GOD BLESS AMERICA
Written and directed by Bocat Goldthwait
Starring Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr
Released in 2011
Written and directed by Bocat Goldthwait
Starring Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr
Released in 2011
Here's what happens. As you get older, you notice that the society around you is not a part of you any more, if it ever was. At first you conclude you are merely jaded because you are getting older. After some reflection, however, you realize that the only thing age has to do with it is that being older has freed you of your illusions. Most things are just as bad as we pretend they are not. Willful ignorance, hostility, ridicule, tastelessness, gluttony, and a general sense that other people are just no damned good and that they like it that way, technology substituting for reality, openness perceived as weakness, honesty experienced as simple-mindedness, hope as a disease: these observations ricochet in your head until the pounding is unbearable. But most of all you notice that many other people are simply not very nice.
A child throws a fit because she was given a Blackberry instead of an Android.
A teenager curses out her parents because she wanted an Expedition instead of a Volt.
Grown human beings gleefully endure any type of embarrassment TV network bosses can think up just so long as those executives allow them on television.
A guy takes up two parking spaces and dares you to say something about it.
Christians attend funerals of dead soldiers and bid those soldiers a welcoming in hell because those soldiers loved who they wanted to love.
A gasbag right wing entertainer uses his daily radio broadcast to announce his view that a nervy woman who does not share his views on contraception is a slut.
And then you notice that, yes, while you are old, or older than you once were, you are not completely alone. True, you still have your memories of Alice Cooper records, of Art Fleming hosting "Jeopardy," and of people coming together over the first moon walk. But your memories also sort of torture you because they are memories, things unconnected to the moment. And in this moment you notice that there are some people a good bit younger than you who are watching what you are thinking, reading your thoughts on your face, nodding in agreement with your disgust. In that flash of insight, you see that they understand what you have lived through and while they themselves may never have known a time without cell phones, they know that something is very wrong with their society and as they clap their hands and stomp their feet you see that they are with you, urging you on, lifting you up, steadying your aim.
You cannot win with the movie God Bless America (2011) and that is one of the reasons I like it so much. You cannot win because even though you will likely agree with many of the visceral and even intellectual reactions that Joel Murray as Frank displays, you probably will not be in favor of killing everyone who offends you so much. Then again, maybe you will. I'm sure that some people do.
Yet you will find your inner self--your Me--cheering him on, just as you will applaud his unwillingness to take sexual advantage of Roxy, played to absolute perfection by Tara Lynne Barr. Frank is a moral man, or at least a man with a sense of morality. The fact that he and Roxy come at their anti-societal (as opposed to anti-social) proclivities from different worlds only serves to bond them all the more.
This is a powerful movie and not merely because director Bobcat Goldthwait shoots for cheap laughs (none here) or phony sentiment (again, none). It's not even because the violence becomes almost cartoonish in its spontaneity. It's a powerful movie because it dares to say something about the societal forces that unintentionally conspire to drive a reasonable person calmly and cooly insane.
You will like this movie because it accomplishes what Falling Down started to accomplish before it fell apart.
Another reason you will like this movie every bit as much as I did is because you will get around to wondering if all the Paula Abdul-lookalikes and mindless self-parodies in this movie actually recognize themselves as such. God Bless America is about ideas far more than it is about physical violence and somehow I suspect that the young woman in the reality TV show that Frank watches who throws a tampon at her girlfriend in a fit of rage--somehow I have a hunch that the actress who played this idiot may not quite have realized that we were appalled by her and by the uses to which her type of nonentity is being put.
Yes, there are a few speeches in this movie and on occasion the film threatens to become a polemic. But funny enough, that doesn't bother me at all. Nope, in fact that feels highly appropriate because all the stupidity that gets manufactured and distributed as "entertainment" usually guises itself in the cloak of Drama or the gown of Comedy.
