The Lamentations of Richard Jewell

As the latest work of veteran American director Clint Eastwood, "The Lamentations of Richard Jewell" did not make mainland fans wait. After the film was released in the United States in mid-December, it was introduced to the mainland in time by the Art Federation in less than a month. Unfortunately, the publicity was poor, the schedule was small, and the total box office revenue of the film was less than two million in the three days since its release.

Of course, the director's last work, "The Mule", was also not good at the final box office after its release in the mainland, only 10 million yuan at the box office. But "Mule" must also have promotional selling points such as "89-year-old 90-year-old" and "Eastwood's family autobiography". Although this film has old drama bones such as Kathy Bates and the joining of Mesozoic powerful actors such as Sam Rockwell and Jon Hamm, they are still some slightly unfamiliar faces for mainland theater audiences. However, even in the United States, "The Lamentations of Richard Jewell" set a new low for Eastwood's work.

But for Eastwood, this work is a very good work worth mentioning in his later works sequence. The film is based on a true story and adapts social news material, which is also the inspiration for most of Eastwood's films in recent years. In the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Bombing, Richard Jewell, who was the first security guard to find the bomb wrapped in the park, after being publicized by the media for three days of heroic deeds, the FBI suspected that he might be the suspect who dropped the bomb, so his personal life was quickly turned upside down by the American media, although he was exonerated after 88 days, but this incident had a very serious impact on Richard Jewell's personal life. After that, he spent almost the last years of his life in depression.

Although the background of this film takes place in 1996, we can intuitively feel the strong critical tendency of this film for media people to disregard journalistic ethics in the current traffic era. The female reporter in the movie, in order to get the headlines, used all kinds of means to get news clues from the FBI detectives, and without any conclusive evidence, trumpeted in the headlines that Richard Jewell was a suspect in the Atlanta bombing. After that, she became the focus of the newspaper, but behind her success was the encroachment on richard Jewell's personal life. Through media propaganda reports, Richard's home was besieged by the media, and the FBI was forced to take further measures to induce him to talk about it, hating that he could not admit that he was the real murderer. This life even affected his family, the mother with whom he lived.

Why is Richard Jewell suspicious? Eastwood shows us how stereotypes can ruin a living person. Richard Jewell was a hunter, had a lot of guns in his house, had made bombs with friends when he was younger, and when the FBI rummaged through items at his house, he found that he had also read a book about how star Simpson had exonerated after killing his wife. These traces of past daily life became an important stain on his suspects in the FBI's investigation. And his interpersonal relationships are also not welcome, he is more real, rigid, strictly dutiful, once worked as a security guard on campus, only because of sticking to the necessary accusations of a security guard, he was suspected by the principal as a very conceited person who likes to show off. What was supposed to be a catch-all and hearsay was portrayed by the media and identified by the authorities as something like a criminal fact.

Eastwood shows that in this age of excessive political correctness, the pursuit of caution is likely to make our world a worse place. In the opponent scene with the FBI, Richard Jewell choked the FBI agent's words to the point, he said that if he is now identified as a suspect by the FBI, will there be security guards who will evacuate the crowd as soon as possible after finding the bomb package to protect the public's life? No, because everyone knows that their loyalty to their duties, instead of exchanging people's respect, will be framed as murderers.

From the perspective of thematic expression, "Lamentations" is similar to Eastwood's work "Captain Sully" filmed in 16 years. Both films focus on the role of "humiliated tragic hero", but the latter's role is still an elite, and after the forced landing at the airport, the relevant personnel are only skeptical about his investigation, and they still have great respect for the captain. The character in Lamentations is just an ordinary American civilian, he is an absolutely weak party, and he does not have the technical voice that Captain Sully has accumulated with decades of aviation experience. As a result, the character's sense of helplessness in the face of accusations is also very prominent.

Importantly, his trust in the public authorities is portrayed several times in the film, and when his lawyers want him not to have too much respect for FBI agents, he feels that those people must have come on behalf of the government. Throughout the process of doubt, we see that he never really took a confrontational posture. This undoubtedly enhances the tragic taste of the film, and a person who believes in the system is eventually ruthlessly hurt by the system.

Ironically, when the FBI captures the real culprit in the Olympus Park bombing a few years later, the film simply shows his lawyer coming to tell Richard that the real culprit was arrested. Yes, the media and the authorities are absent here: the media has long forgotten the object of the once-popular report, and the authorities have long ago pretended that this had never happened, and have been indifferent to it – the system is good at forgetting, refusing to admit mistakes, and has always been so, even for citizens who respect him.

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