The Edge – a class struggle

A multimillionaire named Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) owner of a high-end fashion magazine accompanies his trophy wife´s modelling shoot in the Alaskan wilderness. While location scouting he, the shoot’s photographer Robert Green  (Alec Baldwin) and the lighting technician Stephen (Harold Perrineau) crash in the wild there they find themselves in a ‘man versus nature’ situation where nowhere and nobody is safe.

SPOILERS – If you haven’t seen this movie this review is not for you. I’m going to tackle things a bit differently this time ‘round.

My premise

The edge is an interesting film as it is one of those movies that a lot have people have in fact seen. Yet, very few people bring it up in idle conversation. It’s a good movie but it isn’t good (or bad) enough to merit a mention.

The music, though, should be heard by more people; it’s a brilliant score.

I, however, wish to place this movie in the spotlight once more because I think it has a rather brilliant depiction of class struggle at its core.

Having said that though, I’m fairly sure that I’m reading things into this movie that neither the director nor the writer intended. So some of the insights I offer in this essay are in no sense the intention of the movie –but rather something that I see. A result of human history creeping in if you will.

So, in short: I’m going to ramble! This is going to be a reading of what I take from this movie. And it is all about class struggle.

Class struggle

This article of mine hinges on this (amateuristic) schema depicting ‘class struggle’. The basic premise states that: each person in a lower class (from left to right/ low to high) wants to reach the next class until –eventually- he/she is on top of the proverbial food chain.

The higher classes then try to resist and protect their position. They might 'help' the lower classes if they so wish. But this 'helping' shouldn't result in giving up their position.

However, I also use the ‘rules’ as set in the fictional world of The edge. For example: in this world women are lesser than men and each of them want to reach the next class for them.

Forgo about the feminist discussion here. In the world of The edge men are in charge women are second.

This is something to remember when reading this article: I’m not proclaiming anything about the real world around us. I’m making (for want of a better word) ‘deductions’ based on the fiction: The edge.

I will tackle each segment of this chronological schema per paragraph; starting with the status quo – the beginning of the movie.

Status Quo - The difference between swords and guns.

What’s the difference between swords and guns? Any person can fire a gun and kill somebody.

Though some strange people managed to make even the simplest method of doing this difficult by aiming ‘like a gangsta’.

It requires training to handle a sword. Put any common bloke against an experienced swordfighter and he dies. But put the same ‘regular bloke’ in a gunfight and there is a reasonable chance that he might win.

This has been the inequality throughout history. Rich people often had sword training. So they could control poorer people.

Think of the famous ‘morning duel’. The poor man who, for example, tried to defend his sister’s honour and got mowed down by the nasty rich aristocrat for his effort.

Going back to the Neanderthals; it was the biggest bloke with the biggest club; it all comes down to natural selection and survival of the fittest.

When Samuel Colt came around tables turned.

That’s why we like westerns! In basis Westerns are very black and white = fair-movies.

The same goes for military training. There are of course stories of brave men who were knighted by the king for their valour on the battlefield. But more often the strategic minds behind those battles were people in (financial) power. Again, because they were able to receive an education. It were often the king or noblemen who devised the battle plan not only because they could. But because they were actually best at it.

So to bring all this to The edge.

Wanting to reach a higher class.

At the start of The edge two characters are introduced: Robert (Baldwin) and Charles (Hopkins).

The movie emphasizes two facts about the dynamic between the characters. First, Robert wants to reach Charles’s class. And to achieve that he has already bedded Charles’s wife and set a silly murder-plot in motion.

Second, Robert is in every sense Charles’s equal (apart from bedding the wife). He is smart, ambitious, in control and, as a plus (according to the schema), younger.

Throughout the movie it is Robert who 'bulldozes’ through Charles’s mind-games!

When Stephen is ordered to find a flat rock Robert knows why.

When Charles accuses Robert of planning a murder Robert knows how to (hilariously) respond.

When Robert is pointing a gun at Charles – Robert knows –deep down- he’s going to lose the battle.

The only lacking in the character is that he is of the ‘working man’-class. But he has aspiration to rise. 

Sitting on top (alone)

Charles,then, is rich. We (the viewers) don’t know whether he was a self-made man or if his family was rich to begin with.

