'Til Death Do Us Part

The truth of life is more challenging than the illusions. In a video game, the same villains can be obliterated endlessly; in life, once you’re dead, you’re dead. Game over.

Recently, I’ve seen 3 movies on the big screen that provide a graphic experience with the finality of death: In the Valley of Elah, 3:10 to Yuma, and No Country for Old Men. What these three powerful films have in common is a massive dose of reality that is ugly, harsh, hard to watch, and difficult to forget.

War is reality: as long as we have neighbors, we will fight with them; when the school bully picks on a kid, someone will fight for the kid who cannot fight for himself; when someone wants to take from me that which is mine, I will fight to prevent it. Often, the fight ends in death. Real death. No do-over. No second chance. Just instant, final death.

Life is not a video game.

Elah is about the after-effects of war, the desensitization of the warriors who learn to kill or be killed, an instinct that is not easily shut off once it’s engaged. If you want to stay alive in combat, you don’t play nice! You shoot first; you shoot to kill. When you come back from combat, you deal with the morality of your actions. Sometimes, the simplest home-town confrontations escalate into internal mental wars that result in the enemy, even when it’s a drinking buddy out for a night on the town, eliminated.

In 3:10 to Yuma, a battle of wits ensues when a man, a struggling rancher, gives his word to escort a prisoner to the train that will take him back to jail. The accused tells his escort that he’s already broken out of the same prison once, so the viewer acknowledges that the man’s struggle to return the criminal to prison is a fool’s errand. The criminal shoots first, shoots often, and kills what he aims to kill. If the rancher is in his way, he will die, and both of the men know that is truth. However, once the rancher gives his word, it is his bond. Even if it costs him his life.

In No Country, a man takes $2 million that does not belong to him, but which can forever change his life from what it is to what he imagines it to be. Although he is a Viet vet, he is no match for a psychopath who wants the money back simply because it is his. Shoot first; shoot to kill; do not let anything or anyone stand in the way. Few of us are capable of living that truth.

Life is a lesson that continues long after the individuals are gone. Sometimes we get it the first time, but often we have to be retaught—that is, retaught when there is a “next time.” If the lesson fails, often we pay the price with our lives. Filmmakers send that message in a variety of ways, and in these three films the message is graphic, and it is harsh.

The mostly male casts, sparse dialog, and bleak settings impose substance in subtle, but powerful ways that all too often is artifically created in commercial films. It's not just "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," but more that mankind has to do whatever it takes to get it right, and it's not the same right for every man in every situation. Each of us has to learn when to stand up, when to put our lives on the line for what we know within ourselves is right, even if it costs us our lives, as well as when to walk away.

These characters aren't superheroes--or even heroes--they are just men going through life one day at a time. And then they die.

In each of the films one person asks the question “why,” but there is no why. Life just is; it’s ugly and it’s messy, but whether you do it right or make a mess, you leave behind a lesson that others remember long after you have left.

Unfortunately, that lesson is just as often violent as it is peaceful. More people know Jeffrey Dahmer’s name than know Mother Theresa’s name; Ted Bundy ruined more lives than the local pastor of a small congregation saves.

People live, people die, and the filmmaker tells the story.