by Lance Lee
But what of fighting Miller and his cronies for townspeople who do not wish to be saved? Both the lowlifes in the saloon and the proper families in the church abandon Kane, either because they prefer Miller because evil is fun and remunerative or, according to the mayor, to have blood on the streets would be inexpedient for the town’s reputation. That rejection throws a clear light on Kane’s situation: he is a man of great moral substance in a morally ambiguous situation.
Any discussion of moral substance and ambiguity must consider whether those qualities apply to just character, or to just situation, or to both.
In Unforgiven the protagonist, Munny, was once a ruthless killer who reverts to kind again at the climax, but in a good cause to avenge the pointless murder of his friend. He, and others, are attracted to town because whores offer a reward for anyone who will kill the cowboy who slashed one of their faces. Little Joe is an efficient sheriff, a poor carpenter, a brutal sadist, and once was clearly familiar with many a gunslinger. By the time Munny tells the Schofield Kid, “We all have it coming, kid,” we are living in a deeply morally ambiguous reality in respect to both character and situation.
In The Godfather, Michael starts down the road to evil in the name of helping his father. His father may be good to resist the drug trade but is untroubled by how his family has corrupted judges, politicians, and the police, or by how the family carries out its own extralegal punishments. Clearly, here too both situation and character are morally ambiguous.
Chinatown involves us in an even greater moral ambiguity of character and situation. Jake was once a policeman who worked in Chinatown, where anything can happen. He makes his living as a private investigator exposing unfaithful spouses, a morally shabby activity for himself and the concerned spouses. He becomes involved with Evelyn Mulwray at the same time he suspects she is involved in murder: eventually he discovers she is the incestuous mother of the young woman with whom he first thought her husband was having an affair. Evelyn’s father is the young woman’s father, and tries to employ Jake too. I could go on: the moral ambiguities steadily deepen as the story progresses.
If moral substance is inevitable in a screenplay, then the seriousness with which we treat the specific issues raised is dependent on the nature and premise of the story, and whether the issues are given a conventional or more probing treatment. But moral ambiguity lifts otherwise effective writing to eminence, and moral ambiguity in both character and situation the most. Since the more we aspire to in a story the more demanding we are of causality, necessity, and probability, the more we are forced into an ever deeper examination of motivation and action so they meet those criteria, an essential part of which is the equally ever deeper probing of the morality of character choice and situation. An examination of motivation is inseparable from morality, for a moral judgment always lies in how a screenplay or drama develops and treats a given character: this one is on the right side, but this one on the wrong.
Yet one discomfort we have with moral ambiguity is our sense that it gives a dark or film noir feeling to a film. Munny rides off in Unforgiven threatening to kill the families of any who shoot at him; Michael in The Godfather lies to Kay about killing Connie’s husband just before the men enter the office to kiss his hand as godfather. Jake in Chinatown watches helplessly as Evelyn is killed and her daughter taken by her incestuous father/grandfather. Michael Sr. dies in Road to Perdition in his son’s grief-stricken arms after killing the hit man who has pursued them. Bess dies of “goodness” in Breaking the Waves, as we saw the doctor claim at first, though actually she dies from a brutal rape. Even such films as Like Water for Chocolate or Chocolat end with shades of ambiguity: Tita dies with Pedro in the former, a happy life never to ensue; the Comte collapses into a chocolate-eating frenzy in the latter, with Lent apparently overturned for a kind of permanent self and communal indulgence.
Yet the ambiguity in these endings fills us with a sense of their greater truthfulness to nature and revelatory power for ourselves, who live through them as one with the protagonists with whom we identify.
Typing and Volition in …
Typing weakens characterization, as if to say, “You are your drive; your volition is removed,” whether you are a villain or typed as the ethnic mother-in-law, ingénue, or braggart. Motivation here is not explored, nor, consequently, morality: characters do what they do because their nature is so defined, with a standard moral value attached. Typed characters’ responses may vary with their situation, but they are always “in character,” meaning the same character we first encounter in Scene 1, Act 1, and with the same given values. They do not grow, nor do they reflect. Volition and typing, then, count heavily in sorting out the impact of characters on one another and their moral substance and ambiguity.
What makes this an interesting problem is twofold: first, people generally have a tendency to type: it takes familiarity not just to breed contempt but nuance as well. Most pertinent to screenwriting is the way protagonists are typed in the Beginning and consequently denied volition, however they may delude themselves to the contrary. The false modus vivendi in the reality in which they are caught perpetuates past errors. That means their moral responses are initially given too, and predictable. The first part of the protagonists’ development in a screenplay, then, requires that they free themselves from the typing of their past in order to regain their volition: i.e., that they (re)gain the ability to act from conscience as moral agents. Until then they are no better than a character type: the “detective,” say, like Book initially in Witness.
