Maybe the most knowing story of today’s American fatherâ€â€Âin his sometimes pitiable and lost and degraded life–can be found in the new Kevin Costner movie “Swing Vote.â€ÂÂ
On the surface, this movie is a comedy about a presidential election which is so deadlocked that it comes down to the vote of a single man in New Mexico, one Bud Johnson, played by Costner. Bud Johnson is a good guy, a real father, but self-indulgent and unserious. He’s a cheerful loser, but starting to notice just a little the dark around the edges of his life.
The movie is light weight until about three quarters of the way through, when the pathos of the American family in shambles, previously hinted at, comes to the surface for real. I am not going to tell the plot, nor say exactly in which scene the movie begins to take on a more serious heft and feeling. But something different and more real happens in the last section of the movie.
The cheerily befuddled beer-drunk Bud Johnson comes to be seen in a new light: it’s not that he is bad, but that he and his wife, and American parents…have just lost their way.
The movie ends with a speech in which Bud Johnson confesses his confusion as a man to the American people, and expresses his shame and regret at a wasted life. It’s a surprise scene and a powerful speech that lifts the movie into a serious and heart-shaking plane. Thus Bud Johnson, not easily, redeems himself. And the movie ends.
It’s a surprising movie. I recommend it. Someone involved in this movieâ€â€Âthe writer, or director or Costner, who funded itâ€â€Âknows what the American tragedy is. They see what we see.
I walked out into the parking lot a bit shaken, a bit choked up by the experience and surprised, saying to myself, “We need a group called The Reconstruction of American Manhood.â€ÂÂ
Thinking Nothing less will do. All will be lost unless we reconstruct American manhood.
