You hate to see it, by Caleb Drickey & Frank Meyer

Caleb and Frank like movies. Caleb and Frank are also snobs who think they’ve seen everything. Of course, they have not seen everything, and there exist a great number of movies that they have absolutely no intention of sitting through. But, trapped indoors and bored to tears, Caleb and Frank forced each other to watch the movies they’d otherwise avoid like a different plague.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Caleb Drickey: Before we begin our exercise, let’s get one thing straight. I did not force you to watch The Shawshank Redemption because it is good. Not that it is a bad film, but Shawshank represents something that transcends quality, an attribute that has long since disappeared from the Hollywood landscape. I am speaking, of course, of earnestness. 

Shawshank is a perfectly safe, competent film. Director Frank Darabont constructs a washed-out world of grays and browns that grow richer and more saturated over time, an obvious visual language to convey prison’s monotony and Andy Dufresne’s (Tim Robbins) resurgent self-regard. The tall, lean figures of Robbins and Morgan Freeman are the classical image of soft-spoken dignity. Darabont may lack Steven Spielberg’s slick hand behind the camera, but he adopts a Spielbergian aura of almost embarrassing sincerity. Shawshank scrimps on honest depictions of the violence of prison life, and instead celebrates the triumph of the human spirit with melodramatic gusto (see Tim Robbins bellow in victory after crawling through excrement – get the metaphor?). 

Just three weeks after Darabont’s meditation on soft-spoken strength dropped, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction hit theaters and rendered everything that came before it obsolete. There was no longer any room for something so un-abrasive, so nice, so deeply B-plus in the new industry of irony and caustic wit. The world loves Shawshank because it is a bowl of mac and cheese: warm, uncomplicated, and a nostalgic reminder of more comforting times.

Frank Meyer:  “You’ve never seen The Shawshank Redemption? But I thought you loved movies!” This indictment haunts me. I have heard it in college dorms, from dumb uncles at Thanksgiving, and on lifeless first dates, but I never thought I’d hear it from you, Caleb. If Jordan Peterson is the dumb person’s smart person, Shawshank is the movie to love if you don’t know shit about movies. I, and apparently no one else, saw through it from a mile away: a juicy morsel of Oscar-baiting, sentimental mediocrity disguised as high art.

The Shawshank Redemption is all about taking up time. Our characters amuse themselves and their audience with episodic misadventures that make prison out to be no worse than the mild boredom of endless detention. Stephen King wrote limp platitudes on the passage of time and thankfully Morgan Freeman was on set to muster his full gravitas and make this script sound significant. Cinematographer and all-around hot boy Roger Deakins elevates drab stone walls and autumn fields through stark contrasts and well-calibrated choreography, especially during any scenes on the prison yard. But these standout elements can’t overcome how this film reduces incarceration into a mind-numbing waiting game. Sexual assault, injustice, and suicide all float across the screen to trigger our emotions without earning them. Every conflict resolves itself with a montage and a comforting voiceover from Morgan Freeman. This movie is no more than an expensive slideshow on why prison is sad and freedom is good. Upon finishing Shawshank, I raised my hands in the air like Tim Robbins in the movie’s climax, feeling as though I too had crawled through an endless pipeline of excrement to reach sweet release.

An American in Paris (1951)

FM:  If An American in Paris was an otherwise abysmal film, Gene Kelly’s dancing would elevate it to high entertainment. Whether he’s in the midst of a whirling tap-dance routine or walking across the four feet of his studio apartment, Kelly always glides with an incredible poise. Most movie stars know which angles flatter their face the most. Kelly moved his body to make every angle his best one. If this movie had no other redeeming qualities, I would still insist Caleb watch it. Fortunately, Kelly does not outshine An American in Paris. He is, rather, one among many ingredients in this delicious confection. Director Vincente Minelli’s production and color schemes seduce viewers with a comforting spectacle. In a film about lofty ambitions and impossible dreams, every character’s fantasy seems totally attainable by the brilliance of everyday Parisian life. It is a love letter, not to any specific city, but to the notion of home. In the wordless climax, we enter Gene Kelly’s mind to see Paris as he does. The landmarks become a flat canvas with his neighbors and friends dancing in front of them, lending it the color and emotion of community. If you have any love for Sesame Street, In the Heights, or any similar portrait of neighborhood, you owe it to yourself to visit An American in Paris.

CD: I don’t like dancing. It is a dumb activity best done whilst inebriated, preferably no earlier than 1 AM, and as the last in a long night of shenanigans, because it reminds me that I am no longer having fun and am allowed to go home. So: An American in Paris. Gene Kelly dances real nice — big whoop. I could probably dance as nice as him if I wanted to become an insufferable nerd and wear funny metal shoes for a little while. 

Frank argues that Paris is a stand-in for a general idea of community, and here I must disagree. Paris is the dream of postwar innocence, a holy center of art and culture untouched by the trauma of the Second World War or the paranoia of the Cold one. But to idealize a place is minimize it. Paris is not some sun-drenched paradise of friendly shopkeepers and carefree artists; it’s an insular, unfriendly place that became the cultural capital of Europe through sheer orneriness and spite. An American in Paris skimps on measly things like character and narrative to instead celebrate an art form I don’t respect and a city sans all the interesting bits. I shall never reclaim these two hours, nor shall I ever forgive you, Frank, for taking them.

