The Caine Mutiny
A good boy with a domineering mother struggles to achieve an adult sexual relationship; needing to assert his independence, he joins the navy, but his craving for paternal authority (founded in his wish to form a superego strong enough to allow him to overcome his tendency towards a general sloppiness), which initially appears as if it will be satisfied, is soon forced to confront the fact that there is such a thing as a bad (substitute) father – which is to say, or so we are led to believe, a traumatised one.
As is so often the case, here the latter (the bad father) proves to be a more interesting character than the handsome and well-behaved young protagonist, who is consequently gradually shifted into the background, becoming just one of the group of sons who will together set out to find a pretext for murdering the father. And of course, it is through this collective patricidal act that the boy will succeed in overcoming his sexual problems and successfully acquire a woman, only to discover that it comes at the price of an overwhelming sense of guilt. Fortunately, this feeling can mostly be assuaged through the designation of a scapegoat – here, the cowardly and bookish intellectual type – who must then be humiliated and banished.
Leaving aside the Freudian implications of all of this, the film is generally a pretty good presentation of a moral conundrum, but could have been thematically tighter, and could have made better use of the claustrophic character of its nautical setting.
As is so often the case, here the latter (the bad father) proves to be a more interesting character than the handsome and well-behaved young protagonist, who is consequently gradually shifted into the background, becoming just one of the group of sons who will together set out to find a pretext for murdering the father. And of course, it is through this collective patricidal act that the boy will succeed in overcoming his sexual problems and successfully acquire a woman, only to discover that it comes at the price of an overwhelming sense of guilt. Fortunately, this feeling can mostly be assuaged through the designation of a scapegoat – here, the cowardly and bookish intellectual type – who must then be humiliated and banished.
Leaving aside the Freudian implications of all of this, the film is generally a pretty good presentation of a moral conundrum, but could have been thematically tighter, and could have made better use of the claustrophic character of its nautical setting.
Mini Review: A good boy with a domineering mother struggles to achieve an adult sexual relationship; needing to assert his independence, he joins the navy, but his craving for paternal authority (founded in his wish to form a superego strong enough to allow him to overcome his tendency towards a general sloppiness), which first appears as if it will be satisfied, is soon forced to confront the fact that there is such a thing as a bad (substitute) father – that is, so we are led to believe, a traumatised one.