Heresy itself is actually the searching for one's own value----Analyzing of the Figure of Luke

In the eyes of authority, Luke may be a heresy;
In the eyes of peers, Luke must be a hero.

Because of missing the first part of the movie, I found the entire one with subtitle this weekend and tried to watch it carefully. During watching this movie, I had to stop it and thought for several times. In the end, I sighed: What a man!

The Chinese tittle of this movie is <鐵窗喋血>，which means 'bloodshed in a window with iron grating' in Chinese. I must say it is really a horrible name which totally distort its original idea and categorize it as a prison breaking action movie. Maybe the translators just wanted to attract audience's eyeballs and made up such a typical Hong Kong Kong Fu movie's name. How ridiculous it is!

Okay, come back to our subject.

I cannot exactly remember how many cheaters and liars who Paul Newman have played in other movies, but the figure of Luke is totally different from Paul Newman's consistent acting style, which used to be funny and amusing. In this film, Paul perfectly illuminated the image of an unyielding man and how was he transformed mentally and emotionally during his prisoner's life. Another aspect which I very appreciate is that there is abundant metaphor and montage used by the director in the movie, which leaves audience much space to deliberate.

First of all, metaphor is an important feature of this movie. The talented director, Stuart Rosenberg, likes to utilize metaphor everywhere in his movie skillfully to insinuate the reality. In this film, the jail is not only the place confining freedom, but it is also a symbol of restriction in humanity. In another words, the jail is just our life, our world. In reality, people have a lot of thing they may desire to do but cannot do and people always have all kinds of dream to break the line between them. However, Luke does it, so he becomes a hero who is respected by other prisoners. Actually, We are these prisoners and Luke is the restless desire of freedom in our mind. The jail is the representation of the national machine which could trample on our right, freedom and even life without restraint, such as the prison officers could shoots birds, turtles even human as his pleases in the film. Luke was put into this jail as drunk vandal. Deeply, drunkenness is just the escaping of the social reality, but when he wakes up in the jail, he will find there is no difference between outside and inside. And the three failures of his escaping also indicated that there is only a bigger jail outside and his soul is confined everywhere. In many scenes of the movie, prisoners are working along the road. The tiny prisoners, the wild flatland and the endless road, there is such a strong contrast between confined people and open space. What a sarcasm it is: such a open free space contains a group of poor people whose freedom are deprived. The tragical reality is that the individual who refuses to yield to the control of authoritative ideology is exiled by the society finally.

Another feature of this film is that it conveys a mount of religion insinuation through Luke's behavioral and psychological transformation. At the beginning, Luke lost his believe during the war. He suspect the reality God brings to him: there is only slaughter and death in the battlefield. When his mom died, his love to his mother made his believe resurrection. In the film, Luke played many hymns and anthems to express his memory to his mother in the Heaven when he was forbidden to go to his mother's funeral. In the scene of eating eggs, the picture of Luke lying on the table is exactly the posture of Jesus' Crucifixion. Moreover, when Luke was shot in the chapel, the up shooting camera and the gradually emerging of the cross also sublimes Luke's death to height of crucifixion for the equal freedom and the image of policemen becomes a kind of evil force smashing the believe and destroying the freedom, which is the opposite of righteous . In the last scene of the film, in the endless road, there shows up a big crossing road which could be read as the confusing of people in their believes---turning right or left---or another religion insinuation of cross. Here, Luke transforms from a simple cynicism figure who blindly conveys his dissatisfaction to authority through destructing government's property to a real hero who has his own believe and value.

The reason why Stuart Rosenberg is a special director is that he refuses to convey his idea directly to audience, which makes us rethink our life through watching the movie. Unlike 'The Shawshank Redemption', which blurred the age background and emphasized generalized freedom, and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', which just wildly and directly cries out the word of freedom, 'Cool Hand Luke' is more specific and veiled. Stuart Rosenberg tries to tell a story implicitly about freedom which more agrees with spirit of a specific era and culture---the 60's American. The authority and equal freedom, the Vietnam War and peace, Luke's mermaid tattoo and sexual liberation, all of these leave us a lot of space to think deeply.......