WHAT IS TO BE AN American TODAY?

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2009)

Looked through the paper. Makes you want to cry. Nobody cares if the people Live or die. And the dealer wants you thinking That it's either black or white. Thank G-d it's not that simple In My Secret Life.
I bite my lip. I buy what I'm told: From the latest hit, To the wisdom of old. But I'm always alone. And my heart is like ice. And it's crowded and cold In My Secret Life.
In my Secret Life, Leonard Cohen
"Gran Torino" film main them are like part f Leonard Cohen's song "In my Secret Life". That secret is what hooks you up since the beginning and that is what you want to discover along the film. Why that Walt Kowalsky (Clint Eastwood) is is sitting with his dog, drinking beer and preventing that people enter into his lawn?
Like a lonely ranger surrounded by Asian families, what he called "gooks" and "chinks", that bitter and almost permanently angry men is in sorrow because his beloved wife just passed away. But according how his sons behave toward him, the behavior of this retired car assembled line men was like that long before his mother's dead. In fact the name of the movie is because he possesses a Gran Torino Ford, an American product that is in the core of that home standing as the Flag, and Wally.
So Wally is also a Korea's war veteran and in a lot of ways a self made man. So what this man in doing in that area full of non-WASP people? Well , that is the central metaphor of this elegant, well directed and superb acted film of Clint Eastwood. Who for me has become and equivalent of and Akira Kurosawa of Unites States of America. Telling us the American history from the western, hard core detectives, astronauts, boxing girls, and this lonely old ranger.
What is to be an American today? Are they became self contained all the time in order not to kill the Afro-Americans, Koreans, Mexicans or even Arabs which all of them have lived in this country probably along several generations or is to accept that there are other alternatives to the WASP definition?
The other issue showed in the film is related to father and son relationship and role models. Kowalsky own sons are completely into a different frame of values. They are in business, and of course having a Dad like Walt is not easy, especially because he doesn't want to move out of his house, that in that way could be sold by their sons. The "adoption" of Thao and his family is a kind of re-vindication and also a test of his parenthood abilities.
Finally there is the moral issue. Wally is not too much a believer although his wife was and she asked to her priest before passed away, to convince Wally to have a confession with him. Wally didn't confess right away because the Padre is too young to know about issues of life and dead. Because her last will's wife was to get his confession and absolution by that young priest, he became an obsession to the widow. But when confession is made, in Wally's eyes the real sins were more related to everyday life stuff and killing people in Korean war, for instances was completely out of his vision of transgression of "The Ten Commandments." But instead he did a lot of thing for to protect the "gook" family next door. So he doesn't believe that too much in to be good or bad as part of a God regulatory function but himself and in my opinion he did that extraordinarily well. A film that must be seen from a Director and Actor that would be named in other Countries: A Living Treasure.