Consider Terry at the start of On the Waterfront. He is one of Johnny Friendly’s henchmen and a favorite. Terry obediently calls out Joey, lets his guilt be bought off, and shrugs off the Crime Commission investigators at the docks, complaining to his fellow longshoremen that anyone like them should try to talk to him: he’s no stool pigeon, even if he is one of Johnny Friendly’s pets, like one of the pigeons Terry keeps on the roof. He spies on the meeting of the rebellious longshoremen in the church at Johnny Friendly’s bidding. If he saves Edie, that does not challenge his allegiance to Johnny Friendly or his character typing initially. When he falls in love with Edie, he reveals his “every man for himself” attitude to life—self-serving, amoral, and deeply ironic—for Terry does not act for himself at all. He is a type, one created by Johnny Friendly and his own acquiescence, which Edie correctly characterizes when she calls him a bum.1 Terry is not the hero of anything. He has surrendered his volition and can save no one, not even himself. As such, he has no desires, only a set character to express one facet or another of on demand. This is the true nature of the false modus vivendi protagonists find themselves in at the start.
This is why his falling in love goes beyond simple romance and is so crucial for much broader issues. Edie combats his typing with her own altruism: aren’t we all in this together? Don’t we depend on each other and need to stand up for one another? If we don’t, what kind of lives are we leading? I can imagine Freud watching this scene and, if he could get past his distaste for things American, reflecting on the phenomenon of guilt Terry clearly suffers from yet won’t act on until stirred by Eros, locked in what can only be called neurotic behavior, a living exhibit of why denial cannot forever blind us to the demands of conscience without driving us ever deeper into a typing that narrows our humanity as it removes our volition.
Terry, however, wants Edie so badly he challenges his typing and asserts his will by responding to the painful proddings of his conscience. Friendly and Terry’s brother, Charley, witness Terry flattening one of Johnny Friendly’s thugs as Father Barry speaks over Dugan’s body in the ship’s hold. Then, after Friendly tells him to stay away from Edie, Terry decisively takes her into his arms. Little motivates us so powerfully as the first flood of love, as Freud and so many others remark. Immediately at the start of Act 2 Terry confesses to Father Barry, then to Edie. Now he has weight as a character: to claim volition is to claim the right to make moral judgments. Doing
so makes one a much fuller person, but at the cost of losing the comfort conferred by the surrender of will and thought in typing. Thus this moral process isn’t easy: Terry’s suffering steadily increases until in a rage he demands Edie stop using the word “conscience” when he breaks into her apartment.
By then it is too late to stop: Terry entered the path to herohood by declaring his right to his own moral discriminations. That is the right he argues for decisively with Charley in the taxi, when Charley tries to shut him up with another bribe before they get to River Street where he will otherwise be killed.
No on else goes through this moral evolution in On the Waterfront or in any other film except the heroine or hero, or through them. Characters becomes heroes and heroines by confronting their nature and the demands of their conscience. If it’s easy for them to do so, or without much challenge, as in a Seagal or Van Damme character, or in the Dirty Harry or Lethal Weapon films, we may be entertained by the action but not engaged as deeply as we are with Terry or Michael in The Godfather, nor do we rate such films on a par with On the Waterfront or The Godfather.
Michael is typed as strongly as Terry in the beginning of The Godfather. He is the war hero, the son going straight. He is secure in that persona: he points out to Kay he’s not like the rest of his family. Michael is left out of the planning to strike back as a matter of course after the don is shot. He is not the prospective godfather but peripheral, anything but the hero. We watch, puzzled, anticipatory because we expect to witness the process of the typed hero of the Beginning regaining his volition in order to assume his destiny. Michael, like Terry, is moved to act by Eros—here, by love of his father, helpless and exposed in the hospital. By swearing to stand by him, Michael asserts his volition for the first time. He then immediately asserts his right to act for the entire family by compellingly putting forth his plan to kill Sollozzo and the corrupt police officer McCluskey over the initial objections and mockery of Sonny, the presumed heir.
Michael’s actions establish him as an active agent, as Terry does for himself in On the Waterfront. His actions propel him on a road ever deeper into moral substance and ambiguity, while with Terry the same process toward volition moves him from moral ambiguity to clear-cut moral substance, albeit one shadowed by his compromised past. But then the herohood achieved in The Godfather, while the same as Terry’s qua herohood, has the opposite moral valuation. Both films, however, are weighty because morally weighty.
Léon in Besson’s The Professional is deliberately typed in the opening action as the hit man par excellence as he single-handedly and effortlessly wipes out an entire gang. This is a riff on action sequences of a similar nature in other movies and enjoyed by us as an entertainment, not for its insight into character, motivation, or action. We soon see Léon’s life is entirely sterile: a bare apartment, an inability to sleep in a bed, a Spartan regimen and diet, leavened only by caring for a single plant. Typing in his case has moved him into virtual inhumanity, which is not a moral but species description for him. Extreme typing denies humanity and creates monsters, i.e., characters we perceive as monstrous because of their denial of humanity with its central feature of making moral distinctions.
