Rebel in the Rye -- Film Review
Rebel in the Rye
Directed
by Danny Strong
This is superb. It is
one of the best films of the last ten years, maybe the last twenty. A very convincing dramatization of the young
years of J. D. Salinger. It gave me a
lot of insight into his character and the path that he followed in life. The film highlights several aspects of his
life and treats them with sensitivity, depth, and balance. Crucial are his estrangement from his family
and his particularly fractious relationship with his father. His mother was a more positive, stabilizing
presence in his life and he dedicated The
Catcher in the Rye to her. She stood
with him against his father when his father opposed his career choice as a
writer. It was his experience growing up
in his family and his social environment that defined the character of Holden
Caufield. Much could be said about how
the issues in his family, which shaped the character of Holden, exemplified the
conditions of family life in mid-twentieth century America, which spawned a
feeling of alienation and disillusionment in a vast swath of young Americans who
strongly resonated with the predicament and outlook of Holden.
During the Second World War Salinger was drafted into the military. He landed in Normandy on D-Day and
experienced trauma and atrocities that scarred him for the rest of his life and
deepened his estrangement from human contact.
One cannot overemphasize the impact of the trauma of the war on his
personal psychology. During the war his
writing, you might say, kept him sane.
He wrote in foxholes, he wrote in his head tramping through mud. It was during the war in Normandy, France,
that the character of Holden Caufield crystallized in his mind and took shape
to some extent on paper. The writing got
him through the war, but was unfortunately ever after associated with the
traumas and horrors he experienced. Subsequent
to the war he had a long period of writer's block during which he could write
nothing. He overcame it in a long, slow
process through his relationship with a Buddhist teacher. But the outcome of this process was that his writing
had become a therapeutic exercise, a means of resolving internal demons, rather
than a way of making human contact. This
is why he retreated to rural New Hampshire and lived the rest of his life holed
up in seclusion, writing like a maniac, but never publishing. It all goes back to the war. Salinger's life illustrates the lifelong
impact of PTSD on war veterans. Art, to
Salinger, became masturbation, an internal catharsis, a narcissistic
preoccupation, and actually a barrier, rather than a bridge, to humanity.
The film provides an excellent illustration of the healing
power of creativity and how much of the impetus for art comes from the attempt
to resolve some internal turmoil or wound or trauma within the artist. Before
the war, Salinger's writing reflected the issues within his family and his
upbringing. You might say his writing
was an attempt to come to terms with his family and the emotional conflicts and
confusions they gave rise to. During the
war, he seems to have used his writing as a barrier, almost as a way of
splitting his internal self from the horrific experiences of his daily
life. It served a protective function
that became a lifelong self supportive device.
Because of the associative bond that was created between his writing as
a defensive measure and the war experiences, when he returned home and
attempted to resume his peace time life, he felt paralysis. Reviving the writing would revive the traumas
of the war experience. It took a long
time to reach a point where he could begin to face and deal with the extreme
anxiety and overwhelming feelings imbedded by the war. The writing became the means for his attempts
at self healing, but he was never able to get beyond his wounds and reach out
to other people through his writing. It
is a great tragedy.
The other aspect which the film treats is his relationship
with his publishers and his struggles to get published and achieve
recognition. The pressures for
conformity to public expectations, the desperate desire for recognition as well
as for financial success versus the purity and authenticity of the artist's
vision for his own work are developed in their varied manifestations and
complexity throughout. Many influences
shape the final incarnation of a work of art as it is presented to the
public. For example, in the case of The Catcher in the Rye, although
Salinger is the one who wrote it and he is named as the author, the book would
never have been written had it not been for the impetus offered by his teacher,
Whit Burnett. Burnett was the one who
pressed Salinger to develop Holden into a novel when Salinger was content to
write only short stories. Salinger had
more than his share of setbacks in his early years, but the acclaim that came
with his ultimate vindication became overwhelming and led to his decision to
cease publishing after 1965. It reminds
me a little bit of John Lennon's response to the hysterical worship of the
Beatles and his long withdrawal from the limelight.
Nicholas Hoult does a fabulous job with the character of
Salinger as does Kevin Spacey with the writing professor, Whit Burnett. Everyone was great in this film. I don't think it could have been done any
better. There were only four people in
the theater watching it: my friend, me, and two others. Where was everybody? What could they have been doing that would have
been better than watching this?