Comments | michrennie: Cool Hand Luke...what am I missing?

michrennie

Cool Hand Luke...what am I missing?

May 25, 2008 14:01

Wife is in Florida for the long weekend, so I loaded up the Netflix queue with movies I knew she wouldn't be into. This usually means older films. For some reason "Cool Hand Luke" has been popping up a lot lately so I thought I'd check that off my list of "movies everyone but me has seen ( Read more... )

Comments 6

alanpartlow May 26 2008, 00:28:45 UTC

I've always seen this movie as a simple story of a man who refuses to play by the rules. I never saw it as a "message" movie unless the message is "You can't flout the system." In that way it's very similar to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

I never considered this film to be, and I doubt that it was intended as, a Christ allegory. As you say, Luke doesn't save or redeem anyone. As far as being anti-authoritarian/anti-establishment, it is pretty strong. In a nutshell it is the story of the system versus the individual. In the time period (1967) that was a pretty common theme.

And yes, you can't have a prison film without a strong subtext of homosexuality.

By the way, why don't women seem to like older films as much as men?

michrennie May 26 2008, 02:37:34 UTC

Oh yeah...thank you for reminding me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. At one point I thought "maybe this was some competing studio's attempt to cash in on OFOtCN...or give Newman his "Jack Nicholson" moment ( ... )

alanpartlow May 27 2008, 13:08:43 UTC

"At one point I thought 'maybe this was some competing studio's attempt to cash in on OFOtCN...or give Newman his "Jack Nicholson" moment.'" One Flew Over... came out seven years after Cool Hand Luke and Cool Hand Luke came out two years before Nicholson's first role (Easy Rider), so that couldn't be it ( ... )

michrennie May 27 2008, 22:40:24 UTC

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: no, I realized later that the timeline didn't support my initial thought. It was just someplace my brain went during the final 30 minutes or so of Cool Hand Luke as I was wrestling with this vague feeling that this movie had no central thesis.

I can see the Ben Braddock analogy: Luke definitely drifted from situation to situation without any seeming investment (or even interest) in the outcome. A weird sort of anti-hero indeed.

Never seen Bonnie & Clyde: I'll put it on the list for Kristy's next out-of-town trip.

Thread 6