“It is a stellar film that frames what happens to a nation in turmoil or at war in whatever location, where the poor young men are drafted to fight and be killed.”
A HUNDRED years from now, when one studies American literature in this timeline of crumbling democracy and the frenzied right-wing, Stephen King will be explored with the scrutiny that he truly deserves.
King’s works may be classified in the US as drugstore literature because of his popularity and accessibility. Still, he proves to be a sybil of some sort regarding the downfall of the American dream.
The latest film adaptation of his work, The Long Walk, is especially prescient in the current wasteland of American culture wars and the sacrificial bodies of their young men.
The movie is set in a dystopian America that emerged from an unnamed war, which reduced the vast country to desperate hunger and suffocating poverty. People have been arrested for reading problematic literature. This sounds so apocalyptic, but there is a swathe of banned books and lessons in the current American Trumpian wasteland.
What does this film adaptation do? There is a tinge of American masculine exceptionalism and sordid reality TV (never forget that Trump is a more successful reality TV host than a businessman). Young men are selected from all fifty states to partake in the contest to prove who is the strongest.
The young men must walk at a speed of 3 miles per hour. If they falter or go by the wayside, they are warned, and if they do not correct their pace and position, they are shot. Whoever is the last man standing, er…walking, wins, and he gets to have his wish fulfilled. These sacrificial bodies are meant to inspire a nation.
The film is directed by Francis Lawrence, who worked on a related speculative American apocalypse with most of the Hunger Games movies. But The Long Walk does not suffer from a franchise heft of expectations. It is a stellar film that frames what happens to a nation in turmoil or at war in whatever location, where the poor young men are drafted to fight and be killed.
To walk nonstop (you are not allowed to rest or even sleep) is a test of resilience in an authoritarian system. We Filipinos are sadly all too familiar with the false blessing of resilience as a testament to the “Filipino Spirit.” Resilience is a myth fed to those with no choice left, thinking they are heroic in a system that has given them nothing and has taken everything.
The Long Walk, according to the ultra-conservative American echo chambers, bombed at the box office because of King’s snowballed prickly relationship with rightist idiocies.
This movie is worth watching precisely because of King’s politics, because despite his numerous works of ghouls, the real monsters are men with too much power while holding assault weapons.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
