The Long Walk

General spoiler warning

Based on a novella by Stephen King (writing under the pen name "Richard Bachman"), The Long Walk is a movie about a dystopian future where everyone is miserably poor and every year 50 young men volunteer to participate in "the Long Walk" where they walk and walk and walk, never going under a 3 mph pace and never stopping until only one is left. The winner receives insane riches and a wish. The losers all die, shot down like dogs if they stop walking for too long.

Definitely a very healthy movie to watch at a time like this! (and by "this", I mean "look the fuck around"). But, honestly, I found it cathartic. I often find intense, sad movies cathartic when I am feeling intense and sad. I like what I watch and read to match the emotions inside. 

Ray Garraty, played by the wonderful Cooper Hoffman (son of beloved actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, may he rest in peace), is our main character. After being dropped off at the starting line by his distressed mother (Judy Greer), Ray meets some of his fellow walkers: spunky Hank Olson (Ben Wang), religious Art Baker (Tut Nyuot), edgy Gary Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), stoic Collie Parker (Joshua Odjick), resilient Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), and intelligent and thoughtful Peter McVries (David Jonsson).

The man running the show is known only as the Major (Mark Hamill) and he compliments the boys for having "the sack" to sign up for such an endurance test. The rules are simple: walk or die. If you fall below a pace of 3 miles per hour, you get a warning. If you get three warnings, you are shot. However, your slate is clean after an hour with no additional warnings. So, let's say you have to stop and tie your shoe. You get one warning for stopping. If it takes more than 10 seconds to tie your shoe, that's another warning. But then if you get up and keep walking for two hours with no warnings, you're back to zero.

All Walkers can get fresh canteens of water any time they ask for it. They're given food rations every day. Have to piss? Well, you're going to be pissing as you walk at a 3 mph pace. Have to shit? You can either shit while walking or take a warning or two by popping a squat. 

Got a rock in your shoe and you're already at 3 warnings? You're going to be walking a while with that rock. Thems the rules.

Oh, and if you step off the road you are shot immediately.

You can imagine the type of nasty stuff that happens as the hours of walking pass by. A kid gets a charlie horse and is able to keep up for a while, but eventually gives up, crying "it's not fair!" as a bullet it put in his brain. Same with a kid who gets the runs and keeps dropping below speed to poop. It's not a pleasant movie.

We stick with our main cast of characters. Ray, Peter, Art, and Hank call themselves the "Musketeers". Collie and Stebbins keep to themselves. And Gary is the villain. Well, sort of. He eggs one walker on, who ends up shot because of Gary's prodding. When the boys begin calling Gary a "killer", he tries to tell them he didn't want that kid to die. Gary Barkovitch is one of the most interesting characters because of his desperate desire to be part of a group of friends, but also be a tough guy. Charlie Plummer is great at portraying the edgy, tragic character.

The main message of the film is that to endure great hardship, you must have friends. The central friendship is that between Ray and Peter, both of whom don't have brothers. So they become each other's brothers for as long as they walk. But the tragedy of it is that they both know that one of them has to die so that the other may win. Without having read the novella, I was curious to see how the film would end. I hoped that Ray and Peter would do something like stop walking at the same time, each with three warnings, daring the Major to kill them both and thus have no winner of The Long Walk.

About the ending...this is where The Long Walk went from an "A-" to a "B+" for me. For a couple reasons. For one, the ending felt rushed. Ray and Peter are the final two survivors. They enter into a city, crowded with people. Peter decides to sacrifice himself for Ray and stops walking, but then Ray pulls him forward and tells him to keep walking for a while longer and Peter does so. But then Ray stops walking. And as he already had his third warning, he is shot. Peter is, of course, devastated. When the Major asks what his wish is...Peter decides to carry out Ray's wish (which Ray had privately told him about earlier in the film). He asks for a carbine rifle immediately and is given one. He shoots and kills the Major and then walks away.

