1,566 words
The Last Supper came out in 1995, back when films tended to be a lot more watchable. It’s is about five Leftist grad students sharing a house. They enjoy bull sessions; you know the type. Early on, we have the opening premise: “It’s 1909 and you’re alone with a young artist named Adolf. Do you kill him?” (I’m not so sure that would have kept the peace, but that’s another matter. Either way, in any discussion of situational ethics, this scenario can be used as a ready-made trump card.) That, of course, leads into a debate. Soon, they’re putting their principles into action.
The plot
It was a dark and stormy night. One of the housemates has a breakdown on the road, and someone tows him back. That guy came right from the department of Central Casting specializing in scary rednecks with green teeth, although he’s quiet and polite at first. They invite him to stay for supper. They’d been expecting someone for a weekly discussion, but he couldn’t make it.
After getting him loosened up, it turns out that he is a veteran with dreadfully provincial beliefs. Then he even goes so far as to praise Hitler. (Of course, that’s a dead giveaway that shit’s about to get real.) The straw-man Rightist is also dumb as a brick, not knowing what a Master’s degree is. It turns out later that he’s committed a loathsome crime. Way subtle! He challenges them:
Scary Redneck: You Left-wingers make me wanna puke. You never take a real stand. A stand that you’d be willing to —
Heroic Jew: Die for?
Scary Redneck: No, boy. Dying’s easy. Ain’t nothing heroic about dying. But if you can take a stand for something you’d kill for, that’s something. Something special.
After some verbal sparring, the knives come out, to put things briefly. (Oh, sure; how common is it for a fight to break out over dinner? Well, I suppose it happens.) The Heroic Jew wins, naturally.
So now they have a different problem. Before, they had a scary redneck with green teeth threatening to carve them up. Now, they have a scary redneck with green teeth with a knife in his back and approaching room temperature. What next? What are they going to tell the cops? The Pragmatic Black convinces the rest that the most expedient thing to do is put him in a backyard grave, ditch his pickup elsewhere, and go on with their lives as if it never happened. In brief, “I say we bury the cracker and have dessert.”
Emboldened with their success, they decide to repurpose their weekly discussions and stage a repeat performance. The first special guest invited to his last supper is Reverend Gerald Hutchens. At first he seems quite affable, but then he begins trash-talking gays. For example: “Homosexuality is the terrible disease and AIDS is the cure.” That much is beyond the pale, of course, no matter how appreciative he is of their cooking. They serve him from a blue decanter of poisoned wine. It works, and is quickly fatal. (This was likely a lot faster-acting, and less painful, than a lethal dose of arsenic really would be.) Premeditated murder turns out to be possible in a jiff!
Other guests follow later. Each of these potential Hitlers is served up a meal with a big helping of liberal tolerance for dessert. Those condemned for provincial views include — as named in the credits –Dominant Male, [Anti-]Abortion Activist, Nation [of Islam] Man, Homeless Basher, Illegal Alien Hater, The Anti-Environmentalist, Skin Head, and Illiterate Librarian.
The last was a particularly harsh case. She was a non-drinker, so she got knifed in the back. Her crime wasn’t illiteracy, but rather it was for disliking Catcher in the Rye. Being perceived as an unhip philistine seems a poor reason to whack someone. At the very least, it’s hard to say that she’s literally Hitler — but, well, yanno, these are Leftists we’re talking about here. Their notable aversion to the death penalty doesn’t extend to people who disagree with them. Moreover, she was right: Catcher In the Rye objectively sucks raw Rocky Mountain oysters.[1]
At first, it’s all fun and games to these serial killers for social justice. In one case, they mock the dying guest. Murder aggravated by bad taste is hardly the picture of their famously supersized bleeding hearts. However, as we all know liberal compassion tends to be pretty selective. They bury each illiberal corpse in the back yard, disguising the resulting mounds as tomato beds. That seems to work out fairly well, though the extra arsenic in the veggies might turn out to be a problem.
You can buy Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema here.
When their body count reaches ten, some of the housemates start getting cold feet. One of them plants flowers around the tomato beds, showing some belated respect for the dead. (Later, the Pragmatic Black removes them, since the adornment seems too obvious.) At the next supper they decide to spare the guest. She’s a teenager who finds mandatory sex education at school to be morally objectionable. At last, this is a transgression that doesn’t merit the death penalty. Luckily for her, she never says anything bad about Catcher in the Rye!
