w00t! "Prison Break" resumes tonight! Ye, boyyy! I love that show. (I have to confess, dammit, that I love far too many Fox Television shows . . . ) Although "Prison Break" has, I must admit (like "Lost," or so I'm told; I've never watched that series) strayed far from its roots, its creators have had the grace to bring it to an end with the remaining five episodes. (Now, "Arrested Development," on the other hand, should still be on the air, but that's a story for another night . . . )
So - prisons! Right! What is about confinement that draws us in? Is it because fear of small spaces might be one of humankind's most universal terrors? Is it that humans at close quarters for any period of time will act in ways not otherwise imaginable? Whatever it is, the experience of being trapped resonates for almost everyone.
Perhaps the best prison film ever is one with an ultimately uplifting message. The Shawshank Redemption is all about that - redemption - and the possibility that virtue and goodness burns deep in the souls of the virtuous and the good, and their fire is not easily quenched. Every time I see that film, I have a hard time believing it was written by horrormeister Stephen King, but it was.
Another classic is one of my all-time favorites: The Great Escape. How it might be possible not to root for the imprisoned Allied fliers, whose escape plans embody courage, resourcefulness and ingenuity, is beyond me. The sheer scope of the film's cast is staggering; of course, for me as a young lad, no one could touch Steve McQueen for his ineffable I'm-going-to-jump-my-Triumph-650-over-this-barbed-wire-while-wearing-a-ratty-sweatshirt coolness. (And yes, I know: (a) the Germans used BMWs, not Triumphs; (b) the Triumph TR6 wasn't even around during World War II; (c) McQueen didn't perform the actual successful jump over the first barbed-wire fence (although he did try once, and crashed); and (d) the entire motorcycle chase sequence was fabricated out of whole cloth for the movie; it never happened in real life.)
The Great Escape, though, is not nearly as meaty a flick in many ways as Stalag 17, a psychological drama that is sort of the Twelve Angry Men of the prison genre. William Holden won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as an unlikable airman suspected of being a traitor in a German POW camp.
Steve McQueen shifted gears ten years after The Great Escape to team with Dustin Hoffman in the title role of Papillon, a gritty portrayal of life on (and, eventually, off of) the notorious French penal colony of Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana. High points include a long stretch at a leper colony. Nice.
Schindler's List and The Killing Fields also paint unflinching portraits of the miserable conditions of barbaric confinement. In Schindler's List, Ralph Fiennes plays a hearless sociopathic concentration camp commandant who idly shoots Jews from his balcony for sport; his Jewish prisoners, meanwhile, hide in cesspools to escape detection. In The Killing Fields, a Khmer Rouge re-education camp is just one prison; the entire nation of Cambodia is the hellish death trap that Dith Pran must somehow flee. (Sadly, Dr. Haing Ngor, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Pran, was killed by Asian gang members in Los Angeles in 1996 during a robbery.)
The Green Mile and Dead Man Walking are two recent looks at death row; The Green Mile brings Stephen King's supernatural touch to a story of reckoning and redemption, while Dead Man Walking is a sobering tour de force for both Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn (an assessment which, I guess, would make me a commie homo-loving son of a gun).
I can't leave out one of my favorite film's portrayal of prison: The Blues Brothers has a classic opening sequence hysterically played by John Belushi and Frank Oz; the movie comes full circle back to prison in the last scene, after Belushi and Dan Aykroyd have fulfilled their mission from God. (Fun fact: Joliet Prison, where the opening was shot, is the eponymous "prison" of "Prison Break.")
And - in recognition of the fact that one can be confined in many different kinds of prisons - I include on this list The Diving Bell and the Butterfly which, although I must admit I have never seen it, I am told is an outstanding film.
Thanks for reading! So - which "prison" movies are your favorites? And remember - spread the mojo around while it's still cheap and plentiful!
(Heh - when I floated the idea for this week's FNaTM diary past our esteemed panel of contributors, the mind of one diarist - who shall remain nameless - went straight to the genre represented by such classics as Chain Gang Women. Yeah, ahhh, no.)
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FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES NEEDS YOU! We're looking for a handful of folks who are willing to pitch in on the occasional Friday evening by posting a film-related diary and spreading mojo around in the comments! In addition to chingchongchinaman and annetteboardman, other FNATMers over the past three years have included Dallasdoc, filmgeek83, Land of Enchantment, LithiumCola, Meteor Blades, Laura Clawson aka MissLaura, Sam Loomis (in a surprise guest appearance!) and Spud1. If it sounds like it might be of interest to you, please contact occams hatchet through the e-mail in his profile.