Grapes of Wrath

Long before it ever became a TV show, a friend got me to read The Walking Dead. Initially, I found it quite enthralling, but after a certain point a pattern had emerged: every time something even remotely positive happened to the central group of survivors, it was immediately ruined by an even worse thing than the last terrible thing to befall them. This made the story such an unrelentingly depressing slog that I eventually gave up the series after reading maybe 8 volumes, or about 50 issues, which ultimately made up about a quarter of the total story. The Grapes of Wrath suffers from the same kind of pacing.

The Grapes of Wrath is a much better piece of literature than The Walking Dead (no slight on the comic intended) and so I did not quit watching midway through, but they do share in a plot structure that is nothing but a parade of bad things befalling the people the narrative makes you care about most. I find this type of storytelling to be exhausting.

Not everyone will be bothered by this story cadence and the ones that aren’t have a point. You must have conflict to have a story and a story that is fundamentally about survival and perseverance essentially necessitates going through hard times. However, the thing that The Grapes of Wrath does, that I think is what made me make the connection to The Walking Dead, is that it establishes a simple story premise while repeatedly denying the desired pay off. The basic idea is that our protagonist(s) are at a location that is untenable for whatever reason (evicted by the banks, lack of work, local hoodlums causing trouble, etc.) so the family must move. The unspoken contract with the audience is that leaving the bad place and going to a good place will make their lives better. This, of course, never actually works out. Either immediately, or slowly over time, the new place is shown to be, or made by character choice and action, untenable once again and everyone is forced to pack up and move.

The first couple of times this is done, it can feel like a clever subversion of normal expectations; there is no guarantee the new place will be the answer to all their problems. This can be used to drive a political, moral, or artistic point home by shocking the audience with the unexpected. When done right, it can create an unexpected twist to an otherwise straightforward narrative, as in Mad Max: Fury Road. However, after going back to that well over and over again it feels less like a clever subversion and more like Lucy, Charlie Brown, and the football. The more that same micro story of displacement is utilized, and the more the misery builds up, the more you just want those poor people to catch a break.

Of course, this is, in some sense, the goal of the movie. It wants you to be aware of the plight of the working class transplants at the center of the story, to bring their struggles to life for an audience that might not have been as aware of them. However, I would argue that the story overplays this dynamic, sacrificing viewer engagement by taxing the audience’s empathy beyond what is necessary. The result is something that paints a picture of hopelessness more than the admirable resiliency the final lines of the film indicate as the piece’s expected perspective. Life is hard and then you die may be something that some people find a form of comfort through solidarity in, but as an overarching thematic sentiment in a film I find it a turnoff. Not all cinema needs to be escapist, or have a neat and saccharine Hollywood ending, but The Grapes of Wrath goes too often to the well of misery, utilizing a similar story structure again and again with each trip, for my liking. Your mileage may vary.

Would Recommend: If you want to see the ravages of the Great Depression on rural farmers brought to life in exquisite detail.

Would Not Recommend: If you use cinema mostly as escapism.