At that point, the housemates might’ve been inclined to pull themselves out of the abyss – but it’s then that things start spiraling out of control. This is bound to happen after ten unexplained disappearances within about three months. This would likely be merely a statistical uptick on a data point if this took place in Chicago, but that sort of thing will be noticed in a tranquil college town in Iowa.
Then a couple of them have a chance meeting with Norman Arbuthnot, a conservative TV commentator approximately based on Rush Limbaugh. (He’s played by Ron Perlman, looking here somewhat like a Scotsman/Neanderthal hybrid.) They’ve had a hate-on for him from the beginning, so as one last hurrah before vacation, they invite him over for supper. This, of course, sets the stage for the conclusion. Whether it’s tragic or deserved will depend on the viewer’s ideological perspective.
Summary
This was sort of a Russian novel written as a black comedy and then compressed into an hour-and-a-half of cinema. Although it’s told from a Leftist perspective — what else can one expect from Hollyweird? — they ended up subverting their message by taking it a little too far. The bad guys are rather brutally caricatured, but there’s no sting in it. Arbuthnot is the only one with any subtlety; the others all get the straw-man treatment, and it’s hard to take that personally.
As for the good guys, the movie is a lot more truthful. Although they’re depicted sympathetically, it’s pretty hard to find them particularly admirable. They would’ve done well to remember Nietzsche’s famous warning:
He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
They become serial killers; that kinda sorta puts them in bad guy territory, now doesn’t it? Some among this secret combination do develop second thoughts, at least to the point that the group has trouble reaching a consensus — but it took nine dead bodies for any of these zealots to figure it out. (I’m only counting the premeditated murders; the first was legitimate self-defense.) That’s quite a while to get a clue that an action’s morality does not depend on the participants’ ideology or opinions.
Granted, up to that point the housemates conduct a lot of pious discussion about right and wrong. (I’ll have to hand it to the filmmakers: the bull sessions were spot-on.) Still, as usual for good Leftists, they always spin their fuzzy situational ethics until they find the wiggle room to justify doing whatever it is they want. This includes taking it upon themselves to assassinate those outside of their ideological bubble.
It’s hardly just a theoretical discussion. There are plenty of smug, self-righteous Leftists in real life who’d do exactly that, if they could get away with it. They think they’re justified to do anything they want to advance their cause. The problem for them is that their behavior sets a certain precedent. Of course, they’re the same sort of crybullies who’d get shocked and offended, squealing about their sacred rights, if someone gave them back even a fraction of their own dirty tricks. It’s hardly unheard of in history for the Leftists to push things to the edge of disaster, until the Rightists finally get sick of playing Mister Nice Guy.
All things considered, I’ll rate the film three out of five helicopters.
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Note
[1] Granted, artistic works mean different things to different people, so surely there are others who got something more out of Catcher in the Rye than I did. (Mark David Chapman was one of them, but that’s another story.) Sure, go ahead and read this classic work of literature, if you want. I suppose it’s not so bad for a story about a sophomoric mope whose silver spoon in his mouth starts to get rusty after flunking out of three prep schools, is experiencing a midlife crisis at the age of 17 going on 12, and who preoccupies himself with building castles in the sky whenever he’s not making an ass of himself – besides which the misunderstood hero can’t stop blathering about everything being phony. Did I mention that it sucks?
25 comments
Hard to imagine that things were already that pozzed in 1995, but this definitely goes on my to-see list.
Sounds like the writer or director saw either the film or play of Arsenic And Old Lace and just ran with it(if you’ve never seen the Frank Capra film it’s a must see-nobody could mug like Cary Grant).
“Their notable aversion to the death penalty doesn’t extend to people who disagree with them.”
This touches on something I overheard my melanin enhanced coworker Meechi saying to another the other day. Regarding Ye’s “I like Hitler” rant, he said something along these lines. “This dumb muhfuggah went on the show wit dat White Supremacist dude dat just got sued fo killin’ all dem kids, talkin’ ‘bout he love Hitler. Man, if I ruled the world I’d run it like Iran. Any muhfuggah git caught saying some ol’ retarded ass shit like that, they ass is outta here!” So, an intolerant genocidal dictator. Yet, he claims to be against the death penalty because it “ain’t justice it’s revenge” according to him. I stopped trying to have rational discussions with him a long time ago.
