On deck is a classic, The Grapes of Wrath (1940), a film exposing the ugly underside of human greed, and its associate, the free market. The Joads, having lost the farm they rented during the Great Depression, are forced to search for work. We see them forced from the land, their house destroyed by the landowner’s minions and enforced by the police, as son Tom (Henry Fonda) returns from prison, having killed a man and served his time. Being tenant farmers, they have little right to the land they’ve worked for generations, nor do they have little other in the way of skills, and we see the human cost of ‘creative destruction’ – Grandpa dies first, distressed by the sheer trauma of losing his home through no fault of his own. He’s buried by the side of the road, with a note of explanation.
(As an aside, today I attended a funeral for an elderly gentleman. One of his daughters told me that the last straw, in her opinion, was putting the beloved family home up for sale. The parallels are unmistakable and unsettling, and I cannot help but contemplate that unfettered competition inflicted upon those whose age has made them unable, or even uninterested, in the battle, hardly seems appropriate in a civilization claiming to for for those unable to protect themselves.)
Next pushed down the creek to the ocean of forever is Grandma, the loss of her husband and the road itself proving too much of a challenge for the elderly infirm. Her last contribution to her beloved family is that her body, her staring eyes, a pitiable epitome of a victim of man’s greed, convinces police at a checkpoint to let the family through, where they might have otherwise been turned away from the land of manna.
And that would be California, where there is fruit to be picked and men to be lost! Yes, sir, on the way to the fabled land of work and honey, the husband of one of the family daughters, she, naturally, in the family way, skips out, leaving her prostrate with grief. His talk of pursuing a lucrative trade leaves us to wonder if his dismay at the travails of the family has pushed him away – or if he’ll just trade his wife for a taste of commerce with which to feed himself – and perhaps only himself.
But we’re not done yet disposing of this excess humanity! A former pastor, Casy, played by the formidable John Carradine, joined the family caravan at the jumping off point. Questioning his faith, unable to perform those spiritual duties of an informal spiritual leader, not feeling the spirit move him, he can work and fulfill his obligations, but in a world where all he knew and trusted no longer works, he’s at a loss. But now, in California, as they work for wages that hover on the very edge between subsistence and starvation, Casy has discovered a new faith: labor unions. In the dark of night, Tom, the former prisoner, seeks him out and finds him hiding from company enforcers. Eventually, in a creek under a bridge, the enforcers find Casy, Tom, and others, and a single, symbolic clubbing sends Casy off to his maker; in vengeance, Tom becomes a recidivist, and one of the enforcers accompanies Casy on his last journey.
The Joads, carefully shielding Tom from view, move on to another job, and this is like heaven: the workers control the means of production, and how this farm is governed. For a short while, peace reigns; then the free market, sensing apostasy, cancer, even kaiju (if you’ll forgive the shattering of conceptual walls), attempts, through the deceits of faux riots and corrupt lawmen, to dismember the farm; but the farmhands, sensing the forces of envious greed surrounding them, peacefully (more or less) nip Bud in the bud, and the lawmen, disgruntled, are forced to leave with their clubs unbloodied.
The final blow to the family is Tom, realizing his endangerment of the family, decides to leave them, proclaiming that, as an outlaw, he must now thrive in the land where the unfortunate are found, never to be on the good side of the law again. His Ma shoulders this final burden, and vows she’ll feel fear no more; sans Tom they lower their heads to take Fortune’s hard shots, forced upon them by Man’s greed.
Is it a great movie? Yes, marvelous performances, good writing, not really a spec of humor, so it’s a movie that’s also good for you. If you’re not in the mood for that sort of thing, then perhaps this isn’t for you.
