Over the weekend, my friends and I piled into a car and took a 15 minute drive to AMC North Dekalb to watch “A Long Walk.” If you know anything about North Dekalb, you would know it’s a movie theater on the side of a mall that is being completely renovated and the seats are anything but modern. So as we sat down, tried to get comfortable, and the opening ads all had us thinking we were in for a horror movie, I was surprised to leave that theater with a soaking wet face and red eyes. As we as a society continue marching towards a future that is remise of 75 years ago, movies like this feel like a wake up call. As this review continues, I will try to not give a lot of spoilers, but to properly discuss it I need to talk about some important scenes within it. So this is your warning!
This movie was jarring, for a bit of context- this movie follows a group of 50 men who were chosen to participate in “The Long Walk,” which is a government competition where you have to walk until only 1 person remains, either you die of natural causes or they kill you for going below the set pace or stepping out of the boundaries, and when you win, you get more riches than you can imagine and one golden wish. A Long Walk is a political wake up call, the movie does not show the title card until almost 10 minutes into the movie. It follows the first death, an 18 year old boy who caught a cramp while walking, even though people tried to help him keep walking, we get an utterly graphic image of him as he drops to his knees and the guards who walk with them, literally blow his face off with a carbine rifle. Some contestants looked happy because their odds went up, others looked mortified knowing they could face the same fate.
This scene sets the tone for the movie, this is not something they all will walk away from, 1 person will end this bearing the weight of having to watch 49 other men go through the hardest moments of their lives before, and they did this with everyone, getting shot in the head. As the movie progresses, Ray begins talking negatively about the whole competition, people yell at him to be quiet, waring him that talking negatively about the system will get him murdered. Free speech is a thing of the past here, they are cattle being controlled.
This idea of the civilians in this movie being cattle is a main theme, the guards follow them on this walk as if they are herding dogs. They keep them in line, and punish them for going out of line. They wear number tags and are referred to only as their number. In a flashback, we see Ray and his family stepping outside their home and being faced with what looks like a 50ft tall metal wall, an enclosure. My first thought was what this scene looked like zoomed out, and the main image was a rat maze.
Along with this, the language they use in this movie is as if they aren’t people at all. They warn other people to stay on pace so they don’t get their “ticket.” In a flash back we hear an executor say that because a person was going against the state by speaking negatively about it, they will face “deactivation.”
This movie continued to feel like a fierce political commentary as despite being warned for denouncing the competition and speaking poorly about the Major, we get a scene of Ray screaming “Fuck the long walk! Fuck the major!” As he does this, other people slowly join in, we get scenes of “tougher” characters having faint smiles creep onto their faces before joining in and for the first time in this movie, we hear music. One of the 50 men, holds his little pocket radio up to the sky and we hear this electric music erupt from it as they chant and cheer. The camera pans out, and the feeling of them being revolutionaries filled the theater, but if you look closely you’ll realize despite this feeling, they are still just men, in the system, doing exactly what they want, with guards who have their guns pointed right at them. Have they really broken free of anything? It raises this amazing question of if we protest, are we doing anything at all or are we still just within their system, doing what they expect us to do as they continue controlling us?
As they continue marching on, they talk more and more and we get a glimpse into their reality outside of this competition. This country is completely unstable, economically depressed, heavily surveyed, and controlled. Despite this world they are in feeling so different than how we live now, it feels like the film makers are giving us a warning, that if we continue trying to reduce free speech and are okay with giving away our freedoms, this impossible reality will become possible. This movie ends with 2 people in tears, this brotherhood they have built the entire movie is forcibly going to have to end. They walk as they approach a crowd of spectators, all of them anticipating that one of them will stop soon. One does, and as he is brutally executed 5ft away from all these people, the spectators cheer and fireworks go off, as our winner is on his knees sobbing. “A Long Walk” is a really engaging and well done commentary on patriotism, how governments control us, and how empathy is becoming a thing of the past. It reminds us to continue fighting for our freedoms, to speak up even when things feel hard, and above all, to lead with love and not forget the things that bind us all together. We are one people, on the same journey of life.
Leave a Reply