“What I did was an act of conscience to stop the war.”
Why it’s a left-wing film
Loosely based on the life of Barack Obama’s pals, domestic terrorists Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn; a couple of privileged kids who grew up to co-found the Weather Underground and wage war on their own country (including the bombing of the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol), director Sidney Lumet’s “Running on Empty” tells the story of the Popes, a family always one step ahead of the Feds due to the fact that 14 years ago Mom and Dad — Arthur (Judd Hirsch) and Annie (Christine Lahti) — permanently blinded and paralyzed a janitor they didn’t know was in the military lab that they themselves bombed as members of their own domestic terrorist group. The year was 1971, the lab was making napalm, the Vietnam War had to be stopped, who can blame them?
Certainly not the film. According to the film, their sin wasn’t waging war against their own country, their sin was not making sure the building was empty before detonating the bomb. And the price of that sin is not the act of turning themselves in and paying for their crime, the price is living the oh-so burdensome life of fugitives always on the run and who deserve our sympathy for their desperate and noble act of trying to keep their family together.
What Lumet and his screenwriter Naome Foner fail to recognize, though, is that Arthur and Annie’s act of “holding the family together” is just another act of baby boomer narcissism. While portrayed as loving and selfless, these are parents who unforgivably committed an act terrorism when their now 17 year-old son Danny (River Phoenix) was only a toddler and then later went ahead and brought another child into their lives as wanted criminals (10 year-old Harry).
Parents don’t get much worse than that.
And thanks to the unconscionable actions of their parents, rather than live anything resembling a normal life, both boys are programmed to keep the world at arm’s length and to avoid any and all emotional attachments and friendships outside the family unit. As a consequence and because they’ve been through it so many times before, the boys think nothing of lying to everyone they know until the inevitable day arrives when it’s time to run the familiar drill of dropping everything (including the family dog) and taking only what’s on their back to another town and another dilapidated rental house and another school where they’ll be known by another name.
Ultimately, according to the film, Arthur and Annie didn’t commit a crime, they made a “mistake,” and while they’re living with the consequences of that “mistake,” their politics, “ideals,” opposition to the war, and militant activism remain pure and right on. When we meet Arthur he’s in the middle of doing a little community organizing in a small Florida town to stop those evil capitalists from creating a nuclear waste dump. So you see, he’s a good guy at heart. He also abhors violence. When a fellow traveler in the hippie underground asks Arthur to rob a bank with him, Arthur’s appalled! Yes, the Mad Bomber is appalled at the very idea of guns on his property!
“Running on Empty” is a leftist love letter to truly wicked people, the privileged, narcissist terrorists of the 60s and 70s and the privileged, narcissist Boomers who love them — a film that says your heart was in the right place, the janitor wasn’t.
Through some skillful cinematic manipulation, we’re also supposed to come to understand that Arthur and Annie have suffered enough for their “mistake” and to admire their selfless act of letting Danny go to pursue his own dreams (as though every parent doesn’t eventually go through this at some level). But as the two terrorists drive away from Danny with poor 10 year-old Harry in tow — who faces another eight or so years of the psychological scarring that must come with living with parents high on the FBI’s most wanted list, you’re left to wonder about one small thing…
When will Hollywood grow up enough to tell the story of the janitor blinded and paralyzed by these two monsters?
Why it’s a great film
The actors. The actors. The actors.
Lumet’s decision to cast Hirsch and Lahti, two of the most underrated actors of the time, was pure genius. She’s a beautiful woman who oozes intelligence and he’s instantly likable, accessible, and sympathetic. Also, there’s a smartly crafted script that leaves no elephants in the room. In a gut-wrenching scene, easily the best in the film, Annie meets and speaks with her brokenhearted father (a superb pre-“Law & Order” Steven Hill) for the first time in over a decade, and he speaks for us. Not only against her crime but also what she and Arthur are putting everyone through, including the boys. This is meant to be our catharsis, an emotional wringer of a conversation that allows Annie to tell us that she would give anything to take that janitor’s place and that she’s living with the consequence of what happened. However, she’s also defiant and unrepentant about her act of “social conscience against the war.” And so in the end, the scene’s not only a standalone brilliant piece of acting but brilliantly manipulative in answering our lingering questions so we can hold on to our sympathy.
Furthermore, the story is mainly about Danny and his coming of age, not the parents. Though he’s as dedicated to keeping the family together as his loving but strict father, Danny’s about to graduate high school, has a real talent for the piano and an opportunity to attend Julliard, and has also fallen in love for the first time with his music teacher’s daughter, Lorna (Martha Plimpton). This sincerely sweet kid who’s (unrealistically) undamaged by life lived with his parents, suddenly finds himself emotionally attached to life’s possibilities. But the cost of exploring those possibilities is the family he loves.
Phoenix is superb carrying this emotionally intense and successfully sentimental drama on his 17 year-old shoulders and the actor’s untimely death just five years later does add a poignancy to his Oscar-nominated performance (Foner’s screenplay also won well-deserved nomination).
But most of the credit goes to director Lumet, who achieves flawless performances from his actors, avoids melodrama, and has you rooting throughout for this family to find a way to be together. “Running on Empty” is a compelling, emotionally complicated, and ultimately moving film about family and loyalty, growing up and letting go; a movie as good as any at crafting The Matrix around truly appalling people in order to blind us to who they really are and to preserve as acceptable what they represent.
What’s not on the list
The Last Samurai (2003): Because it sucks.
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