‘Tony’: Film Review

Many of us go to the cinema to witness sympathetic characters overcome external and internal obstacles and become better humans (or tragically die trying). There are archetypal heroes’ journeys—and now there are fresh archetypal heroines’ journeys emerging, too. These narratives inspire us to be more authentic, to the be heroes and heroines of our own lives.

A bildungsroman is a novel of formation that tracks a young protagonist through the shedding of childish illusions as they individuate and gain a mature understanding of themselves, life, and the world. Unlike a typical adventure, a bildungsroman insists that its hero pays for growth in genuine psychological currency: confusion, failure, grief, humiliation, and the process of taking accountability for one’s own mistakes, transcending one’s failures, and insuring that the same mistakes are never made again. Catcher in the Rye is one American version of a bildungsroman because Holden Caulfield’s journey through New York is a psychological rebellion and exploration, a wandering through artifice and loss that doesn’t allow him to escape unscathed. By the end, Holden arrives, through exhaustion and honesty, at a more complete and authentic understanding of himself, life, and the people he loves, which is precisely what the genre asks of its heroes and heroines. But could this not also be a reductionistic description of successful Lacanian psychoanalysis as well? And we could add a tinge of Tara Brach’s “radical acceptance” as well?

The new film Tony, about the early life of Anthony Bourdain, opens with a quote from his best-selling autobiography: “I was—to be frank—a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive, and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.” The film ends with Tony, barely, by chance, luck, or fate, not stealing from the mentor who tried to help him transition from boyhood to manhood, the mentor whose business Tony has already torched. It’s admirable to have the awareness that one is in need of a good ass-kicking, but what happens when that ass-kicking isn’t accompanied by sufficient remorse and contrition, or doesn’t come at all?

Compare the end of Tony with, for example, Sylvester Stallone’s level of contrition during his search for redemption toward the end of his 1997 film, Copland:

Stallone’s character, a New Jersey sheriff, recognizes that he messed up and wants to be a “stand-up guy.” Informed that he is too late, Stallone has the equivalent of a psychoanalytic “aha” moment, a visceral realization that draws people both to therapy and to the flickers.

While Tony borrows the outer shape of a bildungsroman, it doesn’t satisfy its inner requirements. It’s wonderful that Bourdain realized that he was a narcissistic, selfish lout, but in the film the character of Tony is practically devoid of remorse and contrition. Whereas Holden Caulfield earns whatever understanding he reaches through pages of confusion and honest self-accounting, Tony casually and narrowly avoids a life of crime. There is no scene in which he seeks out the mentor he has wronged and begs for forgiveness.

Don’t get me started on male brooding in films as a poor man’s emotional intelligence. I similarly loathed Jeremy Allen’s brooding in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere; similarly, Dominic Sessa’s excessive pouting while portraying Bourdain is simply poor filmmaking. “Show, don’t tell,” is the adage screenwriters are meant to adhere to. On-screen moping is a compensation for deficient screenwriting.

Thus, Tony delivers a happy ending that isn’t earned. Tony enters adulthood learning, mostly, that he could get away with being a lout and that the world would tolerate and maybe even reward his narcissism—which is the opposite of what a true coming-of-age story necessitates: a hero who becomes capable of guilt, who takes responsibility for the wreckage he caused, and authentically seeks redemption with sufficient contrition. Although Tony surreptitiously redeems himself at the end, he lacks sufficient remorse and thus remains for me a lout. This is what therapists often need to track in session—whether the patient’s level of contrition is sufficient to afford them true redemption.