It's worth noting just how dedicated Hollywood has historically been to black-and-white storytelling. For decades, it had to be because of the Hays Code, a silly set of rules put in place under threat of boycotting by Catholics. As great as James Cagney was, he never got a part like, say, Michael Corleone; his mobsters always had to be monsters that bit the dust in the end. Even after the power of the Hays Code waned, though, Hollywood stuck with simplistic stories. That's par for the course for popcorn blockbusters, but it has also been true of the more serious dramas made by the likes of Stanley Kramer, Oliver Stone, Ed Zwick, and Steven Spielberg. Those directors made it perfectly clear what the morals of their stories were.
But consider some of the films of 2013. Many of them were about subjects that easily could have been converted into the message movies of old. (One, "Dallas Buyers Club," clearly was, which is part of why it's such a bore.) But they dug for something more:
- "Captain Phillips," which 50 years ago would have been a story of blue-collar Americans fighting a Great Black Menace--probably with ominous music substituting for most of the dialogue of the "bad guys"--does a terrific job of digging into why the pirates committed their crimes. And it manages to do this while never excusing their behavior.
- "12 Years a Slave," which Spielberg would have converted into a simple story about the past wrongs of whites, doesn't just lay bare the cruelty of slavery. It shows how whites were perverted by the practice as well, from Benedict Cumberbatch's well-meaning slaveowner who won't upset the status quo to Paul Dano's monstrous overseer to Michael Fassbender's demented, lovesick plantation owner.
- "Her," which could have been a cautionary tale about the dangers of our reliance on machines, becomes a much trickier exploration of the challenges of having a relationship with a real, live human being.
- "American Hustle," a movie about an entrapment scheme by the FBI to take down politicians, depicts almost all its characters as con artists. The only altruistic person in the film is one of the criminals, Jeremy Renner's Atlantic City mayor, who takes kickbacks but wants to invest them back into his community to create jobs. He cares a lot more about the American people than the FBI's undercover agents, who are only looking for the glory of a bust.
- "Before Midnight" is a powerful look at the challenges of maintaining a marriage. In probably the most famous scene of the year, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy take off the gloves for a fascinating fight where both sides seem equally to blame. (Though crucially, it never feels as though the writers are purposefully trying to even it out; both of the characters are just that good at fighting.)
- "Blue Jasmine" essentially takes the Blanche DuBois character and fills in the backstory. Though the movie isn't great, Woody Allen does some fine work with the character, making her both more tragic and more nauseating.
Perhaps the exception that proves the rule is "The Wolf of Wall Street." This is a movie that traffics in black and white, but it's a cartoon. It takes for granted the moral of Oliver Stone's "Wall Street"--that our financial markets are a rigged game which only the powerful can win--and turns it into a cruel joke. Like the movies above, it assumes a certain level of intelligence from the audience. It's about time.
