Many of us go to the cinema to witness sympathetic characters overcome external and internal obstacles and become better humans (or tragically die trying). There are archetypal heroes’ journeys… and there are fresh archetypal heroines’ journeys emerging too. These narratives inspire us to be more authentic, to the be heroes and heroines of our own lives.
A Bildungsroman is a novel of formation that tracks a young protagonist through the shedding of childish illusions as they individuate and gain a mature understanding of themselves, life, and the world. Unlike a typical adventure, a Bildungsroman insists that its hero pays for growth in genuine psychological currency: confusion, failure, grief, humiliation, and the process of taking accountability for one’s own mistakes, transcending one’s failures, and insuring that the same mistakes are never made again. “Catcher in the Rye” is the American version of a Bildungsroman because Holden Caulfield’s journey through New York is a psychological rebellion and exploration, a wandering through artifice and loss that doesn’t allow him to escape unscathed. By the end, Holden arrives through exhaustion and honesty at a more complete and authentic understanding of himself, life, and the people he loves, which is precisely what the genre asks of its heroes and heroines.
“Holden arrives through exhaustion and honesty at a more complete and authentic understanding of himself, life, and the people he loves.” Could this not be a reductionistic description of a successful Lacanian psychoanalysis as well? And we could add a tinge of Tara Brach’s “radical acceptance” here as well?
“Tony” opens with a quote from Anthony Bourdain’s best-selling autobiography: “I was—to be frank—a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive, and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” The film ends with Tony – barely – by chance, luck or fate – NOT stealing from the mentor who tried to help him transition from boyhood to manhood, the mentor whose business Tony already torched. Very admirable to have the awareness that one is in need of a good ass-kicking – but what happens when that ass-kicking isn’t accompanied by sufficient remorse and contrition or doesn’t come at all?
Compare the end of “Tony” with Sylvester Stallone’s level of contrition during his search for redemption towards the end of “Copland”:
Stallone recognizes that he messed up and wants to be a “stand-up guy”. Although Robert DeNiro informs Stallone that he is too late, thuggish Stallone having the equivalent of a psychoanalytic “aha” moment, a visceral realization, is the authentic, the “real”, that draws people both to therapy and to the flickers.
So while “Tony” borrows the outer shape of a Bildungsroman it doesn’t satisfy its inner requirements. Wonderful that Bourdain realized that he was a narcissistic, selfish lout, but in the film the character Tony is practically devoid of remorse and contrition. Whereas Holden Caulfield earns whatever understanding he reaches through pages of confusion and honest self-accounting, Tony casually and narrowly avoids a life of crime. There is no scene in which he seeks out the mentor he has wronged and begs for forgiveness.
Don’t get me started on male brooding in films as a poor man’s EQ. As I stated last year, I loathed Jeremy Allen’s brooding in “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere“; similarly, Dominic Sessa’s continual pouting is simply poor filmmaking. “Show, don’t tell,” is the adage screenwriters adhere to. On screen moping is a compensation for deficient screenwriting.
Thus “Tony” inherits a happy ending that isn’t earned. Tony enters adulthood learning, mostly, that he could get away with being a lout, that the world would tolerate AND MAYBE EVEN REWARD his narcissism, which is the opposite of what a true coming-of-age story necessitates: a hero who becomes capable of guilt, and who takes responsibility for the wreckage he caused and authentically seeks redemption with sufficient contrition. Although Tony surreptitiously redeems himself at the end, he lacks sufficient remorse and thus remains for me a lout. Similarly, this is often what therapists need to track in session: if the patient’s level of contrition sufficient to afford them true redemption.