DIRECTOR: John G. Avildsen
STARRING: Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, Susan Sarandon
Few films capture the essence of blue collar America, and their backlash to the 1960s counterculture movement as poignantly as John G. Avildsen’s 1970 classic, ‘Joe’. A picture of hatred, confusion, friendship, and the duality of American conceptions of life, ‘Joe’ is a film that has once more returned to relevancy. Though not the Haight- Ashbury hippies we’ve seen depicted so often, there is a growing counter culture today whose mores are far from respectable to elder generations. But it takes films like ‘Joe’ to insist we challenge what our lives are moving towards and the definition of respectability.
Why does it sometimes take the seemingly simplest of characters to pose the most important and complicated questions about life and what it means to be a part of a society? Avildsen’s title character, ‘Joe,’ is one of cinema’s most complex individuals. Barbaric and dim at face value, Joe’s multi faceted personality, and the portrait given to us is one that poses more questions than it answers. An aging man in a brutal society, Joe exists in the blue-collar morass of mediocrity and daily struggle. Never given a break and always working for those things he can call his own, Joe has adopted a bitter outlook, especially in regards to the entitled youth. Joe feels that the younger generation lacks respect, and that they ‘shit’ all over everything that he stands for and believes in (America). Whether or not Joe’s claims are true, it is the reasons for which he believes in these injustices that are most important.
‘Joe’ is a portrait of American life as seen through the various social tiers, and brilliantly weaves their interactions into one tragic narrative of pain and strife. Not an easy film to digest, ‘Joe’ is nonetheless an essential viewing, as a perfect film and a commentary on a disintegrating American society. For fans of 1970s gritty cinema, Avildsen’s film is a forerunner to the genre, and perhaps its greatest achievement. Watch Peter Boyle give his most important performance; one that he disliked intently enough to alter his following career. Boyle, said to have been a very kind man, preferred to avoid embodying characters of hatred and violence after the critical acclaim his ‘Joe’ received upon the film’s release. To borrow an applicable tagline from the film adaptation of Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer,’ “When you talk about Joe, will you talk about yourself?”
New Comments