02.21.07 From the Viking
The Top Ten Most Misunderstood Movies Ever Made
We’re not talking about abstract, BS French art films or something. We’re talking Pulp Fiction, The Godfather, Scarface. The kind of movies that you assume you understand on a thematic level, but you really don’t. You need someone to clear things up for you: that’s why we’re here.
10. Pulp Fiction
What everyone thinks the message is: Tarantino values extreme violence and immoral, criminal characters
What it actually is: A selfish, violent life is one not worth living, and redemption is possible for anyone who wants it badly enough.
Most people who truly appreciate Pulp Fiction easily understand its message, but most of the twitchy, conservative, older generation who decried its violence and profanity completely missed the point. It’s easy to look at Pulp Fiction’s best scenes of violence and assume that Tarantino is glorifying the gangster lifestyle, until you consider that the only characters who end up living are the ones who (in some way or another) renounce their selfish ways and redeem themselves.
9. Jarhead
What everyone thinks the message is: War is really good! OR: War is really bad!
What it actually is: Respect your Marines.
Jarhead is a movie where you more or less get from it what you bring to it. If you are vehemently pro or anti-war, Jarhead will do nothing to change your mind in that respect. While the trailer made it seem like a modern Apocalypse Now – the gas mask football sequence seems a lot cooler when taken out of context – Jarhead strives only to tell the true story of what it it’s like to be a Marine. In this case, it involved a lot of waiting, masturbating, and getting cheated on by your girlfriend.
Kind of like high school.
8. Little Miss Sunshine
What everyone thinks the message is: Life sucks ass!
What it actually is: Life rules!
I didn’t say you had to agree with the true moral of every movie, especially considering how sappy and mainstream the otherwise-adequate Little Miss Sunshine is, but them’s the breaks.
Despite cramming as much forced familial dysfunction and philosophical cynicism as humanly possible into the first 90% of the movie, the writers make a complete 180 at the film’s climax and decide that, despite the fact that one of the characters is dead and the rest have had their lives ruined in literally every way conceivable, that life is actually pretty neat!
Even if your gay lover left you for someone who now has your job, and even if you can’t realize your dream of becoming a jet pilot due to biological defects beyond your control, and even if your self-help program didn’t sell (thus leaving you nearly bankrupt with two kids to support), everything can be okay if you dance!
If the movie had gone on for another week, most of the main characters would have committed suicide out of depression.
7. Raging Bull
What everyone thinks the message is: Determination and unwillingness to compromise can lead you to the top.
What it actually is: Don’t be an asshole.
In talking about Raging Bull, Scorsese frequently mentions La Strada, an old film of director Frederico Fellini. In it, an asshole strongman befriends a kind young girl, and then abandons her on the road where she later dies. Too late, the strongman realizes he’s made a horrendous mistake. THAT, in essence, is what Raging Bull is about.
If you have a friend who claims to be knowledgeable about movies, ask him what Raging Bull is about. If he says “it’s about the rise and fall of a boxer,” or if he talks about how the best part of the movie is the well-choreographed boxing scenes, then he’s an idiot and you should kick him in the penis.
If he says “it’s about a violent boxer whose intensity in the ring propels him to stardom, but whose same intensity in his private life drives away everyone he loves,” then you’re probably talking to me. In which case, you should probably give me money for my time.
6. Donnie Darko
What everyone thinks the message is: Donnie goes back in time and intentionally kills himself at the end, thus preventing all of the problems he causes later in life.
What it actually is: Donnie rips the engine off his mother’s plane and throws it through the time vortex making his death not an intentional desire to prevent his existence but rather a necessity in order for him to be sent to heaven and what the goddamn shit am I talking about?
Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding about Donnie Darko’s theme is the assumption that there is any theme at all. While emos have clutched onto this movie like their own cinematic Bible, and while it is an entertaining flick in its own right, a hard truth must be faced: if you watch the movie, and just the movie, and you think you’ve understood the plot, you are wrong. Very large, very important information pertaining to the movie is, for some reason, only available on the Donnie Darko website (which is structured more like an interactive game than a movie webpage).
Now, does that make the flick any less entertaining or weird or fun? No. But it does make whatever standalone message you thought you gleaned from the flick completely null and void.
5. The Searchers
What everyone thinks the message is: Nothing can break the bond between family, or the determination of one man’s love for his niece.
What it actually is: John Wayne hates himself some Injuns.
If you haven’t seen The Searchers in a really long time, you’ll probably remember it as a really great adventure story about some evil Indians and a heroic ex-soldier. And while it is a great adventure story, and a good movie in its own right, that’s not really what it’s about.
John Wayne, a racist ex-Confederate soldier, tracks down his kidnapped niece more out of hatred for Injuns than love for the girl. After finding out that she has become assimilated into their culture, Wayne seriously considers murdering her (against the wishes of his part-Indian nephew, who he pretty much treats like shit for the entire movie).
You may also remember a great tracking shot of Wayne riding through an Indian camp, pistols blazing in both hands. You may not remember the part right afterward where he grabs the incapacitated Indian Chief and then scalps him for his own enjoyment.
