"Asking the right questions" : American History X

American history X (1998) is the first film directed by the English producer Tony Kaye. He has mostly produced music videos and American tv commercials since he was sure that was a "surefire route into movies". Call him eccentric, engaged in social struggles - i.e. abortion (Lake of fire, 2006), education (Detachment, 2011) - his films are not the classic Hollywood productions.

His first movie explores the Nazi drift of two brothers, Derek (Edward Norton) and Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong). After a traumatic experience in jail Derek restarts a new life and tries to get his younger brother away from Nazi ideology.

The following short extract shows the moment Derek receives the visit of his old school teacher Robert Sweeney (Avery Brooks) while he is in prison, and during the conversation experiences the non-sense of his life:

"S: I need to know the truth about how you feel. 

D: You think I want him in here? I mean...I don't know. I don't know what I feel. I'm all... I feel a little inside out. I'm… you know - I don't know. There's some things that...that don't fit.

[...]

S: All right. That's why you have to stay open. Right now, your anger is consuming you here. Your anger is shutting down the brain God gave you.

D: God. You know, man? You've been talking about what's going on with me since I was in high school. How the f... do you know what's going on inside me?

S: No, I know about me. I know about this place. I know about the place you are in.

D: What do you know about the place I'm in?

S: There was a moment, when I used to blame everything and everyone for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me, that I saw happen to my people. Used to blame everybody. Blamed white people, blamed society, blamed God. I didn’t get no answers ’cause I was asking the wrong questions. You have to ask the right questions.  

D: Like what?

S: Has anything you’ve done made your life better?"

I couldn't think of a song about the meaning of life or being in jail and having epiphanies. But instead I remembered about a country song played at one of the very first episodes of Lost (season 1, episode 6 "House of the Rising Sun"). The song by Willie Nelson, "Are you sure?" is from the album Country Willie - His own songs (1965) is a master piece : direct, simple and clear.
 

Oh, look around you, look down the bar from you

At the faces that you see

Are you sure that this is where you want to be?

These are your friends, but are they real friends?

Do they love you as much as me?

Are you sure that this is where you want to be?

You seem in such a hurry to live this kind of life

And you’ve caused so many pain and misery.

But look around you, take a good look

Just between you and me,

Are you sure that this is where you want to be?

Please don’t let my tears persuade you

I had hoped I wouldn’t cry

But lately, teardrops seem a part of me

Oh, look around you, take a good look

At all the locals used-to-be’s

Are you sure that this is where you want to be?

Michael Bay's The Island : "I wish that there was more"

 Michael Bay is not exactly a religious Hollywood director. In this filmography we find The Rock (1996), Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001) or the Transformers series. In 2005, Bay directed The Island, starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson, as Lincoln 6-Echo and Jordan 2-Delta. Lincoln and Jordan live with other people in an isolated, futuristic and utopian residence, a kind of indoor Club Med, highly monitored. All the residents in this pseudo-holiday complex are told they are the survivors of massive contamination. The environment they live in is controlled carefully, apparently for their own benefit. The monotony of their lives is stopped every once in a while by a lottery game which prize is to quit the residence to go live the rest of their live in paradisiacal island, the last uncontaminated spot on the planet. Like all of the inhabitants of this residence, Lincoln hopes to be chosen to go to there. 

It is possible to perform different readings of this movie, there are several subjects that are evoked – human dignity, freedom and control, the significance of human being - but in this case, I would like just to concentrate on how impossible is to avoid the desire of transcendence to come up to the surface, even if all our basic needs are more or less satisfied. 

From the very beginning of the movie we notice that Lincoln feels some kind of anxiety, not for a specific reason, has nightmares, and he starts questioning the environment. He is asked to pay a visit to doctor Merrick (Sean Bean), who is in charge of the programme:

"L: All right. Tuesday night is tofu night. And I'm asking myself, who decided that everyone here likes tofu in the first place? And what is tofu, anyway? And why can't I have bacon? I line up every morning, and I'm not allowed any bacon for my breakfast. And... Let's talk about all the white. Why is everyone wearing white all the time? It's impossible to keep clean. I always get the gray stripe. I never get any color. And I hand it in to be cleaned, and someone cleans it, and folds it neatly back in my drawer, but who? Who is that person? I don't know. I just... I wanna know answers. And I wish that there was more. 
D:  More? 
L: Yeah. More than just waiting to go to the Island. 
D: Lincoln, it's your nature to question things."

They might look like silly questions (food, wardrobe…), but then it turns to be a critic of "system", the way things are run at the residence. Though his main source of dissatisfaction is the absence of meaning in his flat life. "I wish that there was more" is also the cry of contemporary man thirsty of transcendence.