10 Films as Analogies

Ever get the feeling that the movie you're watching is saying more than it's really saying? That there's some hidden meaning? As if the movie itself is cracking a joke and everyone else in the audience is in on it but you (I mean, aside from your usual paranoia)? Well, fear no more! Brush up on this week's List and learn the hidden meaning behind your favourite films! Impress your friends, or your money back!

The List's standard movie spoiler warning:
Today's List involves a discussion of movies. In the course of the discussion, important plot points about the movies may be disclosed. If you're the kind of person who hates finding out what happens before you see a movie, read the following at your own risk!

Fatal Attraction
What's it about?
Happily-married-but-horny Michael Douglas goes out of town and has a sizzling, sex-in-the-elevator one-night stand with Glenn Close. Unfortunately for Mikey, she's nuts, and doesn't take too kindly to him going home to his wife and kids. She sets out to knock off his family one by one starting (as one does) with the pet rabbit.
An analogy for . . .
. . . the dangers of promiscuity in the AIDS era. How 80s!
Say what?
Douglas's supposedly harmless indiscretion literally follows him home and endangers the lives of his nearest and dearest.

Aliens
What's it about?
In the future, a platoon of cocky "ab-so-lute-ly BAD ass" space marines are sent out to investigate a colony that has lost contact with Earth. Long story short, they mostly get eaten. Mostly.
An analogy for . . .
. . . the 'Nam.
Say what?
Director James Cameron had just completed the screenplay for the return-to-Vietnam Reagan-era wet dream that was Rambo: First Blood Part II when he started work on this sequel to Alien, and it shows. The film is drenched in Vietnam War imagery, from the look of the marines' weapons and body armour, to the helicopter-like 'dropship', to the claustrophobic tunnel action scenes, right down to the end result. The marines get their "ab-so-lute-ly BAD asses" handed to them.

Southern Comfort
What's it about?
In 1973, a platoon of cocky US National Guard soldiers get lost whilst on maneuvers in a Louisiana bayou. Bored and wanting some cheap laughs, they prank some of the local cajun population by firing blanks at them. Bad news: The cajuns don't take kindly to pranks and begin to kill the soldiers. Worse news: blanks are the only ammunition the soldiers have.
An analogy for . . .
. . . the 'Nam. Yes, again.
Say what?
Sure, Deliverance did the trapped-in-hillbilly-country thing better, but the political message of Southern Comfort is more direct: In unfamiliar country, fighting an enemy speaking a language you don't know, and a culture you don't understand, you're gumbo.

The Quiet Earth
What's it about?
Bruno Lawrence, a New Zealand scientist, wakes up after a suicide attempt to discover he appears to be the last person on Earth. Everyone else seems to have spontaneously disappeared. Could it have something to do with the top secret experiment he was doing for the United States Government?
An analogy for . . .
. . . New Zealand's then-burgeoning anti-nuclear policy (the film was made in 1985), and the price of taking a solitary path.
Say what?
For Bruno, read NZ. "The Americans" (as they are unsubtly described throughout the film) have been a-tamperin' with forces beyond their control, against our objections, with apparently apocalyptic results. Bruno's ultimate isolation at the conclusion of the film mirrored New Zealand's, both geographically and militarily, as the ANZUS defence treaty collapsed.

High Noon
What's it about?
Gary Cooper, a sherriff in the Old West, learns on the day of his retirement that a murderer he sent to the gallows has been paroled. He's returning to town and when he arrives, he and his gang plan to settle the score. The sherriff appeals for help from the townfolk who, one by one, abandon him to face his fate alone.
An analogy for . . .
. . . McCarthyist paranoia and the 'blacklisting' of those in the film industry suspected of having a communist agenda.
Say what?
Cooper's sherriff is a good man, who appeals to the other 'good' men of his town for aid. The hypocritical townfolk reject him, more concerned with saving their own skins than in defending a man who has helped them in times past.

The Astronaut's Wife
What's it about?
Charlize Theron is married to astronaut Johnny Depp. But after an accident during a spacewalk, Johnny returns to Earth . . . strange. The weirdness only increases after Charlize falls pregnant, and she slowly comes to suspect that the person who came back to Earth might not be her husband at all.
An analogy for . . .
. . . the anxieties of first time motherhood.
Say what?
At the heart of this horror film is Theron's character's terror that the thing growing inside her will consume and overwhelm her. Her anxieties mirror those of expectant mother's suffering from prenatal depression.

The Bridge on the River Kwai
What's it about?
In Malaysia during World War II, a stubborn POW British Colonel (Alec Guinness) clashes with the commanding officer of his Japanese captors. The Japanese want a bridge built, and they want to use the Allied POWs as labour to build it. After initially resisting, Guinness begins to view the construcion of the bridge as a challenge. Much to the confusion of the Japanese commander, he begins to take to the task with enthusiasm . . .
An analogy for . . .
. . . the rise and fall of the British Empire.
Say what?
The Malaysian jungle is presented as unforgiving, harsh, primal, raw and primitive - just as how the British Empire saw the uncivilised world. To Guinness's character, the construction of the bridge represents progress, industry - the impressing of Britain's will and, therefore, civilisation, upon an untamed world. The bridge's eventual spectacular destruction draws more sympathy for the misguided Guinness than any other response.

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
What's it about?
In small town America, a Doctor learns that people have been disappearing and are being replaced with impostors. These impsotors are indistinguishable from the people they have replaced, bar for one unsettling feature - they lack all emotion. The doctor investigates further, and quickly discovers that the impostors are not of this world . . .
An analogy for . . .
. . . well, you've got two choices. Either it's about the feared loss of individualism that communism would bring, or it's a satire of the rabid Cold War-era anti-communist paranoia. Either way, it's all about the commies!
Say what?
The screenwriter, Daniel Mainwaring, was himself a blacklisted screenwriter, which suggests the intention was the latter. On the other hand, the director, Don Siegel, was well known for his aggressive right-wing views (how aggressive? Siegel would later direct Dirty Harry), which suggests the intention was the former.

Spartacus
What's it about?
In the time of Ancient Rome, a gladiator breaks free of his bondage. He begins a war against the Roman oppressors, and, freeing slaves as he goes, is soon leading a massive army that threatens the gates of Rome itself.
An analogy for . . .
. . . a call to arms for socialist revolution. It's those damn commies again!
Say what?
The plot could've fallen out of Karl Marx's manifesto. The film fairly drips with anti-captitalist sentiment. The slaves are all salt-of-the-earth multi-skilled folk on whom the Roman economy depends and who want nothing more than to return home. The historical fact that Spartacus's slave army took slaves for themselves is conveniently ignored.

The Green Mile
What's it about?
A simple, hulking black man, John Coffey, is wrongfully convicted of raping and killing two girls in 1930s Louisiana. He is sentenced to death. While waiting on Death Row, it becomes obvious to his guards that he is no killer, and he soon begins to display extraordinary healing powers.
An analogy for . . .
. . . Jesus Horatio Christ himself.
Say what?
John Coffey is a saintly, gentle man with the ability to cure through touch (in one scene he cures a woman of cancer; in another he resurrects a dead mouse) who is wrongfully convicted of a crime and sentenced to death. Need any more evidence? Check out his initials. As Stephen King, the author of the novel on which the film is based, once wrote, "What is this, rocket science? I mean, come on, guys."