In class Monday, we discussed the symbolism involved in Walt’s cough and his death at the end of the film. The way in which both these ideas become manifest in the film involves an extensive use of the visual imagery of Walt’s hands covered in blood—first the blood he coughs up, then the blood streaming from his bullet wounds onto his outstretched hands. There is another particularly intriguing moment involving Walt’s hands, namely the close-up on his hand dropping his water glass when Sue walks in after her beating and rape. I’d like to discuss how each of these images in turn fill out Walt’s character and problematize his model of white masculinity.
The blood on Walt’s hands from his cough carries with it a variety of connotations. First, it bears the obvious symbolism of the blood on his hands from the Korean War, something that he cannot let go of and that constantly resurfaces unpleasantly, just like the blood coming from his lungs. The image also gives us a reminder/representation of his impending death, and the visual nature of that memento mori keeps us from being able to escape it. Such a reminder of Walt’s mortality functions to make him more sympathetic, since we pity his shortened lifespan; to provide a sense of urgency, since we now know he has little time to atone for his deeds; and to complicate his highly foreshadowed sacrifice, since laying down his life is less of a cost to him if he already knows he will lose it soon (and perhaps more unpleasantly).
Later, when Sue walks in visibly having been beaten—and even in this moment it is not difficult to presume she has also been raped—there is a cut to a close-up of Walt’s hand holding a water glass, which he promptly drops. As a technician who spent 50 years building cars, and a self-professed person who fixes things, Walt’s hands are symbolic of his power in the world. Dropping the glass, then, is a failure of his hands and indicates his sudden awareness of his own helplessness. This moment is emblematic of many of the problems with the film as a whole. It is an extremely powerful moment showing a crack in Walt’s toughness, which carries with it the connotations of Clint Eastwood’s toughness. However, the focus on Walt’s loss of power in that moment takes the focus away from Sue’s loss of power; her rape becomes, like the rest of the film, all about him.
Finally—and I’ll go into this a little less because we discussed it so thoroughly in class—there is the blood running down Walt’s lifeless hands as he lies in a crucifix-like pose. In a way, in addition to being a Christ reference, this brings together the implications of the two images discussed above. The promise of mortality is realized, and his hands are both powerless in death and far more powerful than they have been before. If we take it in the context of the other hand images, we can read the crucifixion imagery as having more specific character meaning than just its Jesus-figure implications. I think an exploration of hands as a symbol throughout the film could be far more rewarding than what I’ve done here—such an exploration could delve further into Walt’s fake “hand-gun,” for example, and could even incorporate a reading of Walt’s faux pas in touching the child on the head. It might also be valuable to include readings of the hands of other characters, such as the symbolism of Thao’s hands washing the car, etc.
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