Cutter and Bone was released in 1981 as Cutter's Way. I have no explanation for the name change. The movie illustrates an instructive point: many of the best movies are those that are modestly proportioned, not unduly ambitious, and populated by vivid and interesting characters. Cutter and Bone is a small scale film noir, intelligently directed by Ivan Passer, an emigre from Czechoslovakia who had written and made a number of excellent movies in his home country -- he was part of the generation of Czech new wave directors that included Milos Foreman who also defected to Hollywood. Cutter climaxes with a single gunshot -- there are no explosions and no other violence in the movie, although the picture proposes a sort of American brutality that is as red, white, and blue as the flag and tasty as mom's apple pie. Early in the movie, someone encounters a battered corpse in a garbage pan and begins to violently retch. The film is true to its premises -- namely that actual violence is rare but an affliction that crosses generations, men and women are largely opaque and disappointing to one another and, even, themselves, and that there is corruption in paradise: the film is set in a version of Santa Barbara that is all posh gardens, green jungle, and colorful festivals. The movie represents a high point in the early careers of Jeff Bridges (Bone) and John Heard (Cutter), but everyone in the movie is very good, particularly Lisa Eichhorn playing Cutter's alcoholic wife. The movie alternates between high society and middle class domesticity portrayed as neighborhood bars and small, steamy bungalows -- the friction between mansions with their polo grounds and the small crowded home where Cutter lives with his mournful, depressed wife is an important aspect to the movie: the two worlds seem wholly apart, separated by money and class, and, yet, the maimed Cutter, who apparently comes from wealth, navigates both realms. The picture has shrewd things to say about these two Americas, but its theses and critique are always secondary to the hazy, almost dream-like and somnambulant ramblings of its main characters -- people who are in thrall to self-destructive impulses.
Bone is a lady's man, too pretty for his own good. We first meet him crawling out of a bed occupied by the dismissive and icy Nina van Pallandt. (She's playing a southern California trophy wife, a cameo role that reprises her part in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye). Bone is a boat salesman and his technique for closing the deal involves sleeping with the wives of the wealthy men in the market for yachts and cabin cruisers. He works for a pudgy ineffectual man named George who spends most of the movie cowering. Nina van Pallandt's housewife isn't impressed with Bone's sexual prowess; he repays the compliment by telling her he's had "better." She's not interested in Bone's sales pitch on the yacht that's for sale. Bone later sneers that she and her husband are looking for something "a lot smaller." Bone goes to a bar downtown. There's a Spanish heritage festival underway complete with mariachis and baton twirlers as well as floats and high school marching bands. In a bar, Bone meets the obscene and abrasive Cutter, a Vietnam vet whose service has left him sans one eye, one leg, and one arm. Cutter is brilliant and frighteningly abusive -- he's bitter about the war, his mutilation, and the fact that his morose wife, Maureen ("Mo") seems to like Bone a lot better than him. Cutter's bitterness, however, masks a deep-seated urge for justice, to set thing right in a world that is irrevocably flawed. In the bar, Cutter insults some Black pool players, using racial epithets that almost get him beat up. Bone leaves the bar, planning to sleep on one of the boats for sale in the harbor marina. In the alley behind the bar, Bone's Austin Healy breaks down, a symbol for Bone's rather dilapidated glamor. In the dark and rain, he sees a man near a garbage can -- we can't really see what the figure is doing and it's just a flash of dark on dark on the screen. The next morning, garbage collectors find the corpse of a 17-year old cheerleader in the garbage can. During a parade at which Cutter denounces the patriotic floats rolling past, Bone sees a man ramrod straight on a white horse -- this is a local oligarch named J. J. Cord. Bone thinks that this was the man he saw by the garbage can where the dead girl was discovered: we have no idea whether he is right about this identification which seems fanciful. However, Cord's car was torched the morning that the corpse was found, suggesting, perhaps, that he is trying to destroy evidence of the murder. Cutter is approached by the girl's sister, a woman who seems like a dimwitted opportunist -- she wants to blackmail Cord and, also, sleep with Bone. Cutter latches onto this hare-brained scheme with righteous fury. He sees Cord as embodying the privilege and sense of arrogant entitlement that motivated the Vietnam war. He doesn't want money but, rather, justice -- and we have the sense that he wishes, through this crusade, to avenge himself or avenge the injuries that have crippled him. The problem with Cutter is that he is always chugging whiskey from a bottle and never really sober -- he makes a good match with Maureen who is also a drunk and who also drinks her vodka neat from the bottle. People in the know believe that Cord, a veteran himself of World War II, is a dangerous man -- he has made a fortune in oil and we see the ocean disfigured by off-shore drilling rigs. Bone is fearful and doesn't want to tangle with Cord. Cutter, however, prosecutes the extortion scheme, delivering a blackmail letter to Cord's offices in LA. That night, "Mo" actually sleeps with Bone, apparently consummating a relationship that has been simmering for a long time. "Mo" wants Bone to stay with her, but he sneaks off to sleep in his boat -- he is always "walking away," Cutter says. Cutter's house is burned to the ground and "Mo" is killed. Cutter accuses Cord of killing his "wifey" at a polo game and vows revenge. Bone thinks that "Mo" killed herself after their sexual encounter. After some squabbling, Bone and Cutter crash Cord's party with Cutter armed so that he can kill the oligarch.
The movie's tone and atmosphere is hard to characterize. In one notable scene, Cutter steals a horse and rides it through a garden party, wildly running through a buffet table and terrorizing the guests. The scene is staged for laughs -- the horse knocks over butlers and women in expensive gowns and tears up tents pitched in the yard. But this comedy is laced with bitterness and, even, tragedy and Cutter, whom we have seen limping pathetically, seems suddenly unleashed as a real force for justice, wrath riding on a white horse. While watching a parade, Cutter who is drunk and profane talks about the Spanish who are being celebrated in the parade as enslaving the Indians and working them to death. He tells this parable: "When you first see a Vietnamese mother and her child lying in the ditch dead, you say that you hate the United States of America and wish it would lose the war and be destroyed. Then, you think about this more and say: "I hate God. It's God that has done this." and, then, you think about this a little more and say: "I'm hungry. Let's eat." The film is filled with brilliant bits of business -- a particular highlight is a scene in which the completely drunk and destructive Cutter smashes his neighbor's car with his own vehicle and knocks down a fence in the process. The neighbor calls the cops and Cutter appears, seemingly sober, explaining the accident as a result of his war wounds. The cop investigating the scene thinks of Cutter as a war hero and ends up chastising the neighbor who, in turn, calls the cop a fascist. It's both funny and maddening. If you can see this movie, do yourself a favor and watch it.
No comments:
Post a Comment