Whoa! Stop drinking the Kool-Aid for a second and take a listen. (I know you posted this in 2007, but I just thought that I ought to respond to it anyway.)
Bear in mind though, I haven't seen this movie in a few years, so forgive me if I'm wrong about of the details of the movie's plot.
There's a lot to tackle in your comment, but I think I'll just cut to the chase and focus on the main idea.
The big problem you seem to have with this movie is that it seems to take the side of people who defy authority, which can be be applied to atheists or non-Christians who, according to you, I'm sure, defy the divine mandates of Yahweh as printed in the big book.
I can't remember all of the rules of the cider house, but I'll try, and then I'll explain why the farmhands feel they don't need to follow them. (And yes, these can be similar to the Ten Commandments if that's how you're interpreting them.)
1. Don't smoke in bed
2. Don't operate the pump if you've been drinking
3. Don't eat on the roof
4. Don't go up on the roof at night
5. Ask permission first if you want to go up on the roof
(At least I think that's what they were.)
Number one and two might be good advice, but making rules out of them is silly. That would be as though I broke my hand, and the doctor made a rule that I wasn't allowed to pick anything up with it. Yes, I probably shouldn't do anything strenuous with a broken bone if I want to save myself some grief, but how does one enforce that rule? Would he follow me around to make sure I don't use my injured hand? And what would be my punishment for breaking the rule? Tape it down to my hip?
I think what Heavy D's character said was appropriate for rules 3 through 5. He said, "Why don't they just say, 'Don't go up on the roof?'" I think that's really what those last three rules are all really about. They just don't want them up on the roof. Why? They don't say. And therein lies the big problem.
The rules for the cider house are arbitrary. They were put there by people who are not in their position and don't understand their experiences, who don't have to follow the rules that they made up, and don't have any consequences for breaking them. Did you notice that everyone broke the rules? Guess what; nothing ever happened when they didn't follow the rules, and the family didn't punish them for breaking them. (I sometimes wonder if they forgot they ever put them up.) Also, did you forget that these rules were given to people who couldn't READ them? What's fair about that? Hell, what's right about that? The rules weren't put there for their own good. If anything, it was just a way to remind the farmhands how the pecking order went. The family they worked for was pretty much telling them, "Here are some rules we want you to follow. We know that you can't read them, but we expect you to follow them anyway because we're your boss." If you're going to go along with something just because it comes from a source of authority, you might as well be a slave or someone's pet because you won't be very good at living on your own. Things just aren't that simple, and it's up to us as individuals to weigh the options of the situations that befall us and act on them the best we can.
But as messed up as Mr. Rose was, he was right about one thing; life isn't about following rules from some make-believe figure of authority who doesn't care whether or not you know what the rules are or if you follow them as long as you know who the boss is. Some people might live their lives that way, and I know that many people do, but when he was saying that we make our own rules, that pretty much means that the rules we make up aren't really what make us who we are. What we have are choices, and those choices are what dictate our lives. If anything, that's the real message. Our lives are not based so much on what happens to us but how we react to those things. Life is hard and sometimes dangerous, and pretending that making rules will make it easier is asinine.
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DaDudeAbides
16 years ago
While I agree with the basis of your post, I thought I might add some more details from the book, which obviously is a lot more detailed.
The book is about individual freedom to choose what one believes in and how an individual's actions are dictated by those beliefs. Homer is an orphan and orphans grow up without having the freedom to decide their own fates (i.e. in the movie they only had King Kong to watch, orphans don't choose their adoptive parents or whether or not they will get adopted at all, etc.), at least in comparision to non-orphans. Larch takes Homer as an apprentice, without Homer really deciding whether or not he wanted to be, and teaches Homer everything he knows, even how to give an abortion. In the book while Homer is dumping out the abortion waste into the furnace a fetus falls out and Homer sees "some sort of an expression" and believes that the aborted fetus has a "soul." Homer still believes that women should have the right to an abortion, but wants no part of it (he won't even help Larch in the procedure) and will never undertake the procedure himself. Larch tells him that until abortions are legalized he has no right to make such a selfish decision because the women will seek abortions from a less knowledgable source (i.e. the woman who ended up dieing in the movie). This does not change Homer's opinion (in the book Homer was already at the apple orchard during the botched abortion) and when Wally and Candy show up he finally has a chance to leave St Clouds (in the book it is actually Larch's idea, because he sees the well off couple and figures if Homer can hit it off with Wally's parents he will have a benefactor to put him through medical school).
So Homer goes to Ocean View Orchards with Wally and Candy and lives a worry free life and ignores his past at St. Clouds, not because he doesn't miss the people he loves, but because he's finally free from responsibility. When Rose Rose gets knocked up he finally has to come to make a decision between his personal beliefs and the action that goes against those beliefs. Homer decides he must give Rose an abortion and because "if you decide to play God, you can't play God a little" he knows that he can never turn away a woman that wants an abortion and will give them whatever they ask for, but will stop if abortions are ever legalized.
So we see that Homer makes his own decisions which are formulated by his internal beliefs and are compromised by what happens in his external environment. Mr. Rose has his own internal beliefs, that blacks and whites live in two different worlds and that blacks have their own set of rules white people know nothing about. In the book the rules have been altered due to past events (i.e. no sleeping in the cooler no matter how hot it is, becuase somebody did that and got pnenomia, no sitting on the roof because people get drunk and fall off, etc.) and a new set of rules were tacked up every year. Olive (Wally's mother) noticing the rules were not being obeyed would ask Mr. Rose to make sure he told his workers about rules, but he never did. The family didn't punish anybody because that was Mr. Rose's job and because he did such a good job keeping his workers in line, they weren't going to step on his toes for such a small thing (the rules were only posted only to protect the migrant workers not to show authority). Mr. Rose believed the workers could do whatever they wanted, but would have to deal with him and long as the white man wasn't involved (i.e. if you cut somebody, you didn't cut them bad enough to go to the hospital) and if he was you were on your way. Mr. Rose broke this rule when he knocked up his own daughter and Homer had to get involved to fix the problem he caused. Mr. Rose knew that he had broken his own rules when he found out about the pregnancy and when Rose Rose stabs him he knows it was just a reaction for his breach of conduct and takes the punishment (he could have gone to the hospital and lived as it was not a fatal wound, but then Rose Rose would have been in trouble).
We all have our own internal beliefs, but these beliefs are usually compromised by external factors, and sometimes your reaction to this compromise can make you a hero. Although Homer believes abortions are a type of homicide, but he permits his actions to go against this fundamental belife for the greater good and what's more heroic than that?
Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. - The Dude
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