A Turn for the Worse

TV: Breaking Bad, season 1

"Breaking Bad" is, according to Wikipedia, is a southern colloquialism for taking a turn off the straight and narrow path. Or it might be defined as when someone forced beyond their limits to their breaking point--the point at which they're forced to do things they never thought themselves capable of.

Walter White, played in turns gently and ferociously by Bryan Cranston, is the definition of "breaking bad". He's a mild-mannered chemistry teacher with a loving wife, Skyler, who is unexpectedly pregnant with the couple's second child. Their first son, Walter Jr., has cerebral palsy. Walter and Skyler manage to hold it together as a lower-middle to middle-middle class family. They may not be able to afford a new water heater, but they're not exactly starving either. Things are going ok and they have a lot to be grateful for.

That is, until Walter is diagnosed with terminal, inoperable lung cancer. He will almost certainly be dead within two years, leaving his family with a mountain of debt. This turn for the worse is what pushes Walt to take a turn for the worse in the moral sense.

After Walt's brother-in-law, who works for the Drug Enforcement Administration, describes the massive amount of money meth dealers can make, Walt is inspired. He has the scientific knowledge to cook the world's greatest, purest meth. However, what he has in book smarts he seriously lacks in street smarts--at least at first.

Walt recruits Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul--you might remember him as Amanda Seyfried's husband in Big Love), a rough around the edges drug dealer, to do the street work for him. Turns out that Jesse is smart and, in many ways, a decent guy. He comes from a good family. Like Walt, Jesse wasn't born bad--he's breaking bad.

The first season of Breaking Bad is a short run of seven perfectly tuned, intense, gritty episodes. I was hooked from episode one. The concept of a good man pushed to his limits intrigues me. And unlike many other violent and exploitative shows, Breaking Bad has genuine heart below its grimy surface. When Walt's family tries to stage an intervention to make him undergo chemo (Walt balks at the idea), Walt explains as calmly as he can that in his last few months he doesn't want to be "unable to enjoy a good meal...to make love. To be so nauseous I can't turn my head...you would all remember me that way". As much as we sympathize with Skyler and Walter Jr., who think Walt would be crazy not to try to fight the cancer, we see Walt's point of view as well. He's going to die--why suffer to delay the inevitable for a few months?

Yet, the next day, Walt wakes up in bed alone. He walks downstairs to the kitchen, where Skyler is making breakfast. He hugs her from behind and says "Ok. I'll do it for you." At this point, Walt realizes there is something he loves and cares about more than a good meal and the ability to make love--his wife and son. He has decided not to live his last months for himself, but for them. The love in the White family is palpable, which makes it all the more heartbreaking.

But unlike a Lurlene McDaniel book or Lifetime movie, Breaking Bad removes any sentimentality of terminal illness. In the world of Walter White, illness leads to desperation--and a certain kind of exhilaration. Walt, previously a geeky, quiet, passive man is now on the road to becoming a criminal, a liar, and a killer. This is no 3-hankie made for TV movie where the cancer patient lies in bed and nobly waits for death to come. Breaking Bad is about what it's like to live when there is literally nothing left to lose. And it's a heart-pounding ride.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Night of the Living Hillbillies

Movies: Tucker and Dale vs. Evil

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil is a one-joke movie, but what a hilarious joke it is! Parodying all those movies where dumb, privileged teenagers (and adults, in the case of Deliverance) get lost in the woods, only to be brutally murdered by inbred yokels, Tucker and Dale takes this trope and turns it on its ear. In this movie, the hillbillies are nice, decent guys and the college students camping in the woods are slaughtered by their own ignorance.


Tucker and Dale is sly and, well, I guess you could call it "meta". The college kids in the movie assume that Tucker and Dale are mentally deficient killers because they've seen enough horror movies about college kids in the woods to know that that's just how it works. If there are rednecks in the woods, popular culture has taught us that they must be mentally deficient killers.

But in this case, Tucker and Dale are just slightly more rural gentleman. When they see comely Allison fall off a rock and conk her head during a bout of skinny-dipping, they row their boat out to save her. Allison's friends see them hauling her into the boat and assume they must be kidnapping her--so they do what any sensible people would do: run away, refuse to call the police (because calling the police never works in the movies, so why bother?), and plot to save her themselves. A series of misunderstandings follow, which lead to the funny and grotesque deaths of the college students.

This movie proves that to assume makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"--and sometimes that ass winds up in a wood chipper.

Going back to my first point, as funny as Tucker and Dale is, it's ultimately one-note. By the time we get to the final act, in which the true villain--Chad, the preppy psycho and alpha male leader of the group--ties poor Allison to one of those moving buzz saw things, we've already gotten the joke, and the movie has little to offer except the inevitable conclusion in which evil is vanquished and the hero (in this case, the bearish sweetheart Dale) gets the girl.

More entertaining than Attack the Block but less substantial than Shaun of the Dead, Tucker and Dale vs, Evil is the latest in the growing genre of horror movie spoofs and proves to be a fun (and not *too* bloody) night at the movies.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Iran (So Far Away)

Movies: Circumstance

Considering I just saw it a week ago, I guess it's too soon to say that Circumstance changed my life. But as I was watching this amazing and heartbreaking film, I felt such a sense of luck and gratitude...and that feeling has stayed with me.

Circumstance takes place in modern day Iran; a country that has knowledge and access to "western" culture, but whose own culture is extremely religious, conservative, and punitive. Two teen girls, Atafeh and Shireen, navigate and negotiate the culture they were born into through small acts of typical teen rebellion. They pass each other notes at school, sass back to their parents, and doff their hijabs in favor of sparkly tank tops and tight dresses when they secretly attend parties. The only difference between Atafeh and Shireen's lives and the life of a teenager in the United States is that if Atafeh and Shireen get caught, the consequences would be severe--we're talking prison, "virginity checks", and worse.

In addition to partying and rock music, Atafeh and Shireen experiment with sexuality--both with boys and with each other. It becomes clear that they love each other as more than friends, though they don't have the words to express this love. Are Shireen and Atafeh lesbians, or are they simply indulging in a schoolgirl crush? It hardly matters. What matters is that throughout the film, the two young women lean on each other for the support that their families, teachers, and boyfriends cannot provide. They are the definition of soul mates, and, sadly, their culture and families conspire to keep them apart.

Spoiler!

After the two girls get in trouble with the law, Shireen is married to Atafeh's zealous and controlling brother, Mehran. Although Shireen tells Atafeh that she married Mehran so that the two girls could always be together, under one roof, it's obvious that the marriage is the wedge that will drive the girls apart.

End spoiler.

Although the film ends on a hopeful note (at least for one of the girls), Circumstance is...not so much depressing as it is eye-opening. The amount of institutionalized sexism and hatred toward women that Atafeh and Shireen face is staggering. Even Atafeh's father, who is relatively liberal and not religious, treats his daughter not as if she were a young woman about to enter adulthood on her own terms, but as if she were an ungrateful child in need of constant supervision and protection. Circumstance's message is all the more effective in because it reveals the insidiousness of benevolent sexism (i.e. women are in need of special protection)--as well as overt misogyny. It's agony to see Atafeh and Shireen driven apart because they need each other so badly--for strength, for encouragement, for love, and for all the emotional and psychological support they damn well aren't getting from anyone else in their lives.

Circumstance is one of the most deeply emotional (without being cloying) films I've seen in a while. Anyone who believes that feminism's work has been accomplished should see this movie, as well as those who know that we still have a long way to go on the road toward equality and respect.

5 out of 5 stars