Convoy (1978)

"Hey Duck, are you coming back?"

They could be on the same side, Martin Penwald and Lyle Wallace, and their trades are soon to be part of the same union, the Teamsters. And they have one fundamental thing in common, they are both fiercely independent, they rather be on their own than part of any union. But they cannot be friends. Penwald is a trucker and Wallace is a sheriff, and the sheriff hates truckers. Or he has grown to hate them. Whatever the two have in common, one is now destined to be hunted by the other. Towards the end, Penwald accuses Wallace of having become corrupt and mean, and Wallace is hurt by it because he knows it is true.

Penwald and Wallace are the lead characters in Convoy (1978), Sam Peckinpah's tribute to American truck drivers, and the two are somewhat to Convoy what Pike Bishop and Deke Thornton are to The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah 1969). It is a road movie, where more and more truck drivers, men as well as women, black and white, gay and straight, join what is becoming a national revolt against police brutality and racism, and a struggle for workers' rights. Perhaps. It is not as specific as that. The leader, Penwald, aka Rubber Duck, would not consider himself a leader, and he does not seem to have much political interests other than to be honest, decent, self-sufficient and be left in peace. After he has led the truckers across two states, he suddenly leaves them and goes off alone, to help a friend. That is when the line I quoted above is spoken. One of the other truckers calls after him, with the fear of being abandoned palpable in his voice. Rubber Duck does not reply, because he cannot. He does not know where he needs to be.

For a film by Sam Peckinpah, it is relatively bloodless; it is more cars and trucks that are hurt than people, but it is still permeated by his style and personality, and an anarchist dream of total freedom. That freedom is inaccessible, but as a dream it lives on and is perhaps necessary to be able to keep going in a brutal world.

Peckinpah did not like the script and was high on alcohol and cocaine during the making of it, and was frequently unable to actually direct. James Coburn is said to have directed a lot instead. A first rough cut was 3.5 hours but after Peckinpah had been working on editing and post-production for months without being able to finish it, the production company took over and the film was finally trimmed down, without Peckinpah's involvement, into 110 minutes that could be released.

The released film was scolded when it came but I like it. I find it irresistible, and already found it so when I was in my early twenties. It is totally devoted to its subject, and in its diesel-scented working-class romance it is an example of a movie that is rarely, if at all, made today. The expansive cinematography by Harry Stradling Jr., of roads, fields, small towns, and endless lines of trucks across the horizon, is quite beautiful. It is often said to be badly cast but I disagree with this too. Kris Kristofferson plays Penwald, Ernest Borgnine plays Wallace and Ali McGraw plays a photographer who joins Penwald in his truck, and they are all fine. I think Kristofferson is perfect in his part, aloof and detached.

Between 1969 and 1973 Peckinpah made six films that together form an exceptional explosion of creativity and brilliance. The three films he made before 1969 are good too, as are the five films he made after 1973, but they do not reach the same height of those four years of exceptionalism. Yet Convoy, for its flaws and disturbed production, still has enough of Peckinpah's magic to make it feel more genuine and special than most American mainstream films made today.

-----------------------------------------------

I was reminded of Convoy recently for two reasons: it was unexpectedly released on Blu-ray in Sweden, and there was an article in The Economist about Chinese truck drivers, and how the American mythology of truckers gives them a status that Chinese truckers do not have, who are instead treated badly by anyone. And while I am recommending articles to read, there is also Nick Pinkerton's 2005 article in Film Comment about the history of truckers in American cinema.

I got the information about the making of Convoy from David Weddle's book If They Move...Kill'em! - The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah (1994).

Death and its representations

Only twice have I been in the same room as death. The first time was when my grandfather died, peacefully in a hospital bed. The second time was when a drug addict died of an overdose at a cinema where I was working. There was nothing peaceful about that, or the failed effort to bring him back to life.

On film on the other hand death is a constant presence, and many have perhaps only experienced death through seeing it in moving images (in the news or in fiction). It is a peculiar thing. Does it teach us anything? Does it make us more prepared for when we too will encounter it? For children, experiencing death on film might be very traumatic and perhaps therapeutic. I worked as a projectionist when The Lion King came out and I used to go into the screening room at the moment when Simba's dad is killed. I did it because it was so moving listening to the children. There were two kinds, those who had seen it before and started whispering about how the dad would die soon, and those who had not seen it before and were very concerned. The tension in the room was palpable, 100 kids shifting in their seats, holding their breaths.

"We live - as we dream - alone." wrote Joseph Conrad, and we die alone too he might have added. We might reach out for a hand to hold in our last moment, as in the very end of Heat, but that is not the same. Or we might be embalmed in a light from above, as in so many death scenes in the films of Ingmar Bergman. A peaceful and benevolent light, but one which also emphasis the loneliness of the deceased, the only body in the light. But Carol in Wyler's Mrs. Miniver had neither a hand nor a light to sooth her, instead she died by herself on a cold wooden floor.