Yep, Frank is you. Frank is me. But Frank is not Everyman or else he would not need to exist. This is not about how educated you are because universities are jam packed with highly educated bigots. This isn't about what kind of job you have or your position in the company because there is hatred aplenty on the loading dock as well as in the executive restroom. And this sure as hell is not about "political correctness," which is a very clever pair of code words for "I'm about to say something geared to hurt an innocent person's feelings and you better not call me out for it." What God Bless America is about is outstanding understated acting. It is about the beautiful audacity of Goldthwait to write and direct this masterful period-piece. It is even about something more rare than a great movie: It is about that thing that drives decent men and women, and even decent boys and girls, to do some very bad things. What is that thing, you ask? Go ask Alice. I think he'll know.
A child throws a fit because she was given a Blackberry instead of an Android.
A teenager curses out her parents because she wanted an Expedition instead of a Volt.
Grown human beings gleefully endure any type of embarrassment TV network bosses can think up just so long as those executives allow them on television.
A guy takes up two parking spaces and dares you to say something about it.
Christians attend funerals of dead soldiers and bid those soldiers a welcoming in hell because those soldiers loved who they wanted to love.
A gasbag right wing entertainer uses his daily radio broadcast to announce his view that a nervy woman who does not share his views on contraception is a slut.
And then you notice that, yes, while you are old, or older than you once were, you are not completely alone. True, you still have your memories of Alice Cooper records, of Art Fleming hosting "Jeopardy," and of people coming together over the first moon walk. But your memories also sort of torture you because they are memories, things unconnected to the moment. And in this moment you notice that there are some people a good bit younger than you who are watching what you are thinking, reading your thoughts on your face, nodding in agreement with your disgust. In that flash of insight, you see that they understand what you have lived through and while they themselves may never have known a time without cell phones, they know that something is very wrong with their society and as they clap their hands and stomp their feet you see that they are with you, urging you on, lifting you up, steadying your aim.
You cannot win with the movie God Bless America (2011) and that is one of the reasons I like it so much. You cannot win because even though you will likely agree with many of the visceral and even intellectual reactions that Joel Murray as Frank displays, you probably will not be in favor of killing everyone who offends you so much. Then again, maybe you will. I'm sure that some people do.
Yet you will find your inner self--your Me--cheering him on, just as you will applaud his unwillingness to take sexual advantage of Roxy, played to absolute perfection by Tara Lynne Barr. Frank is a moral man, or at least a man with a sense of morality. The fact that he and Roxy come at their anti-societal (as opposed to anti-social) proclivities from different worlds only serves to bond them all the more.
This is a powerful movie and not merely because director Bobcat Goldthwait shoots for cheap laughs (none here) or phony sentiment (again, none). It's not even because the violence becomes almost cartoonish in its spontaneity. It's a powerful movie because it dares to say something about the societal forces that unintentionally conspire to drive a reasonable person calmly and cooly insane.
You will like this movie because it accomplishes what Falling Down started to accomplish before it fell apart.
Another reason you will like this movie every bit as much as I did is because you will get around to wondering if all the Paula Abdul-lookalikes and mindless self-parodies in this movie actually recognize themselves as such. God Bless America is about ideas far more than it is about physical violence and somehow I suspect that the young woman in the reality TV show that Frank watches who throws a tampon at her girlfriend in a fit of rage--somehow I have a hunch that the actress who played this idiot may not quite have realized that we were appalled by her and by the uses to which her type of nonentity is being put.
Yes, there are a few speeches in this movie and on occasion the film threatens to become a polemic. But funny enough, that doesn't bother me at all. Nope, in fact that feels highly appropriate because all the stupidity that gets manufactured and distributed as "entertainment" usually guises itself in the cloak of Drama or the gown of Comedy.
Yep, Frank is you. Frank is me. But Frank is not Everyman or else he would not need to exist. This is not about how educated you are because universities are jam packed with highly educated bigots. This isn't about what kind of job you have or your position in the company because there is hatred aplenty on the loading dock as well as in the executive restroom. And this sure as hell is not about "political correctness," which is a very clever pair of code words for "I'm about to say something geared to hurt an innocent person's feelings and you better not call me out for it." What God Bless America is about is outstanding understated acting. It is about the beautiful audacity of Goldthwait to write and direct this masterful period-piece. It is even about something more rare than a great movie: It is about that thing that drives decent men and women, and even decent boys and girls, to do some very bad things. What is that thing, you ask? Go ask Alice. I think he'll know.
