The Wasteland Reviewer

Outside the Wasteland: Cool Hand Luke (1967)

Film can mean so much more than just entertainment on a screen, right? Outside the Wasteland is my new avenue to express my thoughts on films that have truly made an impact on my life. This is not about how great the films are or even how much I love them. This is an expression of how these films have made a direct impact on my life including my love of film, my personality, my world view, and just an overall lasting impression that deeply affected me.  This is a doorway into The Wasteland Reviewer through the films that have shaped me.

Cool Hand Luke (1967)

When did I evolve as a movie watcher? As a child, you start by watching movies and falling in love with the entertainment and experience that they are for us. You probably watched certain films almost every day as a kid and slowly drove your parents inside. As we get older, we can process more complex stories and more emotionally impactful cinematic experiences. But there is a specific shift in life that certain people experience, and it drastically changes the way they engage with film. The moment you stop being a fan of movies and start becoming a student of film is quite the exciting and expanding experience.

What was that specific moment for me? High school. Cinema class. I used most of the available electives as a high school student to take business courses and expand my skills (I do have an undergraduate degree and Master of Accountancy). But I did have one extra one and no other business classes to take so I decided to take a film class. I loved movies at that point in my life already, but it was just about entertainment and enjoyment for me. Star Wars. Rocky. The Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter. But that film class changed things for me from the first film we watched. The film? You guessed it…Cool Hand Luke.

Why was this film so significant for me? There were a few films I watched growing up like Cool Hand Luke. This wasn’t an action movie (which my mom watched plenty with me growing up). This wasn’t a silly comedy with plenty of laughs. There were no robots, dragons, aliens, or anything ripped from science fiction or fantasy stories. But this film opened my eyes to the possibilities of film as an art form and as a mechanism of meaning. I certainly watched plenty of films about actual religion like The Ten Commandments or Ben Hur. Cool Hand Luke was certainly different as it is draped in religious symbolism and metaphor. Paul Newman’s Lucas Jackson was a rebel and idol in the eyes of his fellow prisoners. These recurring crosses throughout the film captured the iconography of Jesus Christ himself (a confirmed Roman Catholic myself, this imagery was not lost on me). This film might be about a rebellious prisoner on the surface, but it taught me that you could go beyond that and see something deeper and layered underneath.

What other elements of film did I learn from my experiences in this class? Cool Hand Luke was just the tip of the analytic iceberg for me. Symbolism and imagery are just a couple of cinematic tools that filmmakers can utilize. Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King taught me about the use of color and magical realism. Memento taught me just how creative a storyteller could get with narrative structure and conventions. There was a whole month of Hitchcock which taught me just how dynamic a filmmaker can be with the camera and visual storytelling. Along with that, the art of suspense. You know…Hitchcock was the master. But this class was a challenging experience for me though. Not every film was one that I could crack at this point in my life. I hated one of the films about two Italian American brothers who threw F-words around like candy while one committed domestic violence and boxed occasionally. Those were certainly my initial thoughts having watched Raging Bull for the first time. Since then, I have revisited and acquired a whole new appreciation for Scorsese’s craft (but my initial thoughts were still technically true).

Do you need to take a film class to become a student of film? No. The likes of Quentin Tarantino leveraged a life in a video rental store. Others took advantage of their local library (how I watched North by Northwest for the first time as an assignment for that very class). Today, you have whole digital libraries surrounding you all the time through your phones, computers, and televisions. You can explore through other artistic media (i.e. books) that can expand your horizons (books on film are one of my favorite genres to read). But if you get a chance to take a class and have the guidance of a more knowledgeable other in the realm of film, you can learn so much and it can jumpstart your own cinematic evolution.