My issue with this ending isn't that it's bleak. Earlier in the film, Peter and Ray have a conversation about Ray's plan to kill the Major. Even if it means Ray will die, he feels that he would be "cutting the head off" by killing the Major. Peter urges him to "choose love" if he wins and to use the money and the wish to make the world a better place--not by killing someone, but in some other way. Well, we see at the end that Peter decides to choose murder over love, for better or worse. He's betrayed his own values to get revenge for his friend. 

But MY issue is with how unrealistic it is. I find it difficult to believe that 1) they would just give the winner of The Long Walk a rifle when he asks for it even though the Major is right there and emotions are high, 2) not immediately shoot Peter in the head when he points the gun at the Major, and 3) not definitely kill him after he shoots the Major. I mean, maybe they do kill him, but we don't see it. We just see Peter walk off into the night. 

While it would have been satisfying to see Peter kill the Major, the way it's filmed is just very...anticlimactic. Like, "oh, that happened. The end." Any message, whether it's "this poor boy has lost his soul in killing the Major" or "Peter learned that sometimes killing is the right thing to do" is lost due to the way the scene plays out. Now, that's just my opinion. Others have found the ending to be powerful or appropriately bleak.

So, yeah, The Long Walk is a very good movie that stumbles (ha ha) at the end. But as I said above, the real reason to watch the film is the acting. All the actors are excellent and make you feel each painful step of the Walk. Standouts are Hoffman, who feels the most "real" of any of the characters (some of the characters feel a bit cartoonish at times, but Ray, both in dialogue and mannerisms, is very real and not cartoonish at all), Plummer, and Jonsson. 

Every time one of the boys dies during the walk, it is an absolute gut-punch. Whether they die screaming for help or die trying to fight, the gravity of what is happening hits hard. And the looks of horror, bewilderment, and agony on the other boys' faces as they force themselves to walk on is...something to behold. Given the week I had before going into this film only made it more powerful, more unsettling, and more devastating. I only recommend it if you're in the "right" headspace to see it, whatever "right" means to you. 

The Long Walk is a dystopian film for our current times. Desperation drives these boys to what is tantamount to suicide. Their pain is meaningless to the guards who shoot them like dogs if they stumble or slow down. And because this is Stephen King, who is as ruthless as he is sentimental (even cheesy, at times), the ending reads not as triumphant, but as bleak as hell. The only balm is knowing that they found friends--even brothers--along the way.

Grade: B+

Revisiting The Lord of the Rings trilogy

I've never been a Tolkien fan. That's not to say I don't like his work, I was just never into high fantasy (or low fantasy for that matter), so I never read his work with the exception of The Fellowship of the Ring, which was required reading in 11th grade English.

But of course I saw all three of The Lord of the Rings movies. You kind of had to. I remember liking The Fellowship of the Ring the most and seeing it at least 2 times, perhaps 3 times, in the early aughts. However, I only saw The Two Towers and The Return of the King once each. I saw them in the theatre and have not watched them since.

UNTIL NOW. 

IN A WORLD...fraught with division and strife...

IN A WORLD...where evil gains traction every passing day...

IN A WORLD...where the little guy has to stand up for what's right...

ONE MOVIE LOVER...has the courage to return to the past and watch a series of movies that she was convinced were overrated and boring. 

COMING RIGHT NOW TO AN INTERNET NEAR YOU is the sensation...the blog entry all the critics are talking about...

JENNY'S REVIEW OF THE LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY 

***

So it turns out that I was wrong and Peter Jackson's LOTR trilogy is an absolute masterpiece of filmmaking. I watched all three films--the extended cuts of each one--in less than a week. I planned to watch one film per weekend over the course of 3 weeks, but the minute that Fellowship was over, I started The Two Towers. With Two Towers and Return of the King, I watched a few hours each night for a whole week until I was finished.

These movies got their grubby little hobbit hands in me.

I'm not going to go into plot details because I'm guessing that most of you reading this are bigger fans of the series than I am. I'll just write about some feelings that came up for me as I worked my way through the movies.