4. Casablanca
What everyone thinks the message is: Love conquers all, and saves the good guys from the harshness of war.
What it actually is: Love is a waste of time. Join the peace corps.
Rick makes Ilsa leave with Laszlo at the end of the movie. Period.
Everybody quotes the “you’ll regret it, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life” speech as if it was the most romantic thing in the world, but Bogie’s essentially telling Ingrid Bergman to get the fuck out while she still can. He figured she’d be better off as a freedom fighter in France than Humphrey’s bitch in Casablanca.
And yeah, his desire for her to have a better life is kinda sweet, but it’s hardly romantic. Romance would have been if he’d boarded the plane with her, instead of staying behind with the gay French cop and the dead German.
3. The Godfather
What everyone thinks the message is: The Mob values family above all else.
What it actually is: Violence is a vicious, inescapable cycle.
Hey, society, I’ve got an idea. Let’s ignore all the actual events of the Godfather and only quote certain things out of context! Like when Brando says that “A man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man”!
Ignoring, of course, the fact that Michael Corleone – who is initially the most levelheaded of the Corleone children – has no qualms whatsoever about killing his repentant brother-in-law Carlo or his misunderstanding, borderline-retarded brother Fredo. The whole point of all of the flashbacks in The Godfather Part II was to show that violence begets more violence: a crime lord kills Vito’s family, Vito joins the mob so he can go back and kill the crime lord, and his children have to inherit his legacy of violence (which is why Michael starts out as an upstanding marine and ends up claiming to renounce Satan at his nephew’s baptism while simultaneously killing the fuck out of the heads of the four other families).
Although, he DOES, technically, “spend time” with his family members. Right before he, you know. Kills them.
2. Gone With The Wind
What everyone thinks the message is: Nothing can stop love, or the will to survive.
What it actually is: Black people is dumb. The South shall rise again!
People heralded Hattie McDaniel’s Best Supporting Oscar win as a watershed moment in motion picture history: a moment that marked a more intelligent, more progressive Hollywood.
Too bad they gave her the award for playing a stupid, unrealistically kind slave woman.
Most of the troubles that Scarlett O’Hara faces in Gone With The Wind come from one of three sources: (1) The Civil War, (2) Postwar Carpetbaggers/Greedy Union Soldiers, and (3) Clark Gable’s dick. Two of these three problems go more or less unrecognized and unremembered in modern society.
While the film is pretty damn good, and does a fantastic job of developing the two leads (over the course of the movie, Scarlett goes from “prissy Southern bitch” to “prissy Southern bitch who doesn’t take shit from anyone”), nobody seems to remember the scene in which the Evil Union Soldier tries to rape Scarlett, forcing her to shoot him in self-defense. Or how grateful Mammy is to have such a kind, caring massuh in Miss Scawlett.
Appreciate the on-again-off-again-on-again relationship between Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara all you like, just don’t forget that biggest problems these sympathetic, well-drawn characters have to deal with all come from evil men in blue uniforms who believed blacks should be free.
1. Scarface
What everyone thinks the message is: Tony Montana is awesome!
What it actually is: No, he isn’t!
If there is any cultural phenomenon more widespread or more infuriating than the wholesale misunderstanding of Scarface by the gangster rap community, I don’t know what it is. Either every copy of Scarface in the ghetto has the last half of the movie edited out, or America is dumber than anyone could have ever truly considered.
Wannabe gangstas(z) look at Tony Montana’s rise, and they think, “That’s me. He’s uncompromising, he’s ambitious, he’s intelligent, and he’s got morals. He is a product of his environment, but he’s made the most out of it and is a relative hero amongst villains.”
Then they look at Tony Montana’s fall, where he abandons his mother, loses Michelle Pfieffer, fucking murders his best friend, involuntarily gets his sister shot, and then gets blown in half by a shotgun, they think, “Let’s watch the first half again.”
Honestly, how ridiculous a world do we live in where an entire generational subgroup admires the aesthetics of a drug-fueled gangster flick, but not its overall message?
Not to mention, this general attitude led to the creation of the alternate-reality Scarface video game, where Tony survives the shootout.
But let’s not think about that right now.
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"The dreams in which i am dying are the best i've ever had...... mad world"
Than again, i maybe should see the movie again :o))
Donnie Darko never survived the accident!!!! The movie is a fiction. :o))
So there you have it. The moral of the movie is up for grabs; your call. Unless the director was lying in the commentary about his film (doubtful).
My Thought on the meaning: To Be Evil, there is no room for compasion. To be good, there is no room for Evil.
the whole 'you can't understand it because you didn't listen to the director's commentary' argument is absolute crap. i don't disagree that the FILM ITSELF is open-ended, but to argue that the meaning of a film (as stand-alone media) depends on the director's intentions / website / commentary is bullshit. if he/she was a director worth his/her salt, they wouldn't have had to interpret it elsewhere in the first place, especially if the film had an 'unknown' bent to it - i hope you satisfied spending the additional money to get the message!
also, plot is not the same as theme. from start to finish, i understood the plot quite well, thank you very much!
What everyone thinks the message is: Freaks gots mad skillz.
