redemption, and God.  The ups and downs, the falling away, the coming back, and the realization that maybe all of this is just because we don’t want to grow up.

Because when we were kids, we knew how to feel alive.

Never growing up is dangerous (Michael Jackson?), but there is that constant thrill, the irrelevance of time, the liberation, the discovery, and the lack of inhibition.  The laughter.

“Dirty Hands” isn’t about crime, or art really.  It’s not about the spray paint, the urine, and soy sauce that Choe uses on his canvases.  It’s not about having sticky kleptomaniac hands.

“Dirty Hands” is about being a kid, fully capable of feeling pain, often subject to faulty logic, prone to injury and disillusionment, believing in the incredible.  It is a film about growing old, but somehow through all the growing pains, staying young, and simply living.