Join Ian, Liam & Megs for our 348th episode as we pull the Gran Torino out of the garage and spend some time with the angriest man on the street for Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino (2008) — a film about racism, masculinity, community and the legacy we leave behind. Kev isn’t with us this week — Walt caught him looking at the Gran Torino and has been sitting on the porch staring at him ever since. Kev assures us he'll be allowed to move eventually. And we're delighted to welcome BFF of the BFE Hermes Auslander to help us unpack one of the most fascinating — and occasionally deeply uncomfortable — films of Eastwood's later career.
This week we discuss:
Clint Eastwood and legacy — how much does Gran Torino deliberately trade on everything Eastwood has represented on screen for the previous forty years?
Where does this rank among our Clint Eastwood films? We put Walt Kowalski up against the other Eastwood performances and movies we've covered on the BFE.
Masculinity according to Walt — tools, cars, beer, work and absolutely no discussion of feelings. Is the film celebrating this version of manhood or slowly dismantling it?
The creation of “the other” — Walt begins with an entire community reduced to stereotypes and slurs.
And the dismantling of “the other” — what happens once the people Walt has spent years categorising actually become people to him?
Walt and Thao — a mentorship that begins with an attempted car theft and becomes the emotional heart of the movie.
Sue — is she actually the person most responsible for breaking through Walt's defences?
The language of Gran Torino — can the film use racism to interrogate racism without occasionally becoming too comfortable with the joke?
The performances around Eastwood — does the decision to cast inexperienced Hmong actors add authenticity, or expose some pretty significant gaps in performance?
And is there one acting moment that nearly ruins the entire film? When Walt locks Thao away, does Bee Vang give us anything close to the desperation that this enormously important scene requires?
Walt's biological family versus the family next door — the people he's related to seem increasingly distant while the people he initially despises become his community.
Father Janovich is more important than he first appears — what begins as Walt mocking an inexperienced young priest develops into a relationship that becomes crucial to understanding the ending.
What does Walt actually leave behind? The Gran Torino matters, but his real legacy might have considerably less to do with the car.
Clint Eastwood playing Clint Eastwood — brilliantly weaponising his own screen persona, or occasionally drifting into self-parody?
That ending — after a career built around armed men solving problems with violence, Eastwood gives Walt one final confrontation and refuses to let him fire the gun.
But does everything finish a little too neatly? Walt gets his redemption, Thao gets the car and the gang problem gets wrapped up remarkably cleanly for a film that has spent so long dealing in messier realities.
Hermes joins us to tackle the redemption question — does learning to love a handful of people actually undo a lifetime of prejudice?
And finally, whether Gran Torino is the Best Film Ever — or Clint Eastwood putting his own cinematic legacy on trial.
Massive thanks to Lex Van Den Berghe for the use of Mistake by Luckydog. Catch more from Lex's new band, The Maids of Honor, at https://soundcloud.com/themaidsofhonor
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