I really enjoyed analyzing this movie more than I did watching it. I love the simplicity of it all. Kowalski is simply motivated to drive fast for the love of speed, freedom, and a little bit on the basis that he made a bet (which enables he to have a motive). I loved how once he popped a pill (ironically "speed") the camera focused on his shifting into gears, making him accelerate the speed of his car. To me, this seemed like a camera trick the movie "Requiem for a Dream" later accomplished. The mother would pop her diet pills, the room would spin, the TV played on erratically. When the pills were consumed, the camera captured the immediate hype they were experiencing.
Kowalski is a simple man whose real motivation to drive recklessly fast is the pure joy of the speed and freedom it brings (and the little bit about the bet he had made, which gave him an end to his mean). I personally feel as though the crash justified his life. Nothing else he ever did really mattered. Certainly not to the amount of his high speed chase he led on state to state. People will remember him not for his achievements in the war (which earned him a medal) but for the high speed chase that resulted in his suicidal death. Like a true exploitation film, he literally went out with a bang, which shocked the audience. I noticed from class discussion that not every one found the ending fitting to the film. But in reality it was. I honestly saw this coming because I couldn’t imagine him going out any other way. Being caught and arrested was not an option for Kowalski.
I loved from class discussion that we all agreed that Kowalski is a blue-collared man who never really committed any real or serious crime to result in his man hunt by the state police. Why then were they all so apt to bring him down? Easy, Kowalski made the police force look like incompetent fools. He embarrassed them because they did not have control of the situation. It soon became a rat race on who could bring him down. Which state could get the job done and done right this time?
I loved how the reading put everything into political perspective. The roads were built by the government for the purpose of quickly and quietly transporting our troops as means for the war. Today, the roads are still controlled by the government which is evident whenever we are out driving…the speed limits. We view the roads as being free but are they really free? We buy our cars that can move 120-200 mph, yet we cannot even test them out to their fullest capability. Ugh, the temptation to rebel! So in the end, the message we are left with is this, you can have your freedom, but you cannot break the speed limit. Short and sweet :)
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Controlled freedom, fun little oxymoron right there. Anyways, it's true that this film couldn't have ended any other way. Everything else would have just been boring, oh hey, he delivered the car, oh look, he's under arrest. With this ending, it maintains the momentum the film built up, keeping the audience with the same idea.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the film couldn't have ended any other way, but I never saw the crash coming until Kowalski's little smirk. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I know that as soon as the movie ended I said to myself "Oh, that makes sense now," about the whole movie, not just the end. I think that any other ending would have been extremely unsatisfying, whereas this ending was meant to be that way. This didn't make a whole lot of sense from the in the sense that a real person would do it, but without this ending the entire movie would have been confusing and virtually meaningless
ReplyDeleteI agree that I really didn't see him dying at the end throughout the movie but that it was the only realy way to end the movie. If he had reached the town and then just been arrested that would have been for a pretty boring ending. There wouldn't have been an ending climax that left the viewer at least interested. I also like how you mention that he is just a simple man. No big great hero, just himself.
ReplyDeleteI like what you're noticing about how the camera maximizes our impression of a speeding car--and in a movie where nothing much else happens at all, except maybe the part where SuperSoul gets beat up (which is in slow motion).
ReplyDeleteGiven what the movie shows us of the culture around Kowalski, and besides the fact that, as you point out, there's really no other dramatically satisfying ending than what happened, why is there no way out for Kowalski? What about the society he lives in causes him to make the decisions he does?