Blow Out

What are a few innocent lives lost when you live in a country where violence is committed on a daily basis that is at worst sensationalized for mass consumption, and at best ignored? Brian De Palma captures this stance between glamorization and disregard with Amazing Grace. We constantly aren’t given the full picture, both literally and metaphorically. Some scenes play out before our eyes; some scenes are implied. Some motives are clear and concise, others are muddy and interpretative. We take what we can get and either accept what we hear or try our best to dig deeper. Those that take the investigative route typically do so to serve their own interests, but that certainly wasn’t the reason a lone sound engineer became involved in this mystery. Travolta does what he does in hopes that internal redemption awaits him; he doesn’t want to fail someone again. He knows that the system is rigged based on previous experience, causing him to know when things aren’t just coincidental. America is built upon countless bodies in the pursuit of happiness, even if those bodies didn’t directly contribute to the opposition. They were just in the way. Upon my first watch of this film, I found Lithgow’s character to be a bit of an enigma that brought the overall continuity and tone of the film down. Now I think about it quite differently. Sane people don’t taint the foundation of liberty with death. Psychopaths do. Colonizers do. And those that employ these monsters without much thought of the potential victims of their crimes remain willingly ignorant, so long as they get what they want. So long as dirty cops all line each others pockets. Those that do empathize carry that weight with them for the rest of their lives. Through careful cinematography, a poured over script, and an amazing lead performance, De Palma showed us what liberty is all about.