Movie: Sunset Limited

Now I'm late in recognizing this, but I'm home on Spring Break and finally able to watch it on my parent's HBO. Sunset Limited is Cormac McCarthy's second play (author of the novels No Country for Old Men and All the Pretty Horses) and was first produced in Chicago during the spring of 2006. More recently it was adapted as an HBO production starring Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson.

The story centers around two unnamed characters in a rundown, single-room apartment only identified as Black and White based on their respective races. White is a college professor about to end himself and Black, a janitor, stops him from carrying it through and takes him back to Black's apartment. The overwhelming bulk centers around the two debating the existence of God and the general morality of the world.

McCormac's writing is enthralling and the complexity with which the conversation unravels is brilliant. What I will take against the work is the characters are terribly outdated, racist archetypes. Their protrayal here could not be legitimately called racist; that would not be fair, but the origins of these archetypes are founded in some really racist protrayals. Black is the cliche African-American savior; simple-minded at the surface yet possesses the deep insightful ability to see through the bull-shit we tack on in order to see the truth. This has been continued and repeated and up to the recent (Bagger Vance, Morgan Freeman in basically all of his roles), but this can be seen as far back as the Mammy from Holiday Inn.

On the flip the White has surrounded himself in his intellect in order to rationalize his pain and build up fortress walls of knowledge to protect against his internal struggles. While he is on the surface an educated man, internally he is lost and looking; unable to see above the forest trees for the light.

The issue is that in these archetypes the audience actually attributes more to the white character. In this dynamic, only the white character is fully developed enough; is complex enough to question, to search, to yearn, to struggle. Human development and growth is founded on internal struggle and when the author reduces a character to an Uncle Tom with all of the answers he denies that character the opportunity to overcome struggle and grow, he denies the character the opportunity to be human.

This is the traditional protrayal of these archetypes, but, while McCormac utilizes the basic archetypes, he takes a rather unorthodox turn with them. Because this is a work of McCormac, the ultimate revelation is not one of hope and renewed faith but of nihilist despair. In the end, Black does not persuade White to God or guide him through the turmoil to the light. No, in the end it is White who succeeds in rattling Black's faith. The force of White's elaquently arranged closing arguements seem to have an even physical blow to Black from which he is unable to find the words to recover. It is interesting to see Black's archetype quiver from his characteristic assurance. In the closing Black offers up a Job-like plead to God asking, "Why couldn't you of given me the words? You gave 'em to him." He's desperation is even more impactful by the lack of return. Just a man shouting to the ceiling with nothing to hear.