Mathilda’s request for Léon to open his door to save her from Stansfield’s thugs puts Léon in a quandary: he must make a choice, and now. He almost can’t decide to let her in; when he does, he has acted outside of typing for the first time in we don’t know how long. It is almost unbearable for him: he nearly shoots Mathilda as she sleeps, then tells her she must leave. He is dumbfounded when she tells him he is responsible for her because he saved her life. Moral actions have inescapable consequences. Types have no responsibility: how can they, with neither volition nor, consequently, moral obligations? If Léon stays a type and throws Mathilda out, not only is the story over, but he cannot become the hero of anything. Step by step, instead, he recovers volition and its attendant moral obligations and through these the fullness of his human nature. Climactically, movingly, he tells Mathilda how she has made him care, love, and want life as he makes her climb down the shaft while he stands off their attackers.
The appearance of Eros in these stories begins by motivating personal change and ends by going beyond the now activated moral nature of the self toward broader responsibilities: Michael to lead the family, Terry the longshoremen, Léon existentially to defy Stansfield for the love and hunger for life Mathilda has aroused in him.
But then Léon reverts to type: though we care for him as we could never have had he remained a type, at the end he is again the hit man par excellence. If he dies, it’s only after having outfaced what seems to be an army with artillery, though he takes Stansfield with him. That’s satisfying but, as in a Seagal film, it’s easy, and below the level of the development of the relation between him and Mathilda. If typing demeans and losing volition dehumanizes, then morality in turn becomes typed and inconsequential. The more of that in a film, the more it turns into an entertainment with little dramatic, let alone lasting, merit.
This is worth pursuing briefly.
Riggs in the first Lethal Weapon is a desperate, violent, suicidal character working for the “good guys,” the police. He is almost mad with grief from the loss of his wife before the action: in one of his last actions in the film he visits her grave with flowers, reconciled with his loss and relatively at peace with himself. He is, in other words, also typed at the start, acting out of a set characterization, not in control of himself, i.e., without volition. He and his partner, Murtaugh, confronting a consortium of evil men is the easy part of the film and demands nothing from us, but Riggs’s growing relation with Murtaugh and his family, which he ultimately saves, generates the real interest, as does Léon’s relationship with Mathilda in The Professional. As his friendship and love for Murtaugh and his family develop, Riggs regains the ability to make choices and to change, and moves from type. Volition contains the crucial element of the possibility of change, and what is more necessary to change than the false modus vivendi the protagonists discover themselves in at the Beginning?
But no one moves from the characterizations established at the end of the first story in the ensuing Lethal Weapon films. Instead, the interest shifts to the next set of evil men and secondary characters, and we begin to relate to the films not as dramas but entertainments in dramatic trappings with given moral meanings and characterizations. They are not remotely as effective as examples of screenwriting as the first film, and petered out in audience and commercial interest. Entertainments have their vogue but eventually boredom is inescapable, even if the films turn self-parodying and comedic, entirely abandoning their initial substance, which is the inevitable evolution of this sort of writing. It couldn’t be any other way unless once more the typing is broken down and volition regained. That would not result in a sequel, but a new film, one of moral substance.
The Heavy and Moral …
When does moral ambiguity turn heavy? Must we sense a story is moving to a redemptive point, not descending to destructiveness for destructiveness’ sake, to avoid the feeling of heaviness, as in Breaking the Waves before its epilogue?
Yes.
Contrast how we think and feel about films that turn into entertainments, as with the Lethal Weapon sequels or those to Friday the 13th. Entertainment, we saw, is experienced as light and weightless because moral substance and moral ambiguity have been leached out. Those are a function of conflict and insight into human nature, the natural “matter” of drama. What was serious becomes a joke in entertainment; characters that frightened us become laughable and types.
Tomas, on the other hand, starts off weightless in Unbearable Lightness. He overtly speaks of life as light. Certainly moral considerations don’t come into play for him where sex is concerned. A smile and enjoyment without consequence characterize his life with the women who allow such treatment and who are consequently also equally without moral weight. They are characters for a Humean universe, precisely the one we do not i
nhabit.
But Tomas gains moral weight through Tereza who can’t tolerate his behavior. He gains weight too, as we saw, by refusing to recant the views expressed earlier in his article against the Communist regime once he returns from Switzerland. He becomes a more meaningful character and ceases to be light precisely in proportion to the degree that morality becomes important. Moral substance is essential for any meaningful character development.
But with Tereza there is a strong whiff of the heavy in her relationship to Tomas, reaching the point at the end of Act 1 where she demands Tomas let her watch him with other women so she can try to understand how he can be, in effect, so immoral. If the attempt to understand gives a point to her request, the request brings the marriage’s destructive impact on her into sharp relief and makes us aware of the extent to which she perseveres self-destructively, if from love, as Bess perseveres in Breaking the Waves. It is well to remind ourselves that love can damn as well as redeem.
Tereza underscores this self-destructiveness when she throws herself into the affair we already know she is unsuited to enjoy in the End. She feels shamefully debased and panics when she suspects the man may be a government agent provocateur. There is no redeeming quality to the experience. Her self-destructiveness is apparent and overwhelms surface motivation and feels as if indulged in for its own sake. The experience is heavy.
If we distinguish between character and situation for Tereza, a morally ambiguous situation with a character of clear moral substance has developed into one in which both are ambiguous, as with Bess in Breaking the Waves. If we distinguish for Tomas, a character without moral substance gains both substance and ambiguity through Tereza while in the same ambiguous world of Czechoslovakia.
