Pretty worthless; whatever happened to making movies that make a difference?

• Author: Austin, Beth

Pretty Worthless

In the 1954 film On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando plays a dockworker named Terry Malloy whose brother is in cahoots with the vicious leader of the dockworkers' local. Although he resists falling in with the crooks, Terry also has no interest in trying to stop them. When an investigator from the crime commission tries to question him, Terry more or less sums up his philosophy of life: "I don't know nothin', I ain't seen nothin', an' I ain't sayin' nothin'."

Enter Edie (Eva Marie Saint). She's educated and has a shot at escaping the docks; if she falls for Terry, she probably never will. But much more threatening to the relationship than Terry's lack of money or brains are Edie's weird ideas. She's putting herself on the line to clean up the waterfront, and she expects no less from Terry. "Shouldn't everybody care about everybody else?" she asks him. He looks amazed. "Boy," he observes, "are you a fruitcake."

As On the Waterfront amply demonstrates, Hollywood has never been a hotbed of complex moral thinking. But the past few years have seen a dramatic narrowing of the issues and themes addressed in the movies. The cinematic legacy of the Reagan era divides roughly into two categories. On one hand are what could be characterized as outward-looking films, in which the main players try to save or avenge their friends/town/city/planet. These heroes are not descendants of George Bailey, who through example and hard work kept Bedford Falls from the clutches of Mr. Potter, or of Gary Cooper, who made it almost to the end of High Noon without firing a shot. Instead, they take after Dirty Harry, whose readiness to blow holes through villains seemed to be all that stood between San Francisco and the apocalypse. No one will be shocked to hear that this bloody-buddy genre has its moral deficiencies.

The Reagan years' other moral legacy to Hollywood is more inward-looking: the exaltation of "family values," in which the family itself has become our only value, the single bright ray in an increasingly murky world. Compared to the bloodbaths of the cop films, these movies are refreshing not only because they're generally fun to watch, but because of their emphasis on love and sincerity within relationships. Still, you don't have to be a graduate of NYU film school to see that the warm, fuzzy movies celebrating friendship, family, and the occasional dog are also lacking morally. In fact, as a moviegoer--and a wife and a mother and a journalist--I find them not just empty, but insidious, because they leave us feeling so good about our insulated selves. The redoubtable Edie would never have settled for such moral interior decorating, as Terry learns to his peril. She flings his offer of a mere relationship right back in his face: "No wonder everybody calls you a bum."

He pursues her, bewildered. "I'm only trying to help you out. I'm trying to keep you from getting hurt," Terry mumbles. "What more do you want me to do?"

"Much more," Edie fires back, almost snarling, "much, much, much more."

Radicchio ad absurdum

Much more, indeed. In trying to produce "family" movies, today's popular filmmakers have confused niceness that stops at the front door. Trend spotting is, of course, a risky business, and there are some exceptions--this year's Oscar-sweeping Dances With Wolves comes to mind, as do other films such as Glory, The Hunt for Red October, and Guilty by Suspicion--to confuse the rule. But a look at the heart-warming blockbusters of recent years indicates that, in general, we hold these truths to be self-evident: that a parent's highest responsibility is to provide complete emotional and financial security for his child; that women exist to help men get beyond their fear of intimacy and commitment; and that personal relationships are the single most important facet of life.

And sometimes the only facet. In the latest afterlife extravaganza, Defending Your Life, Albert Brooks doesn't have to minister to reach a higher level of being. He just has to admit he loves Meryl Streep.

Of course, Brooks and Streep are utterly insulated from the real world--but then again, so are almost all movie couples. In When Harry Met Sally, the seal is so tight that any real human being would surely suffocate. We barely learn what the characters do to pay for their loft apartments, grilled radicchio, and Mexican ceramic tile floors. ("Everybody thinks they have good...