The opening of the film is split between Smith and Perry meeting up and planning the robbery constantly cutting back and forth between life in the Clutter home, the latter completely unaware of the danger en route to them. The background music at the Clutter home complements the family life being depicted without ever being treacly. The jumps cuts between the two sets of characters demonstrate how theirs fates are irreversibly intertwined. Perry makes a phone call at the bus station and the phone rings at the Clutter home is one such example of the complementary action. We see Perry and Dick drive right up to the house and Perry says they should back out of it before it's too late. The film then cuts to what appears to be the next morning when the bodies are discovered.
We never see the crime but jump over it. We then spend the next third of the film hearing about it from the police. The brutal, unmerciful nature of the slayings and the minute evidence that has been left behind are brought up again and again. Perry and Dick however made off with a mere $40.00 and a radio that belonged to the son. The fruits of their labor would not appear to have been as bountiful as originally conceived. The two close partners begin to drift apart as Dick can no longer stand living in Mexico with Perry as he continually talks about dreams of sunken treasure to make up for their less than polished conditions. Money runs dry and the two head back into the US where they are reduced to collecting bottles on the side of the road to fund their travels. The impoverished conditions and the fact that the police are closing in slowly around them allows the audience to sympathize with the two killers. Since we have not seen the murders, we are not as repulsed by Perry and Dick than if we had seen it.
Perry is also a pretty pathetic character. With injured legs that constantly seize up on him and addicted him to aspirin, his home life is as fractured as his psyche. His mother was an alcoholic who cheated on his father with younger men. His father would beat her for her infidelities in front of the children and it is suggested killer her as well. Perry constantly fantasizes about his childhood memories of his mother and her calling to him. Coupled with his child-like dreams of hidden treasure it is hard to truly hate the character. Dick has his own broken home with a father dying of cancer and children that he left behind to go on the road with Perry following the murders. If we had seen the murders prior to all this it would have been next to impossible to identify with the killers but the structure has allowed for this possibility.
Once captured by the police and after hearing Dick blamed him for the murders, Perry relates what happened that night picking up right from where the beginning jumped over the murders. There is no score and the background soundtrack features only the howling wind. We see everything from the time Perry says they should leave to the final murder. The violence is never glorified and Perry right before the killings flashes back to his father urging him on at the end of a shotgun. The closing argument by the prosecutions reminds us that these were essentially senseless murders. There was no huge pay-off and the entire family was executed without a second thought. The killers do not deserve mercy as none was shown to the victims. This closing statement should reinforce the fact that these killers deserve their ultimate fate but it is unsettling as the audience has already identified with them and seen that the murders were not as cold blooded as it you would be led to believe.
I guess the real question is did the killers deserve the death penalty? Not to be too political but the death penalty is something I do not personally believe in. No one reserves the right to take the life of another, even in response to another life being taken. That life is being taken in the name of justice and I do not think justice is being served through the loss of more life. It is hypocritical to damn a person for taking a life and punish them with the taking of their life. Society should be above such actions. The persons handing down punishments should be held to a higher morale standard than those who commit the crimes. I think this film reinforces that opinion in that the execution of Smith and Hickock is presented as being more cold-blooded than the murders of the Clutter family. They waited five years on death row, just sitting in their cells and thinking of when they would be hanged. Five years of waiting for your life to end with no hope of visitors, fresh air, leaving your cell for anything other than to go to the showers and back. It's comparable to hell on earth, a living dead like state where you can do nothing but wait for the end. The executions are as unsettling as the Clutter murders as the number of people involved to set up and the audience there to watch the deed unfold. People watching as two more people are murdered. Six lives lost, and as the reporter says at the end: what's it all for?
"Well four innocent and two guilty people murdered. Three families broken. Newspapers have sold more papers. Politicians will make more speeches. Police and parole boards will get more blame. More laws will be passed. Everybody will pass the buck. And then, next month, next year . . . the same thing will happen again."
Favorite moment: Perry's final confession before his hanging reveals the meaning behind the apparition of his father that appeared to him in the Clutter home before the murders began. Aside from shedding more light onto Perry's fractured home life, the shot of him by the window, where it is raining has the shadows of the drops of water slide down his face as if he is crying. Although it is claimed that this was unintentional by the production crew, it's a beautifully framed shot that permits Perry to show the real emotion he was unable/unwilling to show over the course of his life.
No comments:
Post a Comment