Edmond, directed by Stuart Gordon, is based on a play by David Mamet that was first performed in the early 1980s. The plot centers on an Everyman named Edmond Burke (played by William H. Macy, the Everyman in Focus (2001) who defied public prejudices to stand up for decency). Edmond‘s Everyman, who has been politically correct during his adult life, all of a sudden he feels good by expressing prejudices and serves as the prototypic “angry white male.” Edmond is forty-seven years old, perhaps too old and out of shape to join a “fight club” for alienated, disaffected white males, as portrayed in Fight Club (1999). After work ends on a Friday, he gets a Tarot reading that predicts death and violence. When he returns home, he blurts out to his wife (played by Rebecca Pidgeon) that he is fed up, indeed he has been fed up with his role as her husband for many years. After she blows her stack at his untimely confession, he leaves home in search of something. That something turns out to be sex with an attractive woman. However, he objects to the high cost of commercial sex at a nightclub and at a peep show. He tries to win at three card monte on a street in New York, but he loses; when he asks to see all the cards, the two black men running the scam take him into an alley and mug him. Penniless, he seeks a room for the night, so he pawns a ring. However, he buys a knife that is for sale in the same pawnshop. When another African American tries to shake him down, he pulls out his knife, slashes him, and kicks him, thereby not only getting even for the three card monte scam artists but also feeling exhilarated that at last he has acted in a masculine manner in a society that has demasculinized him; he is a White man standing up to Blacks. Sharing his joy with Glenna (played by Julia Stiles), a twenty-three-year-old barmaid, he asks her to take him home for sex. Fascinated by his sermonizing about the virtue of experiencing life though spontaneous action by conquering one’s fears, she takes him home. But in her apartment he continues to rant while brandishing his knife. When she becomes distraught, he slashes her to death. He then cleans himself up and rides the subway, where he tries to compliment a passenger (played by Patricia Belcher) for wearing a beautiful hat. She ignores him, so he brandishes a knife and frightens the woman, who reports him to the police. Soon, Edmond is arrested, charged with Glenna’s murder, and jailed. As he walks naked to his cell, prisoners throw toilet paper from their cells, as if to say that he is full of shit. His wife comes to visit but leaves immediately after he admits to her that he murdered the waitress. Then one day, a tall, handsome, muscular, young African American (played by Bokeem Woodbine) enters his cell, orders him to give him a blowjob and slugs him until he complies. Subsequently, he tells the prison chaplain (played by Jack Wallace) that he does not believe in religious crap; he also admits that he was sodomized, but the prison guards are unimpressed when he complains. The surprise ending reveals that he eventually finds happiness in an unexpected way. Although Mamet’s play Edmond originally served as a character study of White male neoconservatives (inspired by a false reading of the philosophy of Edmund Burke) who revolted against affirmative action by voting for Reagan, filmviewers may find a more contemporary allegory, with Edmond as the prototype for the White males who not only voted for George W. Bush but also continue to support reckless policies to bomb, kill, and torture those who are perceived as evil. Similar to Edmond’s conviction as a murderer, the Supreme Court in 2006 identified Bush as a war criminal. MH
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