A Red Hat by Gertrude Stein

"A dark grey, a very dark grey, a quite dark grey is monstrous ordinarily, it is so monstrous because there is no red in it. If red is in everything it is not necessary. Is that not an argument for any use of it and even so is there any place that is better, is there any place that has so much stretched out."

Empathy With The Protagonist

Why do so many people feel that to like a film they must 'like' the protagonist within it? For these people a film is to be rejected if the protagonist shows no weakness, no humanity, no affection, no guilt, and so on. If the protagonist is despicable, and the audience feels they cannot identify or empathise with them, there is a strong dislike of the film, and criticism of the director. Oh, how wrong these people are.

An example of this is Stanley Kubrick's 'Barry Lyndon'. Barry Lyndon is the protagonist that people cannot tolerate; a reprobate, with whom there is no relief but rather relentless indifference. He goes through his whole life without changing his ways. Perhaps there may be fleeting moments of guilt, but this only makes it worse as they are only fleeting - he is soon up to his old tricks again.

But this is precisely what makes Barry Lyndon a great film. If the protagonist is such that we cannot empathise or identify with them, what a blessing. This is a hard thing to achieve, and I admire the film-maker who manages to pull this off.

I believe that people do not like films with such characters for many reasons, but by and large because
1 - they need a happy ending, telling them that life is always ok in the end (very weak);
2 - they do not like to see traits in these characters which they too possess (the lack of common identity is simply suppressed);
3 - they are simply not very clever or interesting people.

If anyone would like to tell me of other films with such unlikeable characters I am most interested.