[Edits below.]
Before I begin, let me point to two fellow Fil Am bloggers’ reviews of Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2008) here: Prometheus Brown | Sunny’s Film, Eyeballs, Brain.
I think there are many critical points I can bring up about this film, as an Ethnic Studies major, and as an Asian American, but my first question is this: what do Hmong communities in the USA think of this film and how they are portrayed in it?
I thought it was quite good as an examination of a complicated anti-post-racial America. That’s it right there: we do not live in a post-race America, and the manifestations of problematic race relations are right there in our neighborhoods, woven so integrally into the way we live our everyday lives, and impossible to ignore.
***Spoiler Alert***
Certainly, there are so many instances in this film that made me cringe and even laugh in outrage, with Eastwood’s character Walt Kowalski, the growling, old, working class, white American man, generously delivering racial and emasculating epithets to everyone around him, all across the board. It’s not excusable as being simply the way he is, but we see that through the course of this film, the way in which he delivers them, and to whom, is more like friendly even masculine ribbing than it is about pure hatred and bigotry. I don’t dig it, but I understand it in its proper contexts.
Kowalski is a Korean War veteran, and like John McCain (veteran of a different American war in Asia), uses the word “gooks,” as if it were still in style. He has worked for decades in the Ford factory, assembling American cars. This is the reason for his particular growly disdain towards his own son, who drives a Toyota.
In his review, Sunny tells us that it’s Kowalski’s own family who appear to be caricatures, sit com characters. His sons are ineffectual. He growls at his own grandchildren for being disrespectful and inappropriate, as in, showing up at their grandmother’s funeral in navel-ring revealing outfits, or athletic team jerseys. They are portrayed as simply wanting things from him or demeaning him by treating him like a feeble old man. Think: the birthday gifts of the telephone with its enormous buttons, and the “grabber” to help him pick up or reach things.
There are other white folks in this film too, whose interactions with Kowalski are peppered with colorful epithets: the Italian barber, the Irish construction foreman. Here, we see it’s that masculine mutual ribbing or rapport, as these two also have demeaning names for his Polish-ness. These two appear to be the closest thing he has to friends.
The meat of the film is his relationship with the Hmong family who lives next door, and particularly the fatherless Thao and Sue (newcomers Bee Vang and Ahney Her, respectively, and who, as far as I know, are really Hmong); as the film progresses, he allows himself to open up to them. As part of the Hmong gang initiation, Thao attempts to steal Kowalski’s 1972 Gran Torino, to which he responds with a shotgun to the frightened young man’s face. Thao, you see, is really a good kid; it’s just that he has no father figure at home, and is constantly bullied by other guys. The Hmong gang, led by Thao’s cousin “Spider” bail him out of bullying at the hands of the Mexican gang, and subsequently do everything possible to make a man out of him. Here, being a man is synonymous with being in a gang.
There is the fight between the Hmong gang members and Thao’s family, which has brought another Hmong neighbor running, which has brought even mom and grandma out of the house, which has spilled onto Kowalski’s lawn and broken one of his garden gnomes. Again, he meets the situation with a loaded shotgun, growling “Get off my lawn.” The next day, Sue and their mother Vu insist upon Thao working for Walt to make amends for trying to steal the Gran Torino. This is what brings him into their world.
Sue is Vu’s translator (and the translator for her other family and most of the community members speaking to Walt), and she is also an articulate and confident young woman in her own right. This scene in which she and Vu offer Thao’s labor to make amends, we see Thao trying to back out of this arrangement, and we see both Sue and Vu berate him bilingually. It’s quite funny, and our admiration for these women grows. They and grandma are the ones holding the family together. But we see also how his cousin and homeboys would find this demeaning, as they also react negatively to Thao gardening, which they call women’s work.
Serving as Walt’s guide to Hmong history and culture, Sue is also our guide. Through her is how the necessary exposition occurs, in explanation to him. I say necessary, because we do need these details in order to understand not only why the Hmong community have found themselves in the American Midwest; we (and Walt) do need to know that they fought on the American side in the Vietnam War, and it was their siding with the Americans that brought them persecution in their own countries. We also need to know the state of the community in these run down old neighborhoods. White flight has clearly occurred here (his own sons live in safe suburban areas, and his granddaughter derisively refers to this neighborhood as “the hood” in which she is inconvenienced by not having cell phone signal). Father figures are absent in this neighborhood, hence the presence of gangs and young men of all races/ethnicities in the streets. And also there is the presence of the Father figure of the young Irish priest.
I don’t want to summarize too much more here. In addition to issues of race relations, I believe this film’s major theme is masculinity. Thao has no male role model, and is too young or timid or awkward to step up and be the man of the house. His limited options include joining the gang, or accepting Walt’s mentorship. With the gang, one of its members sums it up: he used to get picked on and fucked with all the time, but never again since joining the gang. With Walt’s mentorship, masculinity means learning that male rapport, which I thought was a little problematic, Walt teaching Thao how to call other men demeaning names. But I get that the point is to be confident or self-confident, to speak for yourself, to get what you need. The other part of Walt’s lessons on being a man is working, taking care of the home, stepping up and supporting yourself and your family.
I do want to say that I agree with Prometheus Brown. This film is not about Walt Kowalski being the Great White Protector of a helpless, poor immigrant family, as the above image would lead us to believe. Regarding his relationship between the Hmong family next door, “they’re the ones who save him.” Walt’s relationship with Thao, Sue, and the family is redemptive. Whereas his neighborhood has grown increasingly “alien” to him, and whereas he has spent his life so distanced from his own sons, and so bothered by this fact, doing all that he can to guide Thao into manhood/male adulthood becomes very important to him.
There are so many other layers to unpeel in this film’s narrative, but as I am getting longwinded here, let me finish by saying this: visually, this is an understated and spare film. It is the opposite of grand and epic in sweep. Though I confess I haven’t seen many of the films Eastwood has produced and directed (I plan to rectify this), as with his Letters From Iwo Jima, what drives the narrative are the interactions and developing relationships between his characters, as well as the development of complicated/multi-layered characters and their equally complicated situations.
I feared Dirty Harry resolution to this film, but happily this never happened. The ending, the consequences of his actions, his meddling between the gang and Thao, can be read as complicated and problematic. They have beaten and raped Sue (and I am relieved we didn’t have to see this on screen; I imagine Eastwood would have thought it undignified and gratuitous). Thao’s family home has been majorly shot up with what I think are automatic weapons. Young Hmong gang members are now in the criminal justice system. As Sue had told Walt earlier on in the film, “we [Hmong women] go to college, and they [Hmong men] go to jail.” So they go to jail, and conversely, Thao now has future possibilities. Infuriating film. Awesome film.
Superb review – very interesting interpretation of the film.