Rio Bravo (1959)

CD: Rio Bravo, Howard Hawk’s greatest and most enduring Western, was born of an act of one-upmanship. Hawks hated High Noon. He hated that the 1952 masterpiece was written by noted communist Carl Foreman, and he especially hated its ending, in which aging Marshall Will Kane is rescued from certain death by… a woman?! So, alongside fellow reactionary John Wayne, he built a film around a brave sheriff facing long odds, but one who meets certain death head-on, backed only by his guts and a handful of proven companions. This being John Wayne, however, there’s never a doubt that the Duke and his compatriots will emerge from their prison siege unscathed.

If Hawks can’t threaten the town of Rio Bravo from without, then he makes sure to load up on metacommentary and strife from within. John Wayne plays, well, a John Wayne type: big, competent, so masculine that he lugs around a rifle while anyone else packs pistols (cuz you know he’s got the biggest gun). His greatest threat is not the villainous bandit in his jail cell, but the prospect that his best gal will skip town before he swallows his pride enough to admit he wants something. Dean Martin, playing a washed-up sidekick to a more powerful man, battles the demon drink with the tenacity of a gladiator. Babyfaced Ricky Nelson yearns for an outlet for all his youth and talent. Hawks understood that grand crises come and go, but these smaller battles define our stories and our lives. So, he anthropomorphized them as known entities, threw in a few gunfights, and sprinkled on some real racist comic relief (he was, after all, a reactionary). Also, Dean and Ricky sing a duet, and I just think that’s neat. 

FM:  I have hated John Wayne since my seventh-grade social studies teacher ordered the class to salute a cardboard cutout of him. On screen, John Wayne was a brute who made a name for himself by shooting Native Americans and growling at women, and off screen, he used his celebrity status to eject leftists and personal enemies from Hollywood, deputizing himself to decide what influences did and did not belong in American cinema.

Rio Bravo is the ultimate conservative fantasy: a paternalistic sheriff defends his idyllic, and idiotic, corner of Americana from the Other. I genuinely enjoyed the first third of this film, which moved at a deliberate pace to introduce the town as a fabric of overlapping relationships. But once the bullets start to fly, our story collapses into a rudimentary tale of Good versus Evil. Internal conflicts that were previously treated with nuance become a question of simply “manning up” to survive the climactic gunfight. John Wayne, ostensibly a movie star, is instead a black hole that sucks the vitality from his scene partners until they all land in an alternate dimension of American Exceptionalism. Angie Dickinson outdoes all her costars in this film, creating a character (with no help from the screenplay) who is believably insecure and still much cooler than all the grizzled man-boys orbiting her. “They don’t make pictures like Rio Bravo anymore,” my grandpa might declare wistfully. Thank God. 

Miami Vice (2006)

FM:  Miami Vice is undeniably dated. The soundtrack, clothing, and early forays into digital film-making all reek of 2006. You could never mistake Miami Vice for any other film. It is a singular artifact through which you enter a world of mojitos, neon, and speedboats. There’s a plot you can choose to follow down its byzantine corridors and emotional chasms, but I prefer to lay back and let this movie wash over me.

I, backed by fathers across the globe, believe Michael Mann to be an artist of indisputable importance. His films are spectacular and illuminating, stylish morality tales that hold the same depth as an intro college course in sociology or political science. While Heat and The Insider are Mann’s best work, Miami Vice is the peak of his directorial vision. Revisiting the old terrain of the glizy 80s television series he created, Mann now reckons with the aching despair that exists behind every adrenaline-fueled crime epic. The film is a staggering production that meticulously documents the complexity of transnational drug-trafficking. Mann recorded this circus from the inside-out, experimenting with the potential of the digital camera to capture the tiniest facial gesture against the enormous Miami skyline behind it. This movie is a priceless gem, a cascade of details that reveal new facets upon each viewing. 

CD:  Franco my friend, you misidentify Mann’s masterpiece (Collateral whips, slaps, bops, et cetera), but I think you’re spot on with your diagnosis of Miami Vice as the most Michael Mann: it’s his platonic idea of a Very Serious Action Epic For Big Boys (see also Heat, Last of the Mohicans, Blackhat). Do we have a brooding, uncharismatic leading man with a dogshit American accent? We do. Are we asked to follow an incomprehensible narrative that’s really just killing time between action sequences? You know this, baby. Are the aforementioned action sequences nasty affairs elevated by precise, muscular camerawork that make me momentarily forget that I don’t care what happens to these underdeveloped violence-doers? Stopping asking me stupid questions. 

Miami Vice, if seen as a loose accumulation of bold choices instead of a cohesive masterwork, is not a complete waste of time. Frank’s admiration for the photography is valid: Mann and cinematographer Dion Beebe craft sublime images in which a cold, infinite background looms over the rest of the frame like the shadow of an unavoidable iceberg. But Colin Farrell’s flat, growly performance and Mann’s inert writing simply cannot support the film’s visual splendor. Miami Vice is not bleak and impersonal in accordance with a defined philosophical thesis; it feels lifeless, demonstrating just how hollow the moving image is once you’ve sucked all the humanity out of it. 

The Shawshank Redemption is available to stream on Netflix. An American in Paris, Rio Bravo, and Miami Vice are all available to rent or buy on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, and other streaming platforms.