But at the same time Charles is very fallible. The status quo (the beginning of the movie) highlights these ‘failures in character’. And I wish to shortly describe them here:

Barking orders

For starters Charles is so used to ‘barking orders’ that he doesn’t even have to anymore. He just appears next to a troubled shoot and offers some advice regarding a banana-peel:

"Did you know you can shine shoes with the inside of a banana peel?"

Not only is this quote some handy advice to have; It can also be read as a warning: ‘Continue the shoot’ or ‘I know how to make shoes shine, why don’t you?’ (as repeated by Robert). His mere presence makes people uncomfortable. It’s lonely at the top.

Education

But this quote shows a second thing very early on. That Charles is, not only, highly educated (a good school he went to). But that he kept his education going throughout his life. This is also intimidating. In fact, he uses his knowledge, not his wit, to ‘put people down’.

The problem with this attitude is that the Charles-character tends to see things the people ‘below’ him don’t see. Or, at least, that’s what he thinks.

So the initial bear-prank was a sound wake-up call for the character.

Any person would be wary of possible bear attacks. But because Charles is so used to being in control and usually being the smartest person in the room he falls for the prank hook-line-and-sinker.

In laments terms: He’s smart enough to understand the dangers. But too smart to realize that this could be staged.

It’s like the Einstein-story: that Einstein could draw down the mysteries of the universe but, at the same time, couldn’t grasp the basic concept of a clothespin. If you are smart you neglect the ‘little things’. And this ‘blind spot’ is what a person trying to reach a higher class uses.

Young versus old

But apart from knowledge and control there is a third failure in the Charles -character that is out of his control: he’s old.

Aging, in the world of The edge, is seen as a bad thing. Charles may be wise and in control, he is also the man who ‘scored’ a trophy wife. This character struggles with his age.

As he is sitting on top of the food-chain there is this constant worry that somebody younger will replace him (the Richard-character).

To put it into the above perspective rather literary in the third act: Hopkins is swinging a sword, Baldwin pulls out a gun.

Wanting to escape

Which brings us to the way the Charles-character tries to escape these weaknesses: escaping class struggle.

As I said before Charles keeps his knowledge up to date. He likes reading booklets with survival tips. Quirky knowledge that nobody will ever need to use (‘How to make fire from ice’) – like the aforementioned ‘banana peel’. This is his escape – this is what he uses to fantasize about.

And to put salt in the wound the movie inserts a character that isn’t young, isn’t smart and isn’t in control. Played by (the always brilliant) L.Q. Jones. This man is quite literally living in God’s paradise and, for the three mentioned reasons, he isn’t a danger to the Hopkins character. In fact he is Charles’s ‘dream’. He is the man he envies. The man he’d like to be.

Yet, even this ‘non-danger’ tries to lure Charles into a scheme that involves theme parks and waterslides.

So, this character, cannot see what he already has. This man wants to reach a higher class (according to the schema: by getting rich) and is willing to destroy for it.

Charles initially didn’t see this. So the reveal that this man is just as ‘ugly’/’clawing at the top’ as the rest of 'them' is heartbreaking to him.

That is why Charles gets onto the plane in the first place. He’s escaping. He’s escaping the fact that the one person in the group who shouldn’t have posed a threat but became a threat.

But then again, he’s still on the plane with Baldwin’s character.

The bear – The class struggle put on hold (but not).

When the plane crashes and the bear attacks the class schema changes. For starters it becomes a ‘man against nature’-story. Nature goes above man. But then, also, for Charles, each and every one of his weaknesses is either amplified or turned around. To tackle them again:

Barking orders

First, as Charles is so used to barking orders from the top, he is amazed to discover that –in a time of need- sometimes people (wilfully or not) disobey him.

“It puts the smell of blood in the air.”

I’m talking about the bloody handkerchief. Charles is so convinced that he has control of the situation that he fails to see that other people might (accidentally) sabotage him. His failure becomes eminent. Even though this direct order falls squarely into the category of ‘seeing things other people don’t see’. The same bit that pranked him several scenes before.

Education: Old versus young

Working man and rich man (pretty much) become one in the wild. There is no financial struggle when there isn’t an ATM-machine within a fifty mile radius.

But there also occurs a strange cultural perception: Old and young switch sides.

There is this common idea that older people are wiser than younger people (which is absolutely untrue). So in a crisis situation people tend to turn to the oldest person in the room. The wise-man/woman archetype.

Because Charles is very smart and educated this choice is actually rather logical in The edge.

