In a DVD commentary Daniel P. Crandall argues that Clint Eastwood’s latest movie, Gran Torino, illustrates how important community is to a fulfilled life.

I finally watched Clint Eastwood’s film, Gran Torino. It is no wonder the Academy ignored it during Oscar season; it’s pro-family, pro-faith, pro-tradition, pro-small community (it would really confuse the glitterati if I were to call it pro-‘principle of subsidiarity’ – so that one is just between you and me). It shows those with eyes to see and ears to hear that, more often than not, if you want to solve a problem you do not look to the State. You work with your neighbors to solve it yourself. Gran Torino is also about the past’s importance in our lives and in our communities, and how one man who growls, “Why won’t these people leave me alone?” learns that a person is complete only in relationship. I cannot think of another recent film that portrays America and its communal spirit as well as this film. It is surely destined to be as much an American classic as is the ’72 Ford for which it is named.

With his wife’s death, Walt Kawolski (Clint Eastwood) “a crusty, inflexible Korean War veteran” lives life by himself and on his own terms. His only company is, predominantly, his dog and his memories. Walt’s human relations are few and distinctly male. Even these, however, he keeps at a safe distance, such that they can make no real demands on him as a person. His two grown sons, who are married with children of their own, are more than willing to let Walt live this way. The only demands they make on him is that he should go away. One son and his family look to the day when Walt either dies, or moves to a retirement home. This represents, unfortunately, an all too common American trait of valuing our elders only for what they can give us, and shuffling them off to so-called retirement homes when the young determine they are no longer useful.

The Hmong immigrants, who now make up Walt’s neighborhood, live very different lives. Family is primary to them; three generations under the same roof is not uncommon, a fact Walt uses to reinforce his own bigotry and keep his neighbors at bay. Their faith and religious traditions are extremely important, as are social roles and responsibilities between the young, the old, men and women. Among Hmong immigrants, these traditions create incredibly strong social bonds both within and between families. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for some 2nd generation Hmong in the film, whose bonds come in the form of a violent street gang.

The Hmong, who make up the street gang, abandon their history and a healthy community for a sick one. They reject their homes, their families and their traditions. Their need for community, however, remains, which they satisfy it in typical “Lord of the Flies” fashion, where might makes right and satisfaction of one’s immediate desires is the only guide. The gang tries to force Thao, a teenager who lives next door to Walt, into their violent circle, which is how he and Walt meet. The Hmong gang pressure Thao to steal Walt’s Gran Torino as his initiation rite. Thao fails to steal the car, but gains a mentor. To atone for his sin of dishonoring his family Thao must work for Walt.

The Hmong sense of community crashes against Walt’s sense of individualism when Walt’s courage and honor, defending his personal property, inadvertently make him a hero to his neighbors. Unwilling to leave Thao alone, the Hmong gang attempt, one night, to drag Thao into the gang. A fight between Thao’s family, of whom Thao is the only male, and the gang spill onto Walt’s lawn. Walt meets this invasion of privacy with his Korean era M-1 rifle and a smoking-induced growl, “Get off my lawn!” His clear promise of deadly violence forces the street gang to retreat. The next day the entire neighborhood is at his door showing their appreciation for his heroism. Walt’s ability to keep people away cannot stand against this outpouring of affection, and over time, he is part of a family, that cares about its history and its community, and with which he has more in common then his own flesh and blood.

Walt’s isolated individualism cannot stand against the strength of the Hmong community. He becomes a whole person as he lowers the walls he built around psyche, walls that maintained his individuality but that kept him apart from his community. Walt is now the father that Thao does not have, providing a healthy initiation into manhood in communion with others. Walt gets Thao a job, teaches him how to talk to other men and encourages him to ask a Hmong girl out for dinner and a movie. This stands in stark contrast to the gang’s initiation into its violent perpetual adolescence, where work is for wimps, macho bravado is the sole method of communication and girls are nothing more than sex objects.

Robert Nisbet wrote, “The State can enlist popular enthusiasm, conduct crusades, can mobilize in behalf of ‘great’ causes but as regular and normal means of meeting human needs for recognition, fellowship, security, and membership, it is inadequate.” As Walt let his over-zealous sense of individualism relax he finds himself recognized as a whole person. He enjoys fellowship with his neighbors and gains membership into a larger community. These are the unseen gifts his Hmong neighbors bring these things to Walt, in addition to their real gifts of food and plants. The Hmong gang returns to the neighborhood with the full brunt of its violent nature, shooting up Thao’s home and raping Thao’s sister. This is the moment when Walt makes his contribution to the community, in the form of security. He fulfills his neighbor’s need for safety where the state is entirely inadequate.

Nisbet also wrote, “No conception of individuality is adequate that does not take into consideration the many ties which normally bind the individual to others from birth to death.” Walt’s concept of his individuality was inadequate not only for his needs but also for his neighbors’. Without Walt, the Hmong are virtual prisoners in their own homes. Without his Hmong neighbors, Walt is limited to his memories of violence in Korea and of working for Ford.

Walt’s communal life effectively ended with his experiences in Korea and with the end of his career in the Ford plant. This is not to say that Walt is entirely alone. He has friendships as seen in his banter with the Barber and the Construction Supervisor. As Nisbet notes, however, “[T]he search for viable forms of community must be a continuous one. All resources of knowledge must be brought to bear on the problem. Neither moral values, nor fellowship, nor freedom can easily flourish apart from the existence of diverse communities each capable of enlisting the loyalties of its members.” Until Walt Kowalski took an active role in his neighborhood with his Hmong neighbors, he, as a person, is limited because his relationships are limited. When he voluntarily gives his loyalty to his neighbors, his community expands, and moral values, fellowship, and freedom for everyone flourish. We see in Gran Torino the decline of moral values, fellowship and freedom in those who have rejected community. It is Walt’s condition through the film’s first half. It is the condition his sons and their families live in. It is the condition of the Hmong gang, who are locked, by the choices they made, in lives of violence and nihilism.

Gran Torino perfectly captures the essence of this Edmund Burke quote:

Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the
counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. . . . Men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.