Another Form of Relief

Note: This post will contain spoilers for both X-Men: The Last Stand and Hard Candy. If you haven’t seen one or both of those films and want to keep their content a surprise, it’s probably best you stop reading now.

Thanks to the joys of the Cineworld Unlimited card, I’ve been getting to the cinema a lot more than I used to lately. In the past few days alone I’ve seen both X-Men: The Last Stand and Hard Candy. I was going to go for a third and see Thank You For Smoking too, but that was quite a drive away and I got lazy. Something struck me on watching the two former films though: Morality in films is a very strange thing.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t going to be some Mary Whitehouse-esque rant about film is corrupting our children and the such. Quite the opposite. I’m entirely opposed to any kind of censorship whatsoever, and find cases that cite media influence on crimes to be frankly laughable. As such, nothing in the following piece should be seen as a criticism of the content of these films, rather an observation.

We’ll deal with X-Men first as that’s the simplest example. I don’t know how it struck most people, but even while watching the film, I couldn’t get out of my head just how backward the whole exercise is. In the film, a corporation creates a “cure” for the mutant gene, which would theoretically allow all mutants that took it to live out ‘normal’ lives. Going into this, I would have expected this to have been seen as the villian of the film, but the actual setup was completely different. As the story progresses, the government makes the cure available for anyone that wants it, and we see scenes with mutants queuing to take it while others protest outside. Obviously this is designed to invoke images of abortion clinics and the such, but it never quite pulls it off.

This is mostly because through all of this, Magneto (the film’s actual “villian”) is leading a crusade against the “cure”, arguing that mutants are perfectly acceptable the way they are. As the story continues, he begins to take direct action against the corporation behind the cure, which is when the X-Men step in and rather than aid their fellow mutants, defend the corporation from Magneto’s attack. Now all of this would be all well and good if Magneto was just a paranoid old man who felt that this was the end of his “race”. While the cure is never made compulsary during the film, one gets the impression that this will eventually come, the government quickly going back on their word and using the cure as a weapon against mutants. All of which leaves us in a position where Magneto was actually correct all of the way through, and while his methods may be morally wrong, his entire motive is to save his race. To put it another way, if this were a Holocaust film where an ethnic or social group were being wiped out, the military that marches in and puts a stop to it would be seen as the heroes. In this film, he and his group are the enemies, leading us to a dangerous situation where the X-Men seemingly trust the actions of the government. You’d think after seeing the first two films, they would know far better than to do that.

Our second film with interesting morality, but one that pulls it off far better, is Hard Candy. It’s not a pleasant film, but it is one that made me think, and that’s the main thing I want from any film. In the film, we see Jeff, a 32 year old man, meet Hayley, a 14 year old girl, after they chatted for a while on the internet. At this point in the film, it’s clear who the villian is. Even though neither character seems particularly dislikable at this stage, more misguided, it’s obvious that Jeff should know far better, and he knows full well what he is doing is wrong.

The film challenges the audience far more once Hayley returns to Jeff’s house though. It slowly dawns that she is manipulating him just as much as he is she, and after a brief period, she manages to drug him. He wakes up tied to a chair, and the following hour or so consists of Hayley torturing him, both psychologically and physically. She claims to be doing this because she thinks he murdered another girl. Did he? The film remains pretty vague on this. He was associated in some way, certainly, but if he was just a helpless observer as he claims, is what is happening right? So in all of this, who is the bad guy? The rug has been pulled out from underneath us entirely. Is Jeff still the bad guy when he’s the one being tortured in front of us? He’s unquestionably done bad things, but does he deserve this? And what of Hayley? We’re presumably supposed to feel sorry for her in the early scenes, but it’s hard to sympathise with anyone who could do that kind of harm to another person. The film itself seems to remain entirely neutral on this point, and that’s what works to it’s favour. It allows us to just observe the proceedings, without ever really taking sides, and that is what leaves us feeling uncomfortable. We’re used to film telling us what to think that when left to ourselves, we have no idea.

It’s been more than a day since I sat through Hard Candy. I still can’t shift it from head, and I still can’t form an opinion on what I saw. As a film, it’s incredibly well made, save for a lacklustre final sequence that relies too much on chance. Did I enjoy it though? Probably not. Yet part of me wants to go back and watch it again. There aren’t many films that can cause that kind of conflict, and I’m glad it doesn’t fall back on easy answers. Unlike X-Men, which told me exactly what to believe, even if on closer examination, it’s a massively flawed argument.

So which of these is a better film? I guess it depends on what you want from a film. X-Men was the more immediate and entertaining of the two. Hard Candy was better made and more thought provoking. Even though I still don’t know what to think about it, it at least made me think, and I’ll take that on any day.