If you’ve been wandering around in a post-election funk, shaking your head, beseeching the heavens (Why? Why?), I’ve stumbled upon a small source of comfort. If you are seeking a clue to what seems like the maddeningly illogical Republican victory, I recommend “St. Vincent,” the feel-good Bill Murray movie appearing in local theaters.
“St. Vincent” is a movie about ordinary people and everyday life. We know they are ordinary people (some version of middle class) from their no frills, hand-to-mouth, desperate lives. It’s America in the present moment. The title character, played by Murray, is hard-bitten, sarcastic, stingy, cynical. Scrooge without money in the bank.
Vincent is a nasty person full of bitterness and hate. And he is also the most loveable and loving person in the world. Salt-of-the-earth, a mensch. A natural father figure, a loyal husband to his wife in the hospital for Alzheimers. A misanthrope with (it turns out) a heart of gold. Saint Vincent.
This unlikely combo is made heartwarmingly believeable by the writing and by the acting of Murray.
So we have the everyday life of contemporary America. Ordinary desperate people, banks, a court, a school (with a sympathetic teacher), a couple of thugs, a prostitute, a nursing home that is kicking out the Alzheimer’s wife for lack of payment. There are references to the Vietnam War (Vincent is a vet).
What’s missing from the world of this movie is political parties, corporations ripping off the public, battles over the minimum wage, movers and shakers and what they are moving and shaking. The Koch brothers (with the help of the Supreme Court) buying the election. Or for that matter the election itself. All the stuff, in other words, that we read newspapers to find out about so we know what’s really going on.
What’s really going on in that sense does not in this movie matter very much. “What’s this country coming to,” Vincent says at one point, but it’s an entirely rhetorical question. He doesn’t seem interested in the country as such.
In this movie ordinary people work out their fates—in this case several quite happy endings—entirely without reference to what’s really going on. The columns of Robert Reich notwithstanding, there is no suggestion that the machinations of the 1% or the corporatocracy matter an iota.
You could theorize that Vincent’s bitterness is a result of our country getting us into futile, unpopular wars, that all these financially strapped people would be happier if the minimum wage were higher, without policies which result in the rich getting richer and the poor poorer. But any such conjecture would be extraneous to the interests of this movie.
If life is being made more stressful by the existence of a dubious nuclear power plant in the vicinity or by a public utility insisting on spraying chemicals on the ground, if there are any popular struggles against such threats, you can’t tell by the story of these ordinary people.
If, insisting on dragging in politics, you were to ask how these people vote, the movie by having no interest in the question suggests that they don’t vote. That’s what I imagine for Vincent. If he did vote it might be against an incumbent to give a spiteful finger to the prevailing order. But no, even that is wrong. There is nothing in this movie like a prevailing order.
I don’t mean to give “St.Vincent” credit for being about the lack of political concern of the characters. The movie itself has no interest in politics, in the relationship between private and civic life. This is the opposite of a Michael Moore movie.
The movie is wrong of course, but it is entertaining, heartwarming and no doubt (subliminally) influential. And makes the recent election a little less mysterious.
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