It's an unfortunate coincidence that I happened to watch Cool Hand Luke for the first time just after hearing of Paul Newman's death. When you witness a remarkable performance by any artist, you immediately want to seek out more from that artist. Newman leaves behind a remarkable legacy on film, and yet, his death means that we'll never get just one more performance from him.
Then again, we'd probably been at that point for a while; his last major on-screen role was as a chilling mobster in 2002's The Road to Perdition. Reading about him in Entertainment Weekly's tribute issue, you realize just how little he worked throughout the last few decades. It sure seems as though he learned how to make the most of the ultimate star luxury--being able to pick your roles carefully, instead of letting your audience or your industry pick them for you.
After Cool Hand Luke, I imagine there was a lot of pressure on Newman to play more of that kind of role--the quiet defiant rebel, taking the piss out of society at every turn and seeking a freedom of purpose that's not really possible in the modern world. As far as I know via my limited grasp of film history, he never repeated himself in that way.
As a performance by Newman, Cool Hand Luke may very well live forever; as a movie, it's a product of its time. Released in 1967, the film lathers on the Christ allegory pretty thick, even depicting Luke posed on a table as though on a crucifix. Yet along with the Christ allegory comes a spirit of rebellion and nonconformity that must have struck a certain percentage of the film's audience as reflecting their own philosophies. Cool Hand Luke hit theaters in the heart of the sixties revolution, and takes a story of a defiant prisoner in a chain gang and infuses it with the spirit of free will and disrespect for authority that defined the popular culture of that era.
Article comments