Gran Torino, strong dynamics

Walt Kowalski has just lost his wife, he has two sons that struggle to get along and communicate with him, and his neighborhood has become dominated by Hmongs. Walt is a veteran of war, and will never forget the terrible things he has done during the Vietnam War. Needless to say he is not happy, but refuses to make a change in his living.

I would describe Walt´s relationship with his sons as shallow. The level of communication and mutual understanding between Walt and his closest is poor. There is, however, a gradual improvement throughout the movie, particularly when Walt has just been to the doctor and tests positive for something I assume was fatal. My grandfather is 89 years old, and there is no doubt he was born many decades before me. He does not struggle to communicate with our family like Walt does with his, but I can see myself as one of the youngster in some of the scenarios from Gran Torino.

We never get to see the wife of Walt, but he describes her as the best thing that ever happened to him. The local priest insists that Walt must relief his sins in confession, but Walt refuses. Much like his relationship to his family, his relationship to his priest improves. The priest and Walt learn from each other, and both seem to benefit from their relationship in the end. I think there is clear resemblance between Walt´s attitude towards the priest and the Hmongs, his ignorance prevents him of seeing how they really are. Walt believes the priest is an overeducated youngster with no real experience with life and death. I think the turning point for their relationship is when they discover they have something in common; Thao and his family. It is at this point Walt corrects the priest when calling Walt “Mr. Kowalski”, and encourages him to address him by his first name. In Norway we have less of a tradition of using titles, and it has never been something I have considered utilizing. Nevertheless I have experienced the same growth of a relationship that Walt and the priest did.

When Walt called his son after having been to the doctor, something was different. I think Walt reckoned how nice it was to just have a casual conversation with his son, without there being a higher agenda to it all, like when his son called seemingly for the bare reason of getting his hands on tickets for a football game. At the point when Walt had been to the doctor, I think he had decided to make the Hmong gang shoot him in front of witnesses already, so he did not really care much for his sickness, as it would not affect him for much longer. In other words, he probably knew this would be his last conversation with his son, and did not want it to be a sad one. Walt´s situation is not unfamiliar to me, I lost my dad a couple of years back, and there are definitely some situations where I prefer keeping that to myself.