“Inside of many liberals is a fascist struggling to
get out.” - John McCarthy
We watched a quirky little movie last weekend, Stacy Title’s 1995 movie, “The Last Supper”. It starred Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan Penner, Courtney B. Vance and Ron Perlman and the screenplay by Dan Rosen.
Jude (Diaz), Luke (Vance), Marc (Penner), Paulie (Gish) and Pete (Eldard) are liberal-minded grad students at a Iowa post-secondary institution who all share a house. Every Sunday for a year, they have hosted a dinner party, inviting a friend over to have an open-minded discussion about whatever topics are of interest to everyone. On a dark and stormy night when Pete was supposed to bring a friend to one of those dinners, he comes home with Zachary Cody (Bill Paxton), who rescued the stranded Pete when his car broke down. They invite Zach to stay to dinner instead of Pete’s missing friend.
They soon find out that Zach is among other things a racist neo-Nazi, which brings up a potentially dangerous situation for Jewish Marc and black Luke. After some physical altercations and verbal threats, Marc ends up stabbing Zach dead out of what he considers self-defence. As the friends discuss what to do about Zach, they finally come to the conclusion that in killing Zach, they have done society a service. So they ponder “why not invite other people who are society’s scum and get rid of them once and for all?” Things get our of hand…
The film is a black comedy but it does raise the important issue of political extremism – far left or far right, it doesn’t matter as the two extremes meet on common ground! The basic premise of the film, “would people be justified in murdering someone if they knew he was evil?” is illustrated by the typical time travel scenario, where the five dinner hosts ponder the question “If you could travel back in time, would you kill Hitler before he rose to power, to prevent the extermination of millions?” The question in their mind finally becomes easy to answer as their dinner guests one by one are disposed and buried in the garden giving bumper tomato crops.
As well as being a tolerable comedy, it is on the second, more philosophical level, that the film really succeeds. The liberals become intolerant killers, revealing the dangers of political correctness and the very real possibility of a left-wing police state in which alternative views are crushed in the name liberal values… The liberals become as “evil” as the rednecks they are dispatching into the next world.
The acting is good, although some of the (now famous) actors were just starting their acting career then. It has a poppy sound track and good settings and overall it was a cerebral, subversive, intelligent, and thought-provoking comedy. Well worth watching if ti comes your way.
And by the way, if you could time travel, would you go back and kill baby Hitler?...
We watched a quirky little movie last weekend, Stacy Title’s 1995 movie, “The Last Supper”. It starred Cameron Diaz, Ron Eldard, Annabeth Gish, Jonathan Penner, Courtney B. Vance and Ron Perlman and the screenplay by Dan Rosen.
Jude (Diaz), Luke (Vance), Marc (Penner), Paulie (Gish) and Pete (Eldard) are liberal-minded grad students at a Iowa post-secondary institution who all share a house. Every Sunday for a year, they have hosted a dinner party, inviting a friend over to have an open-minded discussion about whatever topics are of interest to everyone. On a dark and stormy night when Pete was supposed to bring a friend to one of those dinners, he comes home with Zachary Cody (Bill Paxton), who rescued the stranded Pete when his car broke down. They invite Zach to stay to dinner instead of Pete’s missing friend.
They soon find out that Zach is among other things a racist neo-Nazi, which brings up a potentially dangerous situation for Jewish Marc and black Luke. After some physical altercations and verbal threats, Marc ends up stabbing Zach dead out of what he considers self-defence. As the friends discuss what to do about Zach, they finally come to the conclusion that in killing Zach, they have done society a service. So they ponder “why not invite other people who are society’s scum and get rid of them once and for all?” Things get our of hand…
The film is a black comedy but it does raise the important issue of political extremism – far left or far right, it doesn’t matter as the two extremes meet on common ground! The basic premise of the film, “would people be justified in murdering someone if they knew he was evil?” is illustrated by the typical time travel scenario, where the five dinner hosts ponder the question “If you could travel back in time, would you kill Hitler before he rose to power, to prevent the extermination of millions?” The question in their mind finally becomes easy to answer as their dinner guests one by one are disposed and buried in the garden giving bumper tomato crops.
As well as being a tolerable comedy, it is on the second, more philosophical level, that the film really succeeds. The liberals become intolerant killers, revealing the dangers of political correctness and the very real possibility of a left-wing police state in which alternative views are crushed in the name liberal values… The liberals become as “evil” as the rednecks they are dispatching into the next world.
The acting is good, although some of the (now famous) actors were just starting their acting career then. It has a poppy sound track and good settings and overall it was a cerebral, subversive, intelligent, and thought-provoking comedy. Well worth watching if ti comes your way.
And by the way, if you could time travel, would you go back and kill baby Hitler?...
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