A few times in class over the week we touched on the idea that Gran Torino’s title refers to something that has a relatively minimal presence in the film. Why is this movie called Gran Torino? Is that really a comprehensive statement of the film as a whole, literally or thematically? I’m more and more convinced that it is.
So, first, and perhaps most obviously, the car is a clear marker for masculinity throughout the film, just as it is in American culture. The Hmong gang members test Thao’s masculinity by making him steal the car (he’s previously done “women’s work” by gardening and working around his house), importantly signaling the defunct nature of their masculinity, which is achieved illegally. When Thao “correctly” makes advances into Walt’s form of American masculinity and asks Youa out, Walt lends him the car in a tentative yet authorized form of its ownership. Finally, when Thao has proved himself a “real man” with the nerve and desire to avenge his sister (after previously refusing to engage with the gang when he is attacked coming home from work), Walt legally wills the car to Thao in a highly symbolic gesture. The final image of Thao driving into the sunset in his car is a classic image of American masculinity.
As I’ve been clearly hinting, the Gran Torino also functions as a symbol of Americanness and its rightful inheritance. It is American made, and plays on nostalgia for a magical time when great cars were made, bought, and loved by “real” Americans. Walt’s son, Mitch, as Walt constantly reminds him, owns a Toyota, signaling his eventual displacement as heir to Walt’s essential American identity. By legally (and through institutionalized channels) leaving Thao his car, Walt bypasses and redefines the classic system of Americanness, which, as we’ve talked about throughout the semester, is traditionally built on birth and an ancestry that hopefully stretches far enough into the past that the inevitable immigrant source is buried in history. In this way, the title of Gran Torino points to the way the film attempts to divert classic American narratives and perhaps classic American thinking, if not about masculinity, at least about race (whether or not it succeeds is another, fairly large, question).
But I also think the car is presented, at core, as simply a vessel of meaning in a movie that has a lot to do with emptiness and soulless tradition. Walt sits on his porch every night with his dog and a cooler full of beer not necessarily because it does anything for him, but because he’s always done it. Walt’s children visit their father out of duty and necessity, not because they value him at all. Father Janovich gives a paint-by-numbers sermon and chases after Walt’s confession only because he wants to keep a promise made to a dead woman. Through all this, Walt looks out at his Gran Torino parked in the driveway and says, with genuine feeling, “ain’t she sweet.” The car seems to be the only thing in Walt’s life that bears any meaning at all. Significantly, Walt’s granddaughter sees the Gran Torino as nothing more than a commodity, “a cool old car” that she’d like to add to a list of meaningless items Walt could pass on to her as his age makes them unnecessary. The film demands, then, that items such as the Gran Torino maintain their meaning by being passed on via a non-normative pathway of significance. As the movie tries to grasp at the remaining threads of American substance, it argues that the car, if it had been inherited “normally” would have lost its meaning and become almost demagnetized, stripped of its ability to carry significance (be it masculinity, American identity, honor, family, etc.). Thus the plot of Gran Torino is wrapped entirely around this Gran Torino, desperately urging us to hold onto its meaning.
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