VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG
Directed by Lawrence Schiller
Written by Norman Mailer
Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Christine Lahti, Rosanna Arquette
Picture
   Here is a little secret that filmmakers know: Every movie contains a moral center. The moral center is the person or thing to whom the audience looks for the established and proper psychological response to what is happening. In an essentially simple police drama, for instance, the officer of the law represents the moral center while the unrepentant criminal gives the moral center something to be offended by. In slightly more complex configurations, the criminal may indeed be the moral center, as in The Story of Robin Hood, where it is the Sheriff of Nottingham, the keeper of order, who portrays evil while Robin Hood, the thief, is the person we look to for reassurance. Far more complex is the use of the anti-hero, as one finds in the character of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, where the hoodlum narrates the tale and posits his behavior as morally superior to those of the manipulative society at large. A similar device is used by Oliver Stone in Natural Born Killers, where the serial killers Mickey and Mallory Knox are ultimately shown to be better than the society that celebrates their criminality. On some occasions, the moral center is simply ridiculous, or may be satirized, or may only be developed throughout the motion picture. Tragedies, comedies, historical works, even documentaries utilize this moral center. Sometimes the camera itself should be credited with the role.
    In the important movie The Executioner's Song (1982), Christine Lahti works her brains out to be that moral center for us. As Brenda Nicol, a cousin to the man who would reverse ten years of societal abstinence from the horrors of capital punishment in the United States, Lahti strains with every scene to be that thing that producer-director Lawrence Schiller tries valiantly to resist: giving this film the energy to lift itself up out of the gutter. Tommy Lee Jones, as convicted murderer Gary Gilmore, does his damnedest to foil the core--that is, after all, his job. He does not in any way disappoint. A mere two years after appearing as Doolittle in Coal Miner's Daughter, Jones recreated himself with a conviction, so to speak, that would have taken lesser men lifetimes to master. 
    Jones avoids going for cheap sentiment. We feel no particular sympathy for Gilmore and that's appropriate. We feel no particular sympathy for his two murder victims and--depending on where the film leads--that might get away with being appropriate. So let's turn to Gilmore's acquaintances. Surely there will be some sympathy worked out there. We meet the frequently naked and fascinating Rosanna Arquette, who plays the love interest, a nineteen year-old confusion case stacked against Gilmore's naive misanthropy. But, no, she doesn't give us any moral compunctions one way or the other, one minute loving the killer and the next schtupping guys while he rots in jail. Even when she tries to kill herself so that she may join Gary in the afterlife--at Gilmore's urging--we feel an exhausted sense of pity, but not a flicker of sympathy. 
    Okay, then it must be Eli Wallach, that lovable and totally dependable old stand-by who plays Uncle Vern. Surely his world view will give us something to grip! Nope. Not a thing. One minute he's calmly warning Gary to keep his hands off the granddaughter and the next he's saying, "Oh well, the kid could never mend shoes worth a damn." 
    Without doubt the moral center or core, to the extent that Schiller allows it to exist at all, comes from Christine Lahti. But the director, who seems to have learned his trade from working Quinn Martin productions in the lazy days of police dramas, cannot be bothered to jazz up the Norman Mailer screenplay because, gosh oh whiz, Mailer did after all win the Pulitzer Prize for the novel (which was a lot more interesting) and no one could dare stand up to The Man Himself, now could they? Well, it's clear that Schiller couldn't. Time after time we keep expecting Gilmore to make us cringe or weep or maybe even laugh. Time after time we are disappointed, the only relief being when Lahti finally casts some tired judgment on her cousin and calls him a shithead, which he apparently was. 
    Gilmore, convicted of two murders, was sentenced to death. He opted to face a firing squad. His attorney appealed the sentence and Gilmore dismissed him. The ACLU appealed the sentence. At last the Supreme Court ruled that Gilmore had the right to be executed according to due process. He was shot to death on January 17, 1977. That execution was the first in U.S. history since Luis Monge was killed in June 1967. 
    As of January 1, 2012, 1277 convicted murderers have been put to death in this country. Three of those have been by firing squad. Those three were in Utah. Gilmore was the first. 
   477 of those executions have been in Texas. 
   There were no executions at all in 1978. Then in 1984 the government killed twenty-one prisoners. By 1993 the number of executions had risen to thirty-eight, perhaps demonstrating that both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations like the taste of blood. By 1997 we were up to seventy-four executions. Gilmore's corneas were transplanted into two different people following the execution. 
    The above information might have been the moral core of a film about Gilmore. It was not. 
    Schiller does his best to restrain Lahti from reflecting, much less inspiring, societal values here. To the extent that she managed to defy those attempts sings hosannas to her own talents as an actor. 
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links