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Just watched an interesting movie last night. It is called The Killing. It is a film noir from 1956 by Stanley Kubrick (yes, the 2001 guy, among others). It centers around the robbery of a horse race track on one of the bigger race days of the year. Various people involved with/employed at the track and the local mobsters collude to arrange it so they can take the biggest amount of money possible with the least risk possible. Essentially they arrange it so they will be able to rob the cash storage and couting room after the betting is closed on the big race but before any bets can be paid out, thereby maximizing their take. It’s an interesting movie, definitely not your usual heist movie that you would see these days. Many of the characters are surprising complex when they could just as easily been simplified in service of telling the story. In the end it becomes clear that the characters are the focus of the story and the heist is more of a framework to expose their values and flaws.

The most interesting character to me was a bit player in the story, a big bruiser of a thug named Maurice. He is hired solely to start a bar brawl at an opportune time to distract and occupy the track security guards but it turns out he is a sort of sage philosopher. The brains of the heist, named Johnny, hires him for his muscle but Maurice obviously sees Johnny as a bit of a slow child, he tolerates his shortcomings and tries to teach him something about his future. Here is their first scene together and the quote from it (the actor who played Maurice is Georgian and has a pretty thick accent.):

You have not yet learned that in life you have to be like everyone else. The perfect mediocrity; no better, no worse. Individuality is a monster and it must be strangled in its cradle to make our friends feel confident. You know, I have often thought that gangsters and artists are the same in the eyes of the masses. They are admired and hero-worshipped, but there is always present an underlying wish to see them destroyed at the peak of their glory.

It’s a sad quote but interesting in how it reflects Maurice’s experience and serves as a warning to Johnny not to be too confident in his success. Maurice has obivously come to appreciate the same Japanese idea of Deru kugi wa utareru or ‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.’ Referring of course to those nails you just can’t seem to get pounded in to the wood straight and end up having to hammer down all bent and smashed. Don’t stand out too much or the universe will put you in your place. A very different idea from Western culture that says everyone is unique and should be pushed to excel. Of course, if everyone is unique and everyone excels, then really no one is unique. No one performs any differently.

Anyway, it’s a very good movie and a very different take on the heist type film most people are used to these days.