Reality Bites

Sometimes, I’m afraid to watch a movie. No matter how much I want to.

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across the trailer for a little film called He Was a Quiet Man. Rather than trying to describe it, just watch it, watch the whole thing, and you’ll meet my conundrum:



Maybe a few months ago, it would have been a no-brainer. My taste in movies makes room for off-key oddities, probably welcomes them warmly on the front porch. But after the events at Virginia Tech, I’m not so sure this time. The conceit of the film is that Christian Slater’s character is contemplating a suicidal shooting spree when somebody else beats him to the trigger. Slater’s character is disturbed and lonely, a man who never outgrew his violent, child-like fantasies about revenge for perceived slights and social torment. Opening with that spree, the trailer sings the problematic tune--He Was a Quiet Man is a black comedy.

Black comedies are tricky, and most attempts fail. Their goal is to make you laugh at situations normally deserted by laughter, mining humor by skewing reality to the absurd. But the shock of Virginia Tech is still too soon, and the reality clamors in, twisting the absurdity with bad timing.

It’s not the first time. When September 11th shook us, Hollywood suddenly became cautious. Sam Raimi pulled a sequence--originally shot for a teaser trailer--from the first Spider-Man movie because it featured the World Trade Center. Jackie Chan had to scrap a film set at the Towers, which climaxed with Jackie fighting to prevent a terrorist attack. Some film fans cried censorship, but the reality actually is capitalistic: Any producer or studio head knows that making entertainment out of a tragedy too soon creates discomfort for the audience and, in turn, spells financial doom. Even legendary producer Joseph Schenck realized that when he ordered Buster Keaton to change the finale for Steamboat Bill Jr. to something other than a huge flood--the recent, real-life Mississippi one had claimed far too many lives to be fun.

The climax became a cyclone, hatching Buster Keaton’s most iconic image.

The ripples tragedy leaves behind don’t have an expiration date, either. Paul Greengrass’s United 93 earned all kinds of critical acclaim for its honorable retelling of the one plane that didn’t reach its target on September 11th, but the film still struggled at the box office. Even five years after that event, the wounds were too sensitive to relive it all again. I know mine were.

Which brings me back to He Was a Quiet Man. I’ve watched the trailer several times and unearthed festival reviews, which tell of a “pitch black comedy” taking utterly unexpected turns. They also tell of spirited discussions after the credits roll--most of the festival showings came after Seung-Hui Cho’s rampage. But what the audience yearns to talk about is not recorded. I still don’t know.

I don’t. Watching a troubled man struggle against his worst instincts, perhaps to fail, perhaps to succeed by failing...the message may be one for which I’m not ready. Especially if that message is wrapped up in a laugh lost to echoing gunshots.

Then the trailer’s second half plays again, and makes me wonder.

The real problem isn’t the film’s timing; it’s whether the film understands the true nature of black comedy: to tear away the trappings of tragedy and horror to reveal humanity’s heart. A dozen late-comers have followed Heathers, attempted to carbon copy its twisted teen inanity, but none have matched it. Heathers succeeded because instead of finding hilarity in suicide itself, the film found the fragility in the acts of the people responding to it. While Heathers attacked the strange popularity and the cult of celebrity surrounding teen suicide in the late 1980s, it treated its lead characters as more than simple biological bags of quirks. A black comedy doesn’t vicariate its characters; a black comedy is about the tragic faults of the characters that lead them to mistakes...or enlightenment.

He Was a Quiet Man can be about exploitation, or it can be about healing. After an event like the campus massacre, we briefly ask why, then look for villains. But we forget that there are no real monsters. Something broke, something turned, something smoldered in Cho; failing to understand that helpless hate only deepens the tragedy. A film about a similar character driven toward a similar act, only to be stopped by circumstance to confront his own existence, may help me see past the assumption and dismissal of madmen. And that possibility makes me want to drive a hundred miles to see it.

I watch the trailer again.