Your colleague sounds like quite a logician there.
I recall seeing a short blurb on this film in the “O Tempora, O Mores” section of American Renaissance. When I saw it on TV a few years later, I was surprised at the happy ending.
How does one watch this? Where do you get it?
After-market DVDs should be available. The streaming video services also should have it. Alternately, you might use your metal detector to find a treasure chest on the beach with a bunch of old classics 😉
https://ww1.streamm4u.ws/movies/the-last-supper-1995.o7yd6.html
Gracias, amigo!
“The problem for them is that their behavior sets a certain precedent.”
This has long been my problem with the typical “conservative” take on “what’s wrong with letting the cops just beat the confession out of the bad guys?” mentality. Perhaps someone pointed this out to me and I forgot who. Anyway, the problem is that these “conservatives” imagine the cop is kindly Uncle Pat, or Cousin Billy, upright, square-shooters who know who the bad guys in the neighborhood are, and act accordingly. Problem is, after a couple of beatings, Uncle Pat isn’t Uncle Pat anymore. He’s “got a taste for it,” as Clarice Starling says, and soon he’s a mean, crooked cop who beats a confession out of anyone he doesn’t like for whatever crime is at hand, like Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil. (*)
(*) The brilliant twist in Touch of Evil is that the DA who looks over his records figures out that everyone Quinlan framed over the years was guilty. He just liked framing ’em. There’s a hat tip to that in The Departed: “I never gave up anybody who wasn’t goin’ down anyway.” Orson Welles may have been the last bleeding heart pinko to be willing, or able, to convincingly play a “right wing” bad guy not only believably but sympathetically. Ironically, Charlton Heston, who plays the Mexican “hero” cop, eventually became tagged as a “right wing nut” for his pro-NRA views (and for playing a Mexican). As Harvey Dent says, you either die a hero or live to become the villain.
It’s a shame that Citizen Kane is regarded so highly when Touch Of Evil is by far superior in every aspect. Orson Welles’ true masterpiece as far as I’m concerned.
Absolutely. I recently watched Kane and shut it off half-way through. It seemed superficial and gimmicky and ultimately uninvolving. Touch of Evil, however, had me hooked from the first frame and never let go.
Funny that you guys mentioned Orson Welles.
Just tonight I started to watch a documentary on HBO Max called “The Eyes of Orson Welles”.
I could only watch about ten minutes. The narrator was away too affected and vainglorious. His Irish accent grated at me. (No offense to Irish accents.). It just felt like I was supposed to feel some credibility toward the guy because his accent wasn’t American.
If anyone has seen this documentary and came away with positive feelings, please comment here so that I’ll give it a chance.
In the Tim Burton biopic about director Ed Wood(arguably Burton’s last great film) there’s a scene where Johnny Depp’s Ed Wood character meets his idol Orson Welles(played by Vincent D’Onofrio) at a bar and has this hilarious exchange.
EW “Do you know that I’ve even had producers re-cut my movies?”
OW”I hate when that happens.”
EW “And they always want to cast their buddies. It doesn’t even matter if they’re right for the part.”
OW “Tell me about it. I’m supposed to do a thriller for Universal. They want Charlton Heston as a Mexican.”
It’s a great scene, indeed. But, as I wrote about Touch of Evil here:
“Like many such pop cultural memes, it’s more about what pleases current dogmas than historical truth. We “know” that studios are philistines; we “know” that Whites should never play non-white roles (though the opposite is just fine). But in reality, Heston was already cast, and it was Heston who used his star power to force Welles on Universal as director instead of just actor. And that star power is important to the film as well, since, as we’ll see, our nominal hero proves to be so lame, so paper-thin, as written, that only an actor with the screen presence of a Heston could prevent him from fading away entirely, lost in the malignant shadow of Welles’ monstrous Hank Quinlan. And there simply weren’t any Hispanic actors in Hollywood who could act alongside Orson Welles — Caesar Romero, you think?” https://counter-currents.com/2015/01/breaking-badge/ (Reprinted in Passing the Buck (https://counter-currents.com/books/passing-the-buck/)
Thank you for the link. Fantastic article. Now I have to rewatch BB again! As far as a hispanic actor who could’ve played Mike, Anthony Quinn is the only one who comes to mind but he was no match for Charlton Heston. Still, every time I watch Touch Of Evil, Mike’s non-existent accent and his little Sanchez mustache makes me chuckle.
