Worth a Closer Look

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2011)

Those shacks with their scrawny kids and threadbare mothers are right out of a Dorothea Lange photo essay of the Great Depression. Now, I'm no particular fan of director Ford, but he does nail this social protest film, which remains an affecting classic even 70-years later. Production notes indicate Ford had to battle TCF to get as much realism into the movie as he did. Yet, without those revealing touches, the dramatic impact would be sorely undercut.
What impresses me is the similarity of conditions between then and now, that is, between the great Depression of the 1930's and the Great Recession (housing bubble) of the 2000's. Instead of a stock market collapse and a rural Dust Bowl, our era has seen a collapse of housing prices and a loss of jobs that has wiped out trillions in home-owner wealth. The collapse has created a new class of dispossessed as banks move in to repossess overdue mortgages. At the same time, the unemployed hope to find a job before government compensation runs out.
In the movie, uprooted families pack up and move west to new horizons, living in tumble- down shacks along the way. Nowadays, uprooted families are either homeless or live in cars, there being scant new horizons to move to. Meanwhile, nameless bankers and Wall Streeters hover in the moneyed background, profiting off the general misery from behind gated communities. The movie goes easy on the contrast between the few rich and the many poor, but the implications remain embedded in the screenplay, especially when the sheriff evicts the sharecroppers from the land.
This brief comparison is not meant to be political. Rather, it's meant to suggest that certain economic dynamics are still with us, even 70-years later, a parallel making the movie's social topic as relevant now as it was then. Of course, as yet there's no Steinbeck or Ford to dramatize the plight in the moving way of the novel or the film. But then, this new era of collapse is still pretty young.
The film itself remains a triumph of casting, staging, and scripting. It's really Ma Joad's (Darwell) film, her strength and sensitivity a stand-in for migrant resilience as a whole. I'm so glad Ford refused to prettify her appearance in any fashion. Fonda too provides just the right humorless edge, that of a good man rendered an outlaw by onerous conditions of the time. Carradine's preacher may be the most interesting of the characters. Having lost "The Call", he's a lost soul amidst the general collapse of all that was familiar. Yet, he retains the capacities of a visionary leader, someone who can help guide the new Israelites into a land of milk and honey. It's part of the movie's tragic sense of dislocation that his new understanding is cut short.
Among many memorable scenes, my favorite is the kids at the roadside diner. The hash- house waitress is a typical sassy type, used to fending off jibes from weary truckers. So, when the deal-making Pa Joad comes in with his two hungry kids, she's at first resistant. But then with the cook pushing, her resistance gives way to the humane person underneath. At the same time, the sentiment proves infectious. And instead of the diner losing money by befriending the needy Joads, the truckers leave a sizable tip. In short, a layer of everyday life is peeled back to show a seldom seen solidarity beneath.
To me, not everything is roses. Ford shows his penchant for broad character humor with Grandpa Joad (Grapewin). I know Grandpa is supposed to be borderline senile; however, his overdone antics threaten to undercut the movie's concern with realistic effects. Also, the waitress's scene ending tribute to the generous truckers is unnecessary. Letting the audience grasp the humane gesture would have been more effective.
Nonetheless, these are small blemishes within a beautifully wrought canvas. My lingering image is the final shot of Tom as he crosses the skyline, a silhouette of the reformist spirit now loose upon the land. My hope is there are many Tom Joads still among us.