The Last Supper almost works. It’s a bitter ‘almost’, as buried deep within the film’s flaws lies a valuable message. At least, I think it does; the execution comes off as so haphazard that I’d be reluctant to bet money on one message, just to hear the writer had another in mind.
Speaking of execution, the plot: Five Iowa grad students, Jude (Cameron Diaz), Paulie (Annabeth Gish), Luke (Courtney B. Vance), Marc (Jonathan Penner), and Pete (Ron Eldard), share the same house and often invite people over for dinner and politics. These are seriously pompous left-wingers, the sort who can’t get off the topic because reminding themselves how brilliant and compassionate they are functions as twenty-four hours worth of masturbation.
One evening, a truck driver (Bill Paxton) gives Pete a lift, and receives a dinner invitation. Even though the driver obviously has a few screws loose, that doesn’t stop them from ridiculing his service in the Gulf War, nor do they drop the subject when he expresses admiration for Adolf Hiter. The driver pulls a knife, and the ensuing struggle winds up dead with a blade in his side.
At first the group freaks out, but when calm returns, they feel strangely good about themselves. After all, he was a rotten man, it was sort of self-defense, and he fits right in the garden in the back yard. For once, they feel like they’ve actually accomplished something, which may be similar to the feeling I got recently when an acquaintance said "Fuck the NRA," and I seriously responded "No, fuck you!" Unlike me, who will probably won’t do that again for a couple of weeks, they decide to invite people whose politics they disagree with over for dinner (read: conservative Republicans), and if they can’t change their mind, they serve them some wine poisoned with arsenic.
Of course, any very political person can tell you that changing one’s entire political beliefs through the course of one conversation is virtually impossible. The grad students may feel like they are giving these people a chance, but in reality they have selected them for execution. Never do they consider that their views would be odious to many others, nor do they realize the irony in their favorite question, "If you could kill Adolf Hilter before he had done any damage, would you?" Their behavior echoes Hitler more than that of any Neo-Nazi they invite to dinner, with their fascist monopoly on the truth and distribution of death sentences. I mean, when you think about it, Hitler only murdered the extreme elements that were destroying German society, right?
While The Last Supper may take an unusually negative look towards the type of liberal that Hollywood normally fawns over, it does bear that leftward slant that is a prerequisite for any studio produced political film. While having dinner guests over who argue for a fair tax plan or an aggressive defense policy would be effective, most visitors have malevolent streaks a mile wide. Thinking seriously, when was the last time a conservative you know argued in favor of Hitler, said that the homeless deserve to be beaten to death, and that AIDS was the perfect cure for homosexuality? The blithe portrayal of every conservative as a venomous moron who knows no discourse other than the invective kind is preposterous, and seriously weakens the film’s moral core. It may criticize those on the left who would play God with human life, but it deeply sympathizes with that way of thinking, advocating tolerance of evil conservatives instead of their murder.
Observe the ending, where a Rush Limbaugh like figure (Ron Perlman) misses his flight and comes to dinner. Though well known for his right-wing rants, he cheerily dismisses this image to his hosts, matter-of-factly declaring that both the extreme right and left are bad, and that in reality, we should all be aiming for the center. First off, if you’ve ever met any serious right-wing types, you’d know they think less of moderates than they do liberals. Second, this constitutes a very cowardly cop-out on the part of the filmmakers. Why not have a seriously smart conservative that puts them in their place not through describing the need for moderation, in reality the bastion of the dimwitted and the weak, but by knocking them off their high horses and illustrating how they’ve become worse than those they murder? The Last Supper is on to something, but like its characters, allows itself to get way out of hand.
2 out of 5
0 comments:
Post a Comment