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Change Lanes and Skip Blockbuster For Your
Local Indie Video Store
JimmyO
was right in his review of Changing Lanes: Sometimes
film critics baffle me, and not just Roeper. A lot of
critics gave that movie four stars, and neither of us can
understand why. I
lumped it with John Q as a new brand of angry Hollywood
liberalism, but a lot of critics declared it a "nuanced
character study" or a "morally ambiguous thriller."
Me, I must have missed all the "nuance" and "ambiguity."
To me, the plot and dialogue of Changing Lanes was
so far overblown and altogether crazy that I can't grant it
points for character subtlety. First, I'm a little baffled
as to why I was ever supposed to shift my allegiance to Ben
Affleck—a wealthy, adulterous, conniving Wall Street
lawyer—to ruin this poor guy's life. Yet, I really didn't
care for Sam Jackson either, with his overly earnest Tiger
Woods speeches and whatnot. This movie proposes to scrape
away the excess of modern life and artificial boundaries of
class to reveal the innate greed of selfishness of mankind.
But how can a movie bore into the marrow of humanity when
it dresses itself up with overblown action sequences and Sam
Jackson tossing a computer through a street window when he
doesn't get a loan? How am I supposed to contemplate all this
supposed "moral complexity" when Sam Jackson is
screaming about "computer voodoo" or Tiger Woods
commercials as a microcosm for race relations in America?
How am I supposed to come to my own conclusion that man needs
to be redeemed from his own nature when: 1) I get bonked on
the head with Good Friday symbolism, 2) Ben chews out a priest
at confessional and storms out of the church, 3) Ben and Sam
both thrust out their arms in crucifixion poses looking skyward
during a downpour, 4) Ben stumbles into confessional right
in front of a processional carrying a gigantic crucifix. Changing
Lanes doesn't even have the good manners to explain what
"computer voodoo" is, or how one might overcome
an "addiction to chaos," and I've yet to figure
out why Ben didn't just let his company's insurance handle
the accident claim, why he didn't realize he was being used
as a pawn to launder money, what crime Sam is being charged
with when he's arrested and given the beat down when he tries
to visit his kids at school, or how Sam pulled off that spider
wrench stunt without getting Ben killed. In short, the sheer
preposterousness of the plot overrides any morality play that
may lie within.
If you want a good movie that more clearly elucidates the
same themes, then get your ass over to your local independent
video store (like Showcase Movies in Springfield, Missouri)
and ask for Beijing Bicycle. Of course it borrows from
The Bicycle Thief, one of those undisputed "great
movies" whose legend lives a separate life from the movie
itself. That movie is the landmark of Italian neo-realism:
Director Vittorio De Sica visited brothels and psychics as
research, and his actors are "real people" entrenched
in poverty. It's easy to classify The Bicycle Thief as
a simple Marxist tale in which the small struggles of a man
(like losing his bicycle) are such calamities that we personally,
as the privileged moviegoing audience, would happily pass
the hat around the theater for Ricci's bicycle fund. It's
the sort of movie in which wealth is defined by an overwhelming
plate of pasta, and if there's a tinge of insincerity in the
film, it's that De Sica may seem to revel in the squalor a
bit much, a little too self-satisfied that he's telling a
poignant story. For those offended by Chaplin's or Spielberg's
strategy of arousing guilt and then uplifting the sanctity
of the moral man, The Bicycle Thief may seem a bit
parable-istic, but as a work of art, it's tough to question
De Sica's urban photography. There is something transcendent
in the image of a person on a bicycle, putting distance between
himself and society, soaring past all the troubles of the
world.
Beijing Bicycle begins with a De Sica-ian template:
A poor boy, Guei, moves to the city; the only job he can find
is as a messenger boy on a bicycle. The company loans the
boys some rather expensive bicycles, on the condition that
they must pay for them with deliveries. Of course, on his
final delivery, his bicycle is stolen as he's made to wait
at a massage parlor, like the brothel Ricci runs into. The
thief, Jian, is a more middle-class boy who goes to a nice
school but whose family has come upon hard times. Guei, much
to the surprise of his boss, actually finds the bicycle and
takes it back. Rather than face the humiliation of admitting
his family can't afford a bicycle, Jian assembles his gang
who torments Guei. Guei desperately clings to his only hope
in life; Jian faces the worst humiliation a privileged teen
could possibly feel—being thought unworthy of the group.
The rest of the movie is the parallel stories of the boys,
each scene defining what the bicycle means to them. For Guei,
the bicycle represents freedom and the working man's satisfaction
of keeping what you earn, but for Jian, he needs the bicycle
as a status symbol, and to flirt with a girl he likes. I doubt
that our allegiances are ever to shift from Guei, of course,
but Jian's story is compelling in that we, as the privileged
moviegoing audience, have probably faced fears nearer to Jian's
as we have Guei's, though Guei's is clearly the more sympathetic.
The story goes back and forth like this, developing a richness
beyond simple Marxist parable, and for those offput by upbeat
endings, this may be your movie.
Beijing Bicycle is so well-written and photographed
that there's no need for Tiger Woods speeches or computer
voodoo; neither Guei or Jian are addicted to chaos; nobody
bicycles into a big crucifix. It might be easy to read Beijing
Bicycle as a quiet cry for more evenly distributed wealth,
but there's more going on than just that. The story of the
two kids is simple—the smallest, yet universal events
of childhood are expressed with the same heartwrench we remember.
We really do get a sense of stripped humanity when poor Guei
gets beat down by Jian's posse, seen in the way he desperately
clings to his beloved bicycle. What child in any country can't
identify with that? Or when Jian, engrossed in a video game,
ignores his girlfriend. Is it arrogance, indifference, or
out of a deeply rooted fear of actually talking to her? Whatever
the case, what boy can't identify with that, and what girl
hasn't been on the recieving end? Of course Beijing Bicycle
is a beautiful movie: The images of hundreds of bicyclers
on the streets of Beijing are like schools of salmon swimming
upstream, and it captures the sublime poetry of the exhilaration
of passing the world by on a bicycle, and what it's like to
admire the craftsmanship of a well-made vehicle. In these
moments, the Chinese subtitles dissolve from the screen and,
like The Bicycle Thief, the power of simple, beautifully
filmed images bridge oceans. I'm not sure the same can be
said for Ben Affleck's confessional or Sam Jackson's spider
wrench stunt. Both Changing Lanes and Beijing Bicycle
explore erosion of humanity in the face of greed and
revenge, but if beauty is a measure of storytelling and subtlety
a measure of moral complexity, then do yourself a favor and
skip Changing Lanes for Beijing Bicycle.
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