Death was of course of special significance for Bergman, who made several films about it, and even had Death appear in person. The first of his films with an embodied figure of Death was Summer Interlude (1951) and it was not the last. Death is usually seen as something tragic, but it does not have to be. In several of Bergman's films death is a relief, a victory even. When the pain is too strong, when life brings nothing but misery, dying is not necessarily a bad option. The saying "Every day above ground is a good day." (which I have seen motivational speakers sometimes use) seems to me to be putting the bar terribly low. And only because somebody has died does not mean that they are necessarily gone. Ugetsu Monogatari suggests different ways in which the dead might remain. As ghosts, or hallucinations, or voices.

It is not easy to know how one will react, or should react, when somebody dies. It is easy for others to judge those that show no outward signs of grief and sadness, but that is very unfair. Everybody reacts differently, and nobody else can know what goes on inside another person. They might not even know themselves. Little Eddie, in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, is concerned about not feeling enough about his mother being dead, he is afraid he will forget about her. Then one day he finds his goldfish dead in its bowl, and then he reacts. He reacts with a combination of shock and fierce grief that is unbearable, and one of the most moving death scenes in all of cinema.

Sometimes death is sudden, swift and merciful. In Superman Jonathan Kent is walking on his farm when suddenly he has a heart attack. "Oh no." he says, and then he dies. Sometimes it is the opposite. In Black Hawk Down one of the rangers is slowly bleeding to death while his comrades are desperately trying to save him, in a scene which is long, messy and incredibly intense. I hardly ever cry when watching films but that scene has an unusual effect on me. It is not just that he dies, but how. The terror, fear and panic, together with the visceral close-ups of blood, tissue and bone, makes the sequence overwhelming. That is not how you want to die.

To die with dignity can be of great importance to some, or to be left alone. When Judd dies in Ride the High Country he asks that the others stay away. "I don't want them to see me like this." he says. When he is alone he looks at the mountains, the last thing he sees is where he used to live. He died the way he had too, and even though he might have wanted to live on there was no place for him any longer and at least he died in a noble way. Ride the High Country was directed by Sam Peckinpah, for whom death was as important a subject as for Bergman. A particularly fine scene is this, from Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, where an older couple, played by Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado, is helping a friend take care of some outlaws, with sad consequences.



Bob Dylan wrote the music for that film, and Colin Baker sits by the river, knocking on heaven's door. What happens next is unknown. But films provide many suggestions. In the wonderful After Life you end up in a transit area after you die and there you are asked to think of your favourite memory. When you have decided upon one, that memory will be recreated and you will be living it for the rest of eternity. All memories are different, it is a very personal thing, and for all the sweetness and wisdom in the film it is still the case that in the end we are alone.

What of the rest of us, those who have not died? The best we can do is grant our dying friend a last request, and then go into the other room and cry, as in Only Angels Have Wings, another great film on the subject of death. But we must not stay in tears for too long. A message of the film, a very Hawksian message, is that the dead do not matter, it is us the living that matters. We who are left alive best honour the dead by go on living, continuing with our lives.

------------------------------------
Films mentioned:
The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff 1994)
Heat (Michael Mann 1995)
Mrs. Miniver (William Wyler 1942)
Summer Interlude (Ingmar Bergman 1951)
Ugetsu Monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi 1953)
The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Vincente Minnelli 1963)
Superman (Richard Donner 1978)
Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott 2001)
Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah 1962)
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah 1973)
After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda 1998)
Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks 1939)

I have not forgotten Powell and Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death (1946), but I will write about it in full later this year.

The world after life in A Matter of Life and Death.

Shall we gather by the river

I love rivers. There's something both calm and mysterious about them, and whenever I see one I want to either dive in to it, or get on a boat to travel upon it. You never know what is behind the next bend.

I'm not alone in liking rivers, and here are some great river-related film clips.

First out is John Ford's Rio Grande (1950).

Here's The Night of the Hunter (1955):

Two filmmakers who often use the river both as a setting and as a metaphor are Jean Renoir and John Boorman. Here's Renoir's sublime film Partie de campagne (1936):

Here's Boorman's Deliverance (1972), a dark and disturbing film:

Although a very different film Deliverance shares with Still Life (2006, Sanxia haoren) an ecological message, and shows the threat that "progress" can be to both nature and humans. Here's the opening sequence of Zhang Ke Jia's brilliant film:

Then there's of course L'atalante (1934), the only feature film Jean Vigo made before his early death:

One might add A River Runs Through It (1992), Wild River (1960), The River (1951), also by Jean Renoir, Bend of the River (1952) or The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and so on and so forth but this'll do for now. But for one film, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), perhaps Peckinpah's best film. You'll have to click on the link since it won't embed.