The Movie and Performance:
“I hate him. And I hate to hate him.” At a pivot moment within the film, Gene Hackman, through voiceover narration, utters this line of frustration to the audience. It’s two sentences that fully captures his emotional anguish and turmoil as he tries to reconcile a relationship that cannot be mended. At its core, that is the basis for I Never Sang For My Father; seeking to build a relationship that simply cannot be built. Based off the 1968 play of the same name, the film offers a glimpse of generational differences and the consequence of refusing to coexist within a continually changing world.
Despite being billed as a supporting actor, the film centers around Gene Garrison (Gene Hackman), who strives to love a father who is difficult to tolerate and identify with. His 
father, Tom Garrison (brilliantly acted by Melvyn Douglas), is a man obsessed with the past when he was in his prime and holds onto his outdated worldview with a grip so tight that it suffocates all those around him. When Gene’s mother passes away suddenly, it pushes Gene and Tom back together, and what could be an opportunity for both to find new common ground, instead becomes a tug-of-war between ideologies. While Gene is someone who is compassionate and wishes to find the goodness in all people, his father detaches from emotion and empathy. In an attempt to gain his father’s appreciation, Gene even seeks to rationalize Tom’s deplorable attitudes, which includes being openly anti-Semitic. However, it is quickly reinforced that he cannot live up to the standards of what his father wishes him to be, thereby leading to an inevitable argument that forever severs their ability to communicate again.
I Never Sang For My Father is not a showy movie, nor does it aim to be. Instead, it offers a too-familiar portrayal of a toxic relationship that one 
denies is such. However, the film does not seek to vilify Melvyn Douglas’s Tom Garrison. Due to Douglas’s expert acting, the audience quickly can assert that the tough exterior Tom exhibits is extreme compensation for his internalized insecurities and the genuine belief that he has sacrificed for his family, providing them the best life he could offer. Yet that belief is also Tom’s shortcoming in that, due to his self-perceived sacrifices, he has placed unfair expectations upon his children and openly expresses his disappointment to them when they didn’t comply.
Gene Hackman has the equally complex task of displaying the difficulty of enduring bitter fights with his father, to which it formulates tremendous emotional angst. His performance exhibits the common cliché every child is subjected to: respect and love your parents unconditionally because they raised you. Yet, what if your father or mother 
is a consistent obstacle to your mental health? What if your parent is a constant source of negativity that brings you down? It goes back to the unfair attitude that family members should always work to solve problems with each other…because “you only get one family.” There is a pressure for children, or parents, to coexist, but it is usually at the expense of one, who has to submit to the will of the other. This mental debacle Gene Hackman excellently portrays: a son who desperately wants the respect and love of his father, but doesn’t want to admit the reality that the only way to attain such sentiments would mean to submit to his father’s will. Even then, there’s no guarantee the fatherly love he desires would ever be given. As a result, the feelings of being a constant disappointment build to resentment and anger, which Gene Hackman showcases in an explosive scene at the film’s climax.
The film doesn’t seek to solve the familial problems shown in this movie. Instead, it suggests that perhaps estrangement is sometimes the necessary choice between a parent 
and child. If the environment between the two of them cannot be amicable, it may be better that neither speaks to each other. In that regard, it’s a brave choice many are faced with, shaking away the Hallmark Channel version of interconnected families being a necessity in order to feel completed. The truth is, sometimes one’s relationship with their parent is toxic, and it takes someone responsible to acknowledge that fact and take steps to eliminate such negativity from their life.
For his uniquely sensitive performance in I Never Sang For My Father, Gene Hackman earned his second Oscar Nomination, in the Supporting Actor category. He lost to John Mills for Ryan’s Daughter (1970).
