Gran Torino and My Sister's Keeper

In movies there are big moments that define lives, but real life isn't that clear. We have a lot of messy little decisions instead of great crystallizing climaxes and defining moments. On the surface these were two movies that had little to do with each other, but both were about sacrifices and redemption and acceptance, facing death. The hope is by viewing such beautifully told stories we can step back from our own messy lives for a moment and find our own integrity and decisiveness, increase our own awareness of life and death and purpose.

I'm just spitballing here. The farther I get into this the more I realize I don't know anything. It's a risky thing to write, particularly about your own life. Sometimes it's like throwing a party and having nobody come. To love somebody, to believe in something, that's the important thing. But in the midst of all the small decisions and mounting discouragements sometimes that isn't an easy thing. You can lose your way.

A week ago Thursday I bounced the rent check. It came through a day earlier than I'd planned and it cost me an extra $134, a late fee from the property management company and a returned check fee, and a late fee from the bank. On Monday I had to go to court for a traffic ticket. My license had expired. I had to send away to the State Department for my birth certificate. It cost $35 for the research and the copy and $40 for a new license. I didn't have the money so I kept putting it off. I only drove back and forth to work, so I was hoping I could buy a little time till things got better. Then one night a Beaverton cop pulled me over. I got out of the car with my wallet in my hand, a stupid thing to do. As if driving expired weren't stupid enough. "What was I doing wrong, sir?" I asked, trying my best to suck up. I'm not good at sucking up. It's part of the reason I'm not good at my job. Another story interrupts the first. The cop told me my license plate light was out. It's just a pretense to write tickets. A license plate light doesn't make a damn bit of difference. But it justifies a lot of stops.

So Friday I hawked my laptop to offset the extra expenses, and Saturday I went over to DMV to renew the license, and Monday I went to court. The judge reduced the fine to $295. He used to be able to dismiss those but not anymore. The legislature passed a new set of minimum fines, with a maximum reduction of 25%. It's a way of raising taxes without raising taxes. Things have momentum when you're poor. And everything that happens sucks up more time.

On Wednesday I took a bus over to JPM to straighten out the rent mess, and Thursday I did the taxes. We owe state but we're getting a refund from federal. I filed an injured spouse form to keep them from confiscating it all for interest on an old school loan one of us had. We're buried in debt. We'll never get out unless we get better jobs, win the lottery, or I master the poker thing or the writing thing, which is why I keep doing both of them. You have to keep ridiculous hope alive, because it is far better than no hope at all. Marie got a new job, which helps a lot. Her first check was $530 take home for one week of work, and those numbers looked awfully pretty printed out in a row after a week of self-induced defeats. Finally we had some breathing room and a cause for optimism. We bought groceries and paid the phone bill.

Last night we went out and had the same old fight. One of the bartenders was a young blonde woman with big boobs, and I got in trouble for ignoring her. It's complicated. I don't understand it. My thinking was, I love and adore my wife, and I'm going to show it by staying focused on her and ignoring this bimbo who wants everybody's attention. I just wanted to have a nice time, to dance and then go home and make love. We had hurt feelings and a misunderstanding instead, in a way that always seems to dredge old hurt feelings and feelings of not measuring up, for both of us. We're stuck in a loop with each other, and it's such an awful shame. She's such a vibrant and desirable woman. She deserves to be happy. I don't make her happy. I don't think I'm that appealing to her any more.

In My Sister's Keeper a family's life gets crazy over the oldest daughter's battle with leukemia. They conceived the youngest child in vitro to create a donor match, and after 11 years of cord blood and bone marrow and tests and transfusions the younger sister sues her parents for medical emancipation. It's a tear-jerker, but what humanizes and lifts the story are the honest portrayals. Each family member reacts to the crisis in their own way, and their responses seem very genuine, bouncing from anger to acting out to incredibly touching tenderness. I welled up. There's a time to die. The dying girl keeps a scrapbook of her memories and feelings of guilt.

In Gran Torino Clint Eastwood's Walt Kowalski is an angry man burying his wife, and everything he sees around him angers him more. He fought in Korea and worked forty years in the Ford plant, but his granddaughter shows up at the funeral with a belly ring and a navel-bearing shirt. His oldest son drives a Toyota. His neighborhood is being taken over by foreigners. A gang of gooks try to steal his car. The punks are lawless and purposeless and overrunning the streets. A frail neighbor lady drops her grocery bags and a passing scumbag pantomines raping her.

In a surprising and unlikely way he befriends his Asian neighbors and ends up teaching and protecting the Hmong girl who lives next door and her fatherless brother. The story is told with dignity and rough humor, and as the director, Eastwood displays his spare, lean stye and eye for detail. He's a careful craftsman. I read one time that his father owned a hardware store and his storytelling style shows his respect for the tools of his trade. A locked screen door echoes the priest's confessional without making a big deal about it. It just does. When Eastwood is riddled with bullets and stretched out on the lawn like Christ, there is a rightness about it. The moment is totally free of artfulness or pretension. It just makes sense, like willing the Gran Torino to his young friend instead of his ungrateful family.

I loved Walt Kowalski. I loved his uncompromising grumpiness and rough humor. I loved him giving lessons to his Hmong protege on how to talk like a man, complain about your girlfriend and the cheating mechanic, be confident and irritable and not weak. I saw him as the logical heir to Eastwood's cinematic history. No one can grit their teeth over a cocked weapon like Eastwood, and Walt Kowalski is Harry Callahan aged and humanized, dying gracefully, poignantly, handling things in the only way they can be handled, a savior in a stark place, a savior in a place too grim and lost for saving. Decaying neighborhoods and crumbling morals all over America are aching for a Walt Kowalski, but what they'll likely get is a fire next time that nothing will put out.

In truth I don't know much. I just keep writing because it's the only thing I know how to do. I want to love and be a better man, but the business of living in the real world is tricky. We keep running into the problems of time and money and the problem of living with our regrets and our fears. I watch these movies and I walk away from them inspired by the courage that pushes people on, facing hopelessness with such a spirit of hope, believing something is worthwhile despite all the evidence to the contrary.