Sling Blade

I don't even know how to begin to classify this movie. Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Is it a classic? I think it proves, or will prove, to be all of the above. Billy Bob Thorton plays Karl Childers, a mildly retarded, naive, enigmatic, down-to-earth genius that may be beyond stereotype. As a viewer of this movie at some point, you may find yourself questioning, "Is he retarded?" Is he ignorant?" "Is he too sheltered?" "Is he stupid?" "Is he brilliant?" The answer may be a resounding "yes" to all of those questions.

Karl seems to be blind to the ugliness of life, and only views it as it seems it should be. He lives in a small world of idealism that doesn't allow the ugliness of what actually is. He befriends an oppressed child and tells him the way he believes life ought to be, and proves he means what he says.

Karl is certainly not one who can't learn. We find out in the movie his learning is abruptly limited by circumstances. Extremely observant, and yet his life exists in a very limited realm of what can be observed. He doesn't play with other kids as a child. He doesn't return home from school to watch television, or talk with his family. He doesn't draw, ride a bicycle, play kickball, etc. He returns to his "outhouse" home, outside the main home in a shelter with a ditch for him to sleep, occasionally taught Bible studies by his mother. Most of the time he simply sits in his makeshift home, starting at the wall.

What results from his childhood experiences is abnormal reaction to abnormal exposure to normal reality. One day, he leaves his outshouse to find his mother doing the macarena with his father's boss. As he understands it from the Bible studies, "this ought not to be." Believing to do the right thing, he hacks them both to death with a sling blade, and is sent to a mental institution in the deep south of the United States in what appears to be the 1940's or '50's.

The movie opens with an annoying roomate at the institution that tells stories to Karl that seem to noticeably disturb, but ultimately bounce off of him, as the rest of the world as he experiences it eventually will. He seems to be incapable of assimilating into the real world; however, some things ought not to be, ummmhmmm...

Upon release from the institution for good behavior, Karl doesn't really know what to do with himself, or how to live in the outside world. It's too big, ummmhmmm. He is overwhelmed with freedom. He falls in love with "French Fried Potators", as suggested by the confused minimum-waged "genius" of the outside world he orders from. He doesn't know when he visits his newfound, young friend, to knock to let him know he's there, but simply waits until someone comes around, perhaps as he would have lived at the institution.

Not knowing what to do in this great big world, he returns to the institution, and the psychiatrist there hooks him up with a job, knowing how keen he is with fixing lawnmower engines. Karl's coworker, who is supposed to be normal, doesn't have a clue when a lawnmower seems unfixable. "It needs gas", Karl says, or something to that effect. "You have to put gas in it." Brilliant observation for those of us who always tend to overlook the obvious.

The mother of the child Karl befriends is naive, thinking her son has befriended a harmless retard, but her friend (enacted well by John Ritter) is convinced he has ulterior motives. He takes Karl out to lunch, and wants to know what profound thoughts Karl is entrenched in. "I was thinking I'd like to have some more of them french fried potators", Karl frankly lets him know.

Who is this Karl? What are his motives? There seems to be three men in the life of one woman (Linda played by Natalie Canerday). Which one of them is real of those men? Is Karl just a harmless retard, or in some way more than that? Is Vaughan (John Ritter) just a queer, or an overprotective friend? And Doyle, a belligerent drunk jerk, or a belligerent drunk psycho? Who, what, and how, would these men pose danger for her and her son that would interfere with her trying to pick up the pieces of an actualized suicidal husband and father?

Maybe the world is too big for us all. Karl punctuates his relationship with his annoying roomate with something to this effect: "I'm not going to listen to you anymore." Maybe that's good advice for us all to follow.