What it actually is: Don't try new things or get out of your element. It won't work out.
Or even the much hailed Notes on a Scandal.
What everyone thinks the message is: Old lesbians are Eeeevil.
What it actually is: Predators come in all shapes and sizes. Even teenage boys and hottie blonde teachers.
Seriously though - if you haven't gone into the dvd extra's and have taken a look at grandma death's (Roberta Sparrow) book. Get off of your chair, and go get the dvd now. Reading that book (knowing what donnie was reading) Clears oh so many questions up at the same time it opens new ones. Questions that are better shaped to get a truer meaning of the movie.
And you can't glean the meaning from just watching this once. Heck, not even just a couple of times.
Should Donnie live knowing about all the problems he will cause, as well the benfits, or die.
Should God have created the world knowing that doing so would cause misery to many.
The story has sense because the character of Naomi Watts is completly insane because of the other women doesn´t love her. So before she kills herself she remembers things but also creates an alternatuve dream in which things happened as she wished. The movie is about desesperation of love and mixing drugs with alcohol.
So what it means love sucks and sometimes we make illusions about sometging is not real
- Lost in Translation
- North by Northwest
- Shawshank Redemption
I broke up with a girl because she didn't understand Lost in Translation......
What everyone thinks it is: You can be lonely in another country and you should leave your self open to new people so that you can be happy.
What it actually is: Finding true wuv or your soul mate in life is very very rare. If you find it and the person is same sex or much older. Just enjoy the fact that you found your soul mate. For it is a truly rare experience.
Shawshank Redeption
What everyone thinks it is: Never give up on hope you never know when you will make it out of shit.
What it actually is: ONLY WHEN YOU TOTALLY GIVE UP ON HOPE AND SPEND THE TIME TO WORK THROUGH YOUR SHIT WILL YOU LEAVE THE PRISON OF YOUR LIFE AND LIVE AWAY FROM SOCIETIES SHIT
North By Northwest:
What everyone thinks it is: A cool mixed up mystery movie.
What it actually is: You never know when you will meet the love of your life.
If you do, hang on to her no matter what. Climb mount rushmore if you have too.
Oh, and the song at the end- "...I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had..."- is a cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" done by Gary Jules, written a long time before that movie was made. But maybe the writer of the movie was inspired by that song.
Here's one for everybody, Twin Peaks:
What everyone thinks it is: Uhhhhh....
What the director thought it was: "Dude, I'm so stoned. Hey, Keifer rhymes with reefer, I just realized that!"
Maybe you can tell me what it was about. I don't think that I was able to understand it's true meaning. I mean...It seemed pretty stupid to me. But maybe I just don't understand it.
What Trainspotting is actually about: Scotland is fucking boring, so why don't we get high as a kite and space out for a few hours until it's time to go drink.
Sickboy is my hero...
Of course, something *happens* in a good movie, so it's fair to describe what happens. In "Lost in Translation," Sophia Coppola makes another of her films about young women being neglected, misused and misunderstood by young men. To her twit husband, Johansen is just another piece of ass (hence the opening shot of the film). But Murray has been through the mill, he's a Daddy to his own girls, a husband more than once, and a weary traveler. He and Johansen connect on a personal level, and his life experience allow him to enjoy it and to resist exploiting it--because it's so perfect. And it probably gives both of them a fresh hope that relationships can bring warmth and joy and common feeling into their lives.
But don't you wonder what he whispered into her ear in the street at the end of the film, that left both of them smiling quietly? Was it, "You are so fantastic, you'll find this feeling in the right package?" Or was it, "I'll be at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mexico City starting March 14, I'm making a film. If you want a job, you're hired."
As far as Gone With The Wind goes, Scarlett was a selfish, self seeking spoiled brat that used her feminine wiles to get what she wanted only to be left alone at the end, Brett on the other hand was somebody that followed his own truth, expressed it and didn't take crap from anybody, Scarlett included. Any man that can express valid reasons about why the south will lose the war to men blinded by anger , small mindedness and eager for a fight, openly bid to dance with the 'widowed' Scarlett despite high public disapproval, and tells Scarlett that he'll seek 'company' elsewhere after she barrs him out of their bedroom because of her vanity complex after baring their daughter should be held as a role model for any man.
Want to write a comment?
your life affects more people than you know.
donnie wen through the movie doing all of these things to all of these people. he ended up killing one intentionally and one died on their own (an accident, but still, he loved her). all of these crazy things happened because that freak in the bunny suit brought him out to the golf course. he realized that because he was allowed to live, he affected people - some for better, but more for worse. he comes to the conclusion that if he had died like he was supposed to, all of these people would have ended up better and happier (sort of like the butterfly effect if you've seen that). he goes back and gets hit by that jet engine and dies to save all of their lives (some literally, some figuratively). and when he gets hit by that engine, all of the people that he would have effected wake up in a panic because of their connection to donnie (although they don't know that exactly). but that's the point: we all affect people in our lives more than we know so we must live our lives knowing this and trying as best we can to affect them in a positive way.
questions? rebuttals?
joseph.b.bucci@gmail.com