Looking beyond the language

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2009)

While focusing on Walt's bigotry it seems some of the viewers missed several of the broader and more interesting themes in the movie.
It is given, in the beginning of the movie, that Walt is a bitter man. He lost his wife, has no connection with his children, his old familiar neighbor is a wreckin essence, the world as he knew it is gone. Not only is the neighborhood falling apart, he is too, as are his peers who peek out from their own windows to witness the degradation.
It is also given that he is haunted by his Korean war experience. As one reviewer observed, he has a seemingly justifiable reaction to the Asians as his neighbors. That he fails to realize that his bigotry is misplaced, unfounded, and wrong is his flaw. One of many.
Balancing his bigotry is the bigotry of Thao's grandmother, who sits on her porch, cursing her fate, and Waltevery bit as blindly and as vehemently as Walt himself does.
It does not take Walt very long to see that Thao and Sue are worth knowing. While Sue makes the effort, by inviting him to her family's barbecue, Walt is quick to accept the invitation.
And, it does not take long before Walt's racial slurs, awful as they may be, become terms of affection, however inappropriate. Just as he calls his barber, and his construction supervisor friend by equally appalling names, so he speaks to Thao and Sue. Walt is incapable of gentler words, it isn't in him. It is, in effect, the only way for him to express affection. But his actions prove him to be a good man. As he takes Thao under his care, teaching him the skills he sorely lacks, Walt reveals his better nature.
In the process they help each other. They each gain. Thao and Sue get the protection of a father figure, Walt gets a family. The slurs are a reflex. His real bigotry and hatred is reserved not for ethnicity, but idiocy. He truly rails against the white boy who escorts Sue into the wrong neighborhoodfor his idiocy. He truly despises the gang-bangers because, in essence, they are idiots, and dangerous at that. That they are Asian is irrelevant. Had they been white skin-heads his reaction would have the same or worse.
The anger Walt carries is unbalanced. Thao and Sue give him balance.
The film has a fatal flaw. While it is true that Walt protects Thao and Sue, and becomes a better man in the process, his pent-up rage causes him to react in the wrong way, which leads to something truly unsettling. He warns off the gang with violence, by beating and threatening one of the gang members. That was a mistake on his part. The revenge which the gang extracts, which could have been predicted, leads directly to Sue's rape.
Whatever themes the movie presents, none are as powerful, and lost in the telling, as Sue's rape. Thao's ultimate coming-of-age wisdom gained through Walt's guidance, is nothing compared to the pain which Sue endures, and it is glib of the film's writers to offer such a tidy ending. Walt's ritualistic cleansing and self-sacrifice, replete with body-on-the-cross death, fails utterly to speak to Sue's pain. While Walt will ascend to a heavenly reward (for his sins, as confessed to Father Carley, were trivial), Sue will carry the horror of her experience for the rest of her life. The writers do not see this, and it is a blatant failing, and it nullifies the feel-good ending.
In Million Dollar Baby, which is more or less the same movie, Eastwood's character must do the unthinkable, commit a mortal sin by offering Hillary Swank's character release. In doing so he is condemned. In Gran Torino there is no such recognition of Sue being condemned to her memories. In an otherwise moving film, it is unacceptable.
What Gran Torino does offer is a story of redemption. That a man of Walt's flawed nature can embrace the very thing which he abhors makes the film of some value. His embracing of Thao and Sue is touching, and the process is funny and sad.
Something which goes by very quickly in the movie is the misunderstanding Walt has for the Hmong's place in history. He sees them as he sees the Koreans he battled: as the enemy. In fact, as Sue points out while riding with Walt in his truck, the Hmong were allies of the United States and the South Vietnamese against the North Vietnamese during the Viet Nam war. The Hmong, as a people, sacrificed a great deal, including their homeland; for after the war, and the Communist/Nationalistic victory, the Hmong were cruelly treated, that is to say either killed or displaced, for their association with the Americans and the South Vietnamese. That the film's writers acknowledge this is important.
Another theme the film suggests is race on race bigotry. That the Hmong gang preys on their own is, in Walt's mind, beyond the pale. For those viewers who see only Walt's bigotry, they should also see the bigotry which lies within all cultures.
Gran Torino is a small film, and it is flawed. Still, on many levels it is a touching and meaningful movie, and worth seeing. It is a gift for most viewers to get a glimpse two marginal worlds: Walt's crumbing America, and the Hmong culture as it is integrated into the American fabric.
Ultimately I am haunted by Sue's rape.