Not surprisingly, I remembered the plot of Fellowship the most since I had seen it more than once. I remember enjoying the movie when I was a teen because I had a crush on both Elijah Wood and Orlando Bloom so, you know, eye candy. Fellowship is also the lightest of all three. Upon rewatching it, I'd also say it's the weakest film of the trilogy...but when I say "weakest", what I mean is that I'd give it an "A" rating and the other two movies an "A+" rating, so, like, it's still very, very good.

When it came to revisiting The Two Towers and The Return of the King, I remembered almost nothing. I remembered Merry and Pippin being carried around my some trees in the TTT and the whole "I may not be able to carry the ring, but I can carry you Mr. Frodo!" scene from ROTK. Otherwise, these were essentially brand new films for me. 

And, like a virgin, it was like being touched by JRR Tolkien's tremendous prose for the very first time.

I was stunned by how much I enjoyed TTT and especially ROTK. This was not a situation where I was half-watching, half-playing on my phone. I was riveted to the screen. And those lines people like to quote from the trilogy hit hard. When I was watching these movies as a 16, 17, 18 year old, I was not the same person as I am now. We were not living in the same world as we are now. Gandalf's famous line, "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." hits like a fucking freight train. 

I'm still not a fan of high fantasy--that has not changed. What changed is that I grew up. As sheltered as I still am compared to many people, I'm not as sheltered as I was when I was a teenager. And while I had some semblance of "religion" back when I first saw the movies, what I have now is an actual, burgeoning concept of spirituality that is mine and mine alone, built through loss of innocence, built through experience, built through hard times, and still continuing to be built, day by day.

Even if you're a stalwart atheist, The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a spiritual story. When I say "spiritual", what I mean is the idea that there is something greater than us and our lives. That we actually do need other people. That we each have unique gifts and strengths no matter who we are. And that our strengths and weaknesses fit into to the strengths and weaknesses of other people like a puzzle. 

This is the message of The Lord of the Rings: every person has unique qualities and are of value...but only in the context of being in community with others. Only Frodo could carry the ring as far as he did, but he wouldn't have made it without Sam. The Lord of the Rings says: you are not meant to be alone and to shoulder the burdens of the world by yourself. You are meant to be in relationship with other people. And they with you.

This is a message that I needed to hear and still need to hear because I struggle with two things: 1) a strong desire to be alone a lot of the time and 2) a feeling that I'm not as good as other people. My desire to be alone comes from issues with being overstimulated by other people and their noise and energy. And that's legit, but I also need to make sure that I don't retreat too much into myself. The other part of this is a feeling of creeping shame that I am not enough--not enough of an adult, not smart enough, not strong enough, and certainly not brave enough for this world.

But what LOTR says to me is: you, Jenny, are needed by other people. You, Jenny, do have strengths and skills that others don't have and they need your help. You, Jenny, can learn from others and it's not embarrassing to learn, even as you approach middle age. In fact, it's beautiful to keep learning as you get older. 

Something that I had forgotten about the trilogy is that it ends on a pretty bittersweet note. After the four hobbits return home when Sauron is conquered, they try to get on with their lives. But Frodo can't. He has seen and experienced too much to just live a "normal" life in the Shire. He ends up going to the Undying Lands with Bilbo and Gandalf--basically, like going to eternity without dying. Sam and his friends are saddened to see him go, but it's what he has to do. The Fellowship is truly broken up at this point and everyone is moving on with their lives (or afterlives). And we get that lovely last shot of Samwise Gamgee, the real hero of the movies, going back home to his wife and kids.

This is really not a typical "happy ending" and I love the trilogy for that. I love that the story suggests that sometimes we are so impacted by life events and trauma that we cannot go back to who we were--we can only move forward to who we are becoming. That's beautiful, and that's truth. 

So I rewatched these films while having a mid-life crisis and an existential crisis and a spiritual crisis...and, boy howdy, I cannot recommend these films enough if you are experiencing one or more of the above crises. It's goooood crisis-watching. 

That's all I have to say. Well done to everyone involved in the making of these films. Hopefully they know how much the movies mean to so many people.

Grade: A+