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| Helpful advice - you do not want to mess with guys like Sterling Hayden! |
The Killing - Part 2
Kubrickian approaches appeared profoundly in ‘The Killing’,
and that was an important factor that made the film stands out from the average
crime films from the same era. The first obvious aspect was the clinical feel
that would be so familiar with the later Kubrick films. Kubrick showed the
story of Johnny Clay and co. with a clinical detachment, he did not judge them,
he did not provide personal observations on them. An omniscient narrator was
present in the film, and he observed the action with a detachment, and often,
dark and ironic humor, which would become commonplace in later Kubrick
pictures. The universe these crooks found themselves situating in was at best
indifferent, at worst hostile. Unlike some of the other filmmakers, who still
wanted to provide a bit of hope and sunshine to the Film Noir, the world in
‘The Killing’ was an unsympathetic one, and any players could hit the wall
anytime due to circumstances or intrigue. Nasty as it may be, Kubrick’s world
is unfortunately a realistic one, where many of us can easily identify with
even nowadays. One diversion from his later work was that the film was more
dialogue-heavy than his later heightened work, which relied substantially on
filmic images to convey the idea. While this approach fitted well with the Film
Noir, it also made the film more humanistic, and offered a human warmth not so
common in the later Kubrick films.
Sterling Hayden, who played Johnny Clay in ‘The Killing’,
was the organizing symbol of the film, and, also contributed to much of the dry
humor in the film. He was the prototypical Kubrickian character, and he very
much reflected the worldview Kubrick offered in the film. Cold and cynical, Hayden
successfully portrayed the leader of a bunch of underdogs, whose sole purpose
for an ambitious heist was to survive, and escape from the harsh reality he and
his fiancée found themselves in. Just like many of the later films, Kubrick had
no intention to give some sort of transcendent, super-heroic personality to the
audience. The characters in his films were often anti-heroic and were conveyed
with a strong sense of realism.
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| Chess Hustler. |
Many Kubrickian motifs were also present in the ‘The
Killing’. Chess, which was something Kubrick was particularly masterful at, was
featured in the film. The Chess represented a complex and strategic
undertaking, which was very much similar to the methodical planning of the
caper. Every member was like a chess piece, and was assigned a role in the
plan. They were the nut and bolt of the mechanism Johnny Clay has been
meticulously devised. Someone to shoot the horse to create panic and chaos,
other to pick a fight in the bar to create distractions, so that Clay could
hold up the ticket office without much interference. Every move has to be
carefully contemplated, and carefully executed to reach the final outcome. Indeed,
it is interesting to note that, Jean-Pierre Melville, the master of French
heist films, also loved to use chess as a symbol in his minimalist crime films.
On the other hand, Kubrick's clinical precision can also be felt through the film. The omniscient narrator provided precise details, for example the time and place, when the key action regarding the heist was taking place. This allows the audience to view the unfolding of events in a detached and objective manner, analyzing the heist in their own terms.
Some of the Kubrickian motifs appear in the film, for example:
The Kubrickian perspective
The double
The cosmic joke in the Kubrickian universe
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| On the edge - the baggage containing Johnny Clay's loot. |
Yet, one of the most genius, and indeed philosophical aspect
of the whole film was its concluding part. The ordeal ended in a dark and
tragic way, for which our poor anti-hero had to submit to the brutal fatalism.
Johnny Clay could get away with it – when the luggage with the loot inside was
proved too big for a hand baggage to board on the plane, he had to put it with
the other luggage. That could still work to be honest, if not because a puppy
from a casual lady went off and ran on the track, panicking the luggage cart
driver and made Johnny’s luggage fall onto the track! The bombardment sent all
the cash flying in the air, and Johnny was doomed. This is Kubrick’s ironic
sense of dark humor, and he completely destroyed this character. This scene is
very symbolic, and to me it represented two aspects of human experience. First,
the scenario reminded me of John Huston’s ‘The Treasure of Sierra Madre’,
released a few years before ‘The Killing’. This should not be surprising because the Huston film was one of Kubrick's favorite films (and have also inspired numerous directors including Milius, Peckinpah, Nolan and P. T. Anderson). In the film, after Humphrey Bogart’s
character’s paranoid delusion almost screwed up the master plan, the locals,
who retrieved the gold dust, had no idea how valuable they were, and just threw
them to the air! It seemed to reflect the impermanence of life, that
unpredictable things just came and things you wished to persist could even go –
everything is ephemeral.
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| Trouble from puppy, or trouble from fate? The series of events that led to Johnny's doom. |
Second, it was that the most circumstantial thing could lead
to the most catastrophic outcome and destroyed everything. Johnny Clay has
carefully every nuts and bolts in the right place, and though there are a few
pitfalls, he was still the pawn piece standing on the chessboard. But, it was
the circumstantial chain of events that made him hit the wall, a force truly
beyond his control. As his fiancée urged him to escape when the authority was
closing in, he uttered the classic line, ‘eh, What’s the difference?’,
signifying his submission to fate. This insignificant character was ultimately
destroyed by the most circumstantial event in the universe possible. The theme of fatalism was one that could
feature again in Kubrick’s films, in particular ‘Barry Lyndon’. To Kubrick,
life is often a balance between determinism and circumstance, and it was
intertwined in such a complicated way that the question of free will would
become futile. After all, looks like Johnny and his fiancée would not be able
to live happily ever after...
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| 'Eh, what's the difference?' |
Nuts and bolts fit together to make things work, yet if one
falls off, everything screws up -
especially, when that component is known as ‘fate’...
(2/2)
by Ed Law
19/6/2016
Film Analysis - 66
