the meaning of life — Joe Carnahan’s THE GREY
In preparing for a recent episode of WATCHTHIS WITH RICK RAMOS, I started watching Joe Carnahan’s The Grey, a movie that I have seen a half dozen times over the past three years. I remember the initial viewing. I remember how overwhelmed I was by Liam Neeson’s performance and the authenticity and immediacy of the film. The Grey, a tale of survival in the harshest of conditions, unfolds quickly and without respite. Together Carnahan and Neeson have forged some kind of male-survival masterpiece. There is a commitment in this film that is, regrettably, absent from so much of today’s popular cinema. Admittedly there are personal films being made, however few of them are produced by the major studios, and – subsequently – fewer get any kind of real distribution. I don’t necessarily fault the studios for this. I can’t say that I would be willing to fund a film that was almost guaranteed to lose money (the fact that The Grey would make $77million on a $25million budget is almost accidental). This is not a cop-out in any way, but rather a realistic understanding of the anticipation and subsequent marketing that goes into bringing an audience to a film. The studios have their agenda, and it’s a very simple and obvious one – Profit. It’s as simple as that. The Grey – as much as I love and have embraced this film – is not a safe bet. It is not a film with a happy ending and for it to have one forced onto it would rob it of its honesty. The very idea that these men could survive this experience would negate the experience itself. It would ring of falsehood and would, probably, cause moans of derision and anger in any audience that watches film with any kind of appreciation for storytelling. The popular belief is that audiences don’t want to walk out of a film depressed and angry, and I believe that this may be true, but I would also argue that these are the endings that more often stick with us, haunting our memories. These are the endings that we talk about later because they are so cruelly consistent with life. I know this may be the common reaction after watching this film, but I would argue that this response is the one we appreciate more and more as we re-examine the films we have watched. If one were to actually give the film a chance to sit with them, if they were to make the attempt to go back to the film with a contemplative mind, one would realize that the film is about finding the true meaning of life: Survival. It’s as simple as that. This is not a grand statement, meant to make light of mans’ age-old question of why we are here. Rather, this an understanding of who we are as a species and what keeps us getting up each and every day when we know that today will be much the same as yesterday and will (most likely, unless we pay attention to the warning signs) continue into tomorrow. The sad truth is that if someone had not taken the chance . . . if they had not been brave enough to forgo the accepted belief that audiences do NOT wish to be challenged we wouldn’t have a masterpiece of this caliber.
At this point when I watch a new movie the most I can hope for is that I am entertained, however – more often than not – I find myself incredibly disappointed. Too often movie-watching is a time-distraction. I go into the theater for two hours and – hopefully — I’m taken away from the job, family, and worries of life. But The Grey was a different experience. It was life-affirming. I don’t say this without an understanding of how that sentence reads. The truth is that I don’t care how it reads. I don’t care how others feel about such a statement. Like everything else in this world what matters most is how greatly each of us is affected by what we are watching, what we are hearing, what we experience. John Ottway made me believe in the power and purpose of the struggle. The Grey is not a film for the reluctant viewer. It is not a film that is meant to be disposed of minutes after watching it. No, The Grey is a film with a purpose other than making a dollar (I’m sure that is in there as well – You want people to see your art and you want them to pay for it, but it’s not the driving force.). The Grey is the best kind of art. It is art that exists on a deeply spiritual level and is unafraid to be so in this age of prolonged mediocrity. It is a film with ideas and the conviction needed to defend them. For the viewer who has grown tired of cinema that insults their intelligence, The Grey acts as an artistic re-birth; an affirmation that it is possible to say something, and there is an audience eager to embrace it. For me, I find myself connecting to an experience that somehow validates my own life. I don’t mean to over-emphasize my life experiences – honestly, I don’t believe that I could survive the kind of physical, psychological, and emotional test depicted in this film – but I do believe that there is something to the identification of such suffering and the relation that it has to our daily lives. If your need for survival is never tested how sure can you be that you actually value life?
Producing WATCHTHIS and writing these blogs has forced me to examine my love and appreciation for the various films that I continue to go back to. I have spent hours contemplating (friends and family would argue obsessing over) these films. I cannot get away from that. This is what makes sense to me. Cinema is my calm in the storm. It’s what makes the whole thing bearable. I suspect that each person has something they hold dear to them. Something that makes life a little bit better. Something that makes dealing with the bullshit of everyday a bit more bearable. For some it’s sports. For others’ it’s drinking. My Old Man spent the shittier part of four decades as a mailhandler with the US Postal Service. I saw what it did to him and because of it I was never more afraid of the power of monotony and the emptiness that could come with a day. Life has a way of forcing your hand, causing you to adopt a certain belief and embrace a kind of defeatist attitude. It does suck and we all are just trying to survive it. But there are moments. Moments that make it easier to live with. Moments that give you the strength to muscle through the brutality of it all. Moments that save you from the bullshit. The repetitiveness of the work-day. Supervisors pushing you further than they have any right to push you. Managers sacrificing your teams’ bodies in order to meet their quotas. Day in and Day out, struggling to fight your way to the eighth hour. The Old Man rarely spoke about the job, but it was there. It was there in the silence. It was there in the looks. I didn’t have a full understanding of what it all meant, but I did understand that whatever it was, I didn’t want it for myself. The Grey is so much of this. It is brutal in this depiction. It lets us know exactly what is important. It all comes to a head in the scene where Diaz finally realizes that he has nothing left.
Hendrick: Is that it? You’re just gonna sit there? Is that what you want?
Diaz: Yeah.
Hendrick: After what we survived?
Diaz: That’s exactly why. What I got waiting for me back there? I’m gonna sit on a drill all day. Get drunk all night. That’s my life. Turn around and look at that. (He looks out over a beautiful river and mountainside) I feel like that’s all for me. How do I beat that? When will it ever be better? I can’t explain it.
As I watched that scene play out on screen I realized that you have to find some way to “beat that”. You have to find someway that will make it better. So once more into the fray . . .
