As far as the visuals go, I really loved the out of focus close ups of Kowalski through the driver window. I don’t know if there is a term for this but I love how it really breaks away from the more traditional camera work. It also helps to distance viewers a bit more from Kowalski; instead of getting glorified dreamy close-ups there are a couple instances of these blurred zooming ins. Also visually, the title is really appropriate for this movie. In perspective drawing a vanishing point is where parallel lines converge on the horizon line. Long shots of the road in front of Kowalski, surrounded by desert, show the asphalt melting into nothing in the horizon. I saw the image of the light beam between the bulldozers at the end of the film as the actual “vanishing point,” into which Kowalski, well, vanishes.
About halfway through watching the film, finding myself wanting Kowalski to dodge yet another cop car, I asked myself, “why am I rooting for this guy?” As someone who used to travel at any chance I got, driving hours on end to go to a concert that was really just the excuse for driving, I understand Kowalski’s desire to live life on the road. Although there is nothing heroic about his frantic driving habits. Paradoxically there is nothing about Kowalski that should allow him to be condemned. He is a deadpan driver, the anti-hero who the movie is about yet he has practically like what, ten lines? Without Super Soul, an external force pumping up Kowalski’s ego into stardom, Kowalski has little importance.
Even in the background information viewers obtain through Kowalski’s own flashbacks, he is neither a hero nor villain but rather a regular guy who tends to get screwed over in life. When looking back at being a cop, he flashes to a scene in which he stands up to a superior but ultimately gets fired. In another flashback he is with a foxy girl but she dies, surfing. In a sense it seems like he has convinced himself that he could never be the hero and doesn’t try to be, he just wants to deliver a car in three days. He wants to be “fitter, happier, more productive,” feed by the popular logic of being an efficient fast worker, a contributing member to society.
In this since, Kowalski can never experience absolute freedom on the road as it brings up memories of him being unsuccessful at what he sets out to do. (All of the flashbacks involve a motor vehicle of some sort; a police car, a jeep, a motorcycle.) Actually cars are really the ultimate vessel for containment in the system. Cars run directly on capitalism, gas, on roads preset by the government and for the government, expanded for Cold War purposes. Vanishing Point dispels the romanticism of a counter culture fighting “the Man”, escaping the confines of traditional society, and shows that road narratives are really a contradiction. Instead we have a man who is driving really fast to deliver a car for his boss, dependant on speed stay to up for three days, and is getting chased by the cops. Kowalski hasn’t escaped anything.
I think its interesting how you mentioned that he only had a few lines throughout the movie. I never really thought about it until now but it's very true. I agree that without Super Soul he wouldn't be much of a character at all. I also thought why should I be rooting for this guy. He's not a hero and all he does is drive. That does not give me a good enough reason to root for him.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for explaining the title. I knew it had to mean something but I wasn't satisfied with any explanation I came up with but I really like yours, because it ties so much of the movie together for me, especially by connecting the plot to the more visual aspects of the film, which I tend to have problems with.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason we are rooting for Kowalski is specifically because there is nothing special about him. Life has screwed him over, as you said, and that is what American moviegoers would have identified with, and without any real distinguishing characteristics it is easier to focus on the driving instead of the man driving
As always you wow me with your intrepretations on the films we watch :) I loved how you pointed out that Kowalski can never experience absolute freedom on the road as it brings up memories of him being unsuccessful at what he sets out to do; that in actually cars are really the ultimate vessel for containment in the system. I always viewed his need for speed as a means towards his freedom but how free is he really? Your right, in the fact that in a car he is confined and also haunted by his memories of past failures. He tries to escape through both drugs and driving fast but really he cannot escape from himself and the memories that trail behind him.
ReplyDeleteI really like your point about the 'blurred zooming in.' Kowalski is our point of identification, the prototypical white male protagonist, and we're pretty much programmed to identify with him. But the camerawork you point out, along with the flashbacks and the fact that he really doesn't say much, prevents us from really ever seeing him. So he becomes a projective surface, maybe in a way somewhat similar to the images of women in the movies we talked about earlier. What we do see though, with unrelenting clarity, is the society around him, which perhaps explains how and why he ends as he does?
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