Thanks. I think he put all his effort into shouting ” ¿Qué pasó?” after the car explodes, and then assumed his character had been established as sufficiently Mexican. BTW Heston later starred in El Cid, as El Cid, with Sophia Loren as Dona Ximena. Martin Scorsese is a big fan, and when it was re-released in 1993 some proto-alt-Right types in NYC took me along to see a screening, as it somehow seemed to own the liberals, as we would say today.
My impression was that the movie was satirising the left’s self-righteousness and aiming to make a left-wing audience feel uncomfortable about it.
Yes!
The thought experiment is ridiculous. IMO, fantastic contrivances based on impossible premises have no place in serious thought. The reality is that even if you granted the Supergod power of being able to rearrange the world in exactly its state in 1909, then 20-something reconstituted Hitler walked in, it would be extremely unlikely that he would become anything resembling his historic self. He may have died in the war, been assassinated by the Jewish communists, found success doing landscapes, ad infinitum. And as reconstituted Hitler went down an unexpected path, some other would very likely rise to the tumultuous occasion — assuming the occasion came to again exist — who may well have been a real orchestrator of what the Ashkepathic historic fraud machine imputes to Herr ‘Stache.
That NPC leftists use similar logic to identify “future Hitlers” because they “know what X leads to” is further evidence that the world would be made better if these dog-brained morons took their medicine rather than dispensed it.
Time travel will never be possible because it would require what was postulated in the example above: that the entire universe, like some infinite Humpty Dumpty, were put back together exactly as it was. Even if you made it that far, its state one picosecond later would be so far removed from it’s historic counterpart that you couldn’t reliably predict if reconstituted Hitler would make it home that day or get distracted and end up in a village 50 miles away, much less what the world would hold years hence.
Viewing the world in childlike determinism and claiming powers of prediction that no god could wield is a sure mark of the dullard.
<Ben Elton> wrote a surprisingly good novel exploring this very point, called Time and Time Again.
They are NOT treated sympathetically. Besides being similarly cartooney to their victims, they also have some glaring flaws. iirc, one of the women is a nymphomaniac and the black is a textbook psychopath using “morality” as an excuse to satiate his bloodlust. You could make an argument Cameron Diaz’s character is somewhat relatable, but you can’t escape the feeling you’re supposed to laugh at the rest. Their hypocrisy is quite in your face, especially evident in the repeating formula “we kill people who hate”, where the underlying assumption its their own hatefulness of these people. Movie is a black comedy with an unhinged premise, after all.
Political correctness was very much a thing back in the 90s and it got quite a deal of backlash. David Mamet’s Oleanna is another good example.
Thanks. It was probably back in the 90s when I caught this movie on cable TV, but your description is exactly the way I remember interpreting its satirical message. I would like to see it again now.
Spot on and thanks for another pour of this digestif. While the actors continued to work in film, the director, producers and writer didn’t see a lot of film career.
In a similar vein was The Hunt (2000), in which rich liberals pay to stalk and execute “deplorables” who turn the tables. It’s a loose remake of The Most Dangerous Game and neither a great or bad time, though praiseworthy for existing in this climate. Prior to release, there were a few clueless angry rightists protesting it (surprise) not having seen it.
Yes, and The Hunt (2020, I believe) is a pretty good action movie that makes the left-wing killers the bad guys.
I distinctly remember watching this when it came out after being intrigued by the trailer. I was in college at the time and the anti-white critical race theory movement in universities was just starting to gain major headway. It’s the kind of self-parody and satire the left is no longer truly capable of, so it was kind of refreshing to see at the time. It wasn’t a pozzed movie in any real sense.
And that time-travel exercise is so lame and intellectually lazy. Plus the fact that they always have to use the one-dimensional comic book character of “Hitler” shows how unimaginative our enemies are. Good movie, though, although a tad melodramatic at times. I’d give it a sold B-.
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