![]() The Captain's attempt to sound reasonable and appeal to Luke's humanity, while administering a good ol' prison beating, is tone-deaf in the extreme. Luke knows perfectly well what the Captain wants him to do, he just doesn't want to do it. It's an interesting insight into the mind of the character.ĭescribing the master-prisoner relationship as a "failure to communicate" is basically psychobabble in the context of the film - it wasn't a failure to communicate, it was an attempted escape. Martin believes that the Captain would have heard some “pointy-headed intellectuals” saying the phrase, either around the prison or in a meeting of some sort. Strother Martin, the steadily working western actor, had an idea about how a redneck character like the Captain would have heard the line. They have to think about why their characters are saying things and build an interior life for them. Many of the best performances come from actors who are living and breathing their performances. ![]() It’s important for actors to get into their characters' heads. To borrow a phrase from another movie, Luke is the ultimate rebel without a cause. These are not acts of political protest, they're just a relentless chain of self-assertion. He eats 50 eggs because nobody thinks he can. He bluffs spectacularly at cards because nobody expects it. He refuses to admit defeat in a boxing match as he's being beaten senseless by the prison's alpha male, Dragline (George Kennedy). He lands himself in prison by committing brainless vandalism, drunkenly and methodically cutting the heads off of parking meters. He just hates authority, hates being told what to do, hates being told that he can't do something. He doesn't rebel because of any higher calling. Luke would seem like a hero to the budding counterculture - except that he's not thoughtful or sensitive. Young people who considered themselves more thoughtful and sensitive (what they call "woke" these days) were increasingly resistant to the older generation, to authority figures, and the norms of the '40s and '50s. American society was in turmoil by 1967, with Civil Rights struggles, the Vietnam War and cultural dissonance feeding what was known as the Generation Gap. Cool Hand Luke is an entertaining movie to watch, and it holds up remarkably well (not everything from the '60s does) - but the issue of its meaning has long been the subject of conversation. ![]()
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