An Analysis On "Gran Torino" Film By Warner Brothers (Essay Sample)

GRAN TORINO
Author’s name
Class name
Professor’s name
Institution
City, State
Date Introduction
Gran Torino is a film by Warner Brothers in association with Village Road Show Pictures. Directed by Clint Eastwood, it is based on the themes of culture, cultural conflicts, and cultural interactions. From this film, one learns how cultural perceptions, interaction, and violence based on cultural differences occur in the urban settings of America. In Gran Torino, the theme of culture is portrayed in the slow and unintentional way in which Walt, an oppressor and a tough hearted character becomes consumed in the culture around him and begins to identify himself with the Hmong family. This essay discusses how and why Walt and his Hmong neighbors become close despite their cultural differences.
Walt’s Role in Gran Torino
According to Schenk, Walt in the story comes off as a dad that advises everybody. He is everybody’s shop teacher, despite his or her previous relationship with him (Burk 2010). He sees many of the people in his society at the weakest moments and supports everyone in his community in his own harsh ways. Unfortunately, it is true; the community he lives in does require male heads in their households. From his origins, the character is from Minnesota and drew time working for a factory with a number of Hmong families. This brings us the main theme of the movie.
The people are from the unpopular culture in Laos that joined other parts of Asia that came to the support of the United States in the Vietnam War. As a tribe, they are rare especially, at the present, and many do not know their culture. Walt does not have the same self-control, which ends up most of the time, with throwing of racial insults, as many times as a person that believes they are engaged in a casual conversation. He is an unremorseful racist, except the fact that he makes weak connections with his neighbors and he feels the layers that he had for hostility slowly fade into nothing.
Gradually, Walt assumes the role of a protector, and that change is portrayed in sense a humorous point of view. Walt has a loose and sometimes funny performance in the early parts of the production giving the film one of the great pleasures. Some enjoyment in this sense can be said to be the same as spending a lot of time with an old friend. Eastwood has a rare talent at being able to direct films the he stars in such as this and Million Dollar Baby (Dargis 2008). Thus, he is a legend manipulator of the presence he gives on the set.
How Walt Changes His Attitude toward the Hmong Neighbors
He knows that as he performs on set, his audience is also remembering his previous role as a character in the film Avenging Angels and the Man with No Name. In Gran Torino, Kowalski is a widower that holds on the prejudices ignoring the changes taking place in the Michigan neighborhood (Carvalho 2012). He is tough-minded, old-fashioned, and does not seem to be in a mutual understanding with his children nor the neighbors. In fact, the only thing he adores at first is his prized possession, the Gran Torino, from which the name of the movie is derived.
The strength of the cast involves the influence of the Hmong Minnesotans that have moved into the neighborhood, whereby almost all of them were new at acting. This does a lot in bringing out the clear difference between Walt’s hardstand point and the easy-going neighbors (Yuen 2008). Then there is a bookish neighbor kid that tries to make a name by stealing Walt’s Gran Torino. This incident is expected to end up in quite an unlikely good relationship between the kid and Walt afterwards.
One would assume that a racist, insulting individual like Walt would respond in that manner to someone who tries to steal his vehicle, which is quite valuable to him. However, to everyone’s surprise, he does the opposite. Walt did things in the Korean War just as any soldier would and thus experienced stress related to war environments. During that time, he did not care for new alliances but focused on killing people just as he had been deployed to do. In fact, Schenk comments that all of the Asian communities are the same, so one would expect Walt to show the same character.
In this way, he finds another culture that is unknown and just as rare as it gets, he helps fight for independence when he is at war. Probably, it is the war experience or the fact that he fought beside them and experienced war on their behalf, but Walt comes to know more about the community, which helps him to reflect on his issues of his past misdeeds while learning more about them. For one, Eastwood has always dealt with contemporary issues of race, gender, and religion in the most honest way he could, and which could portray itself as controversial when seen from a political perspective (Burk 2010).
For every kind of behavior, there is a reason behind it. Thus, in this film Walt proves to us this common saying. His racial insults may come out more than the tobacco that he spits, though, with time it becomes obvious that insults based on racial grounds are more of coming from the male’s need to stay in control than from actual difference of race (Yuen, 2008). One would also argue that he did hate other races, but he is getting soft and allowing emotions to take the better part of his judgment. Interestingly, the most real racists express distaste on one race; however, Walt expresses an equal dislike for all the different races around him until a Hmong thief makes a difference.
Reasons for Walt’s Change in Standpoint
Walt is uncomplicated when one takes a closer psychological look at him. Measures of control are quite necessary to him, as they are the only means by which to fit in a world that is changing quickly. He knows that his relationship with his children is worsening, but he stills jumps at the chance to limit their freedom partly because he still believes that it is what is expected of him and every male house head. The second reason may be due to fear, whereby he is terrified at the idea of being left alone with nothing to have control over. This is evident when his son suggests a retirement home because just for that suggestion, Walt kicks him out. However, he does change his mind by letting Tao, who tried to steal his car in the first place, wash it. From this incident, Tao’s...