Starting
with a quotation from Thomas Wolfe that loneliness is the
"inevitable fact of human existence," the film God’s
Lonely Man traces in a very tedious manner the life
of Ernest Rackman (played by Michael Wyle), whose character
resembles Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver (1976).
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, when blue laws once closed
the town to the sale of liquor and pornography, Ernest left
when the repeal of the blue laws brought fundamental changes
to his home town. Rather than moving to another town with
blue laws, however, Ernest strangely moved to Las Vegas, felt
lonely amid the transient environment, and then headed for
Hollywood, yet another sin city, where we see him indulge
in drugs, preferring Hispanic to African American suppliers
while reselling a portion to Caucasians for extra money. To
relate to people, thus overcoming loneliness, he works for
a year or so in an adult bookstore, where he hassles gay patrons
and tries to seduce the owner’s daughter Meradith (played
by Justine Bateman). For the latter indiscretion, Ernest is
fired by the boss Clarence (played by J. C. Quinn). Loneliness
and guilt again overcome him, and at one point he cuts off
his left pinkie while high on drugs, and he even kills a drug
supplier Rick (played by Wallace Langham). While on the street
one day, he encounters Christiane Birsh (played by Heather
McComb), a fourteen-year-old prostitute who tells him that
her stepfather abuses her. Believing that a teenage girl should
not be molested, he cleans up his apartment, stripping the
walls of pornography, and visits the Birsh apartment, posing
as a police officer who has come to remove Christiane to juvenile
authorities. She then leaves home and lives with him, but
he resists Christiane’s sexual advances, preferring to provide
a protective love. She informs him that her sister Samantha
disappeared after agreeing to make a film for a notorious
pornographic director. She supplies him with the name of the
contact for the filming, Keith (played by Kieran Mulroney).
Ernest then locates Keith, shows interest in seeing a film
that features women and violence, and Keith offers to satisfy
his interest at the price of $1,000 for a screening and $5,000
for a copy of the videotape. Ernest agrees. That evening Keith
takes Ernest to the home of the filmmaker, Pollo (played by
Paul Dooley). After coughing up $1,000, he sees a five-minute
snuff film, poses as vice squad officer, and kills everyone
in the house. Afterward, he kills himself, convinced as before
that his life has no meaning. For those who believe that God’s
Lonely Man also has no meaning, writer-director Francis
von Zerneck, Jr., semiautobiographically appears to be saying
through his characters, especially Ernest’s voiceovers, that
children today grow up in an environment where advertising
so sells products through sexual appeals that they believe
that teenage sex is the norm, resulting in meaningless relationships,
loneliness, sex without love, and violence. The commodification
and sexualization of almost everything, he implies, has created
a new kind of society at the end of the twentieth century
that resembles a jungle. Rather than presenting a role model
of an ideal person for the times, all the characters in the
film are corrupted by money, sex, and violence. The unsolved
question in the film is why a wholesome upbringing in Grand
Rapids so unprepared Ernest to deal with all the unpleasantness,
but the answer would doubtless explain why taking care of
Christiane failed to provide redemption. Filmviewers never
really find any redeeming quality in Ernest to feel sympathy
for him. Something rotten must have been in the city of Grand
Rapids before the blue laws were repealed. Contrary to the
title, Ernest is not so much lonely as he is bored, purposeless,
and rootless. MH
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