The Film:
*** 1/2
The Performance:
****
Go Back to Gene Hackman Movie Page
they were a duo that was armed and considerably dangerous, bold in their encounters with the law and often lethal in their actions. Despite their crime spree, the mythology of Bonnie and Clyde has become comparable to being like Robin Hood, depicting them as taking money from the rich and dispersing it to those in need. Given their actions occurred during The Great Depression, when most were enduring economic hardships, this imagery of Bonnie and Clyde is especially receptive.
reinforcing the Robin Hood sentiment towards them. In so doing this, despite these characters being on the wrong side of the law, it depicts law enforcement as brutal and the initiators of violence and of various shoot-outs, when in actuality it was Clyde Barrow who was the brutal force of the duo, being involved in upwards to fourteen murders, most of which were done in an effort to elude capture.
vulnerability amongst the characters. Even with the introduction of Clyde Barrow’s bother, Buck and his wife Blanche (brilliantly portrayed by Gene Hackman and Estelle Parsons), their turbulent and argumentative marriage contrasts and is a visible foil to Bonnie and Clyde, making their relationship seem more stable and fervent.
often charismatic. The performance is simple in its complexity, yet essential in that it formulates the understanding of the Bonnie and Clyde gang mantra: friendly with each other, but capable of submitting to violence at the snap of a finger upon the possibility of being captured. Gene Hackman epitomizes that concept expertly, being the central character that elicits smiles and laughter, but also the instigator of lethal force upon the threat of capture.
suspense greatness amongst film buffs and critics. However, given the complex resume of Stanley Kubrick, The Shining’s director, simply associating The Shining as horror may minimize the intentionality from its director. Kubrick, whose directing style has become the topic of contemporary lore, often applied subtle societal commentary within the framework of the films he directed. The Shining, too, can be inducted into this canon. Through to Kubrick’s directing, The Shining  transcends beyond the intentionality of Stephen King’s source material and instead offers the more complex message that madness is naturally inherent within society and showcases the unfortunate timelessness of bigotry towards others.
unspeakable behavior. The Shining was his means to convey his personal plights on paper for readers to digest. This was how his central character, Jack Torrance, was portrayed within the source novel: a young father, whose weaknesses were his own undoing. By being within the haunted Overlook Hotel, the hotel’s ghost residents manipulate Jack through his alcoholism to commit their violent deeds. Describing the novel, Ryan Vlastelica writes in his article, “Is Stephen King Justified in Hating Kubrick’s Vision of ‘The Shining,'” it is “as much tragedy as horror. Jack is a threat, but a sympathetic and relatable one.”
deliberate decision by Kubrick, which was reflective of his directing style. His style sought to have an “open narrative that erases the transparency of the film form and requires critical engagement of the audience in the discovery – and intention – of meaning” (Cocks 39). Kubrick’s style offered viewers an uncertain future, to which they were active participants in learning the purpose of events as they unfolded. This dramatically contrasts with King’s own intentionality with The Shining, which was to present a sort of expose on the effects of alcoholism and their indirect effects towards others.
possess the halls and rooms of the hotel, but also possess a mindset of misogyny, racism, and possibly genocide from their given era (Smith 302). Rather than being allured to madness by alcohol, as written in King’s novel, Jack’s murderous insanity stems from directly identifying with the ghosts’ ideology of what-once-was, slyly suggesting the timelessness of bigotry. Kubrick is also subtle in his directing to have his ghosts’ disposition on human life be juxtaposed with literal cold: the snowy isolation of the mountains, reminding audiences how “cold reality and relationships have become in the modern world” (Manchel 73).
sympathetic and is ultimately a victim of his vices. However, within the film, Kubrick sought to convey a subtle condemnation of society. Jack Torrance is inherently evil at the onset of the narrative, directly contradicting King’s crafting of the character. More so, Jack is a physical, contemporary continuation of the bigotry that existed in the past, to which his willingness to madness isn’t due to isolation, but rather a desire to join like-minded individuals in their existence of hatred. This offers a more complex narrative that suggests the Overlook Hotel wasn’t merely haunted, but it actively seeks living inhabitants within its walls to join them in their diabolical hatred for others.
Play it Again, Dan 