The Baldwin-character questions it. But that’s because he’s Charles’s equal and has tasted how it is to sit at the top.

But still it is a fool’s choice.

In fact it is a nice mind game to consider what happened if Charles hadn’t boarded the plane. The two survivors would have stayed put and probably get rescued rather quickly.

Everything is brought back to the basics: men are in danger. They turn to the most suitable candidate around to get them out of said danger -Whereby Robert has no time to worry about his murder-ploy. He needs Charles to stay alive. Once they succeed it’s back to the old ways.

However, I argue, that this choice for a ‘suitable candidate’ is based on previous knowledge/is based on the class-hierarchy of before.

Considering the way he fell for that prank in the Status Quo-setting, in the wild he makes the same mistake. As Charles makes a compass and (pretty much) orders the two others to join him he fails to see that he could be wrong. When the failure, then, is brought to light he then fails to see that other people might not respond to this ‘mistake’ as commonly as he.

It’s the ‘barking orders’ and, perhaps, a lack of empathy on the Charles-character behalf.

Throw a bear into the mix: wanting to escape.
This, of course, leads to one of the scariest bear attacks in movie history.

The revenant has now, obviously, taken over that title. But I do wish to give a shout out to Back Country which has, without a doubt, the most gruesome bear attack ever put on film. It is tremendously grose and yet it works in the movie because it only shows the reality of such an event – it doesn’t all out relish in the blood and gore.

The bear in this sense can be seen as an outside threat that brings the two classes together (that breaks the schism between ‘Working man’ and ‘Rich man’ and inverts the ‘old’ versus ‘young’). Like a foreign army invading. But once that enemy has been vanquished they turn on each other one more.

But there is more!

As the L.Q. Jones’s-character proved before it is assumable that time and time again Charles has been confronted with disappointment of not meeting people who enjoy him for who he is but only care for his influence and wealth.

Because Charles is (therefore) so lonely, he, for years, ‘escapistly’ indulged himself with daydreaming about life in the wild. Then when, due to the plane crash and the subsequent bear attack, he got his chance he bloomed into his wish. He loves it so much that for a short time he never wants to leave this rural world. Finally there is no difference between ‘working man’ and ‘rich man’ there is only ‘man against nature’. There is no ‘class’  to escape from, everybody is equal (ly tasty to a bear). The ‘mental escape’ made real.

By the death of the bear (and thus saving not only himself but his newfound friend), however, the class-struggle re-emerges. A re-emergence that in fact saves Charles from his daydreaming.

Because Robert challenges Charles on his place in the ‘real’ (urban) world. After the bear attack does Charles realize that his fantasies about the wild were just a pipe-dream. Would he want to live in the wild? Definitely. But could he run his business or keep his wife there? No.

After the bear – the class struggle re-emerges.

The one character Charles meets in the movie that is most like how he wants to be betrays him by his desire to belong to a higher class (Jones). The only friend who, in the end, took him for who he is died because of this same desire.

Would Robert have gone through with his plan if his track through the wilderness hasn’t brought him on the brink of madness? Did the taste of civilization he got in the end trigger an attack? These are questions one could ask.

The fact is that, in the movie, the whole murder plot is underused. In fact it is so underused that it actually feels out of place. But it still works in various psychological ways.

For starters Charles knows full well that his wife doesn’t truly love him -for his looks at least; old versus young, again – it resurfaces in the third act in the same way it did in the first when old isn’t automatically wisdom anymore.

Charles is smart enough to realize this. But he’s too out of touch with the ‘common folk’ to expect something dangerous at foot. In the same way that he failed to realize that his direct orders wouldn’t be followed by the word.

In that sense the: “How are you planning to kill me?”-quote feels out of place. Too direct.

What the movie is playing for, however, is using this quote as a basis to build a friendship between two characters that class-wise shouldn’t exist. Only for, in the end, class struggle to rise it’s ugly head again.

The death of Robert, therefore, becomes a metaphor. Charles is smart and has been at the top of the food chain for so long that he knows how to manipulate the ‘lower classes’. Once the playing-field became Status Quo-again Robert never had a chance.

Now we’re not talking ‘man’ against nature anymore. We are talking about two equal men. One old, one young. Of course the older one wins. He’s been around longer (plus he escapistly indulged in ‘surviving in the wild’-fiction). He knows how the games are played. Robert, with all his ambition, never stood a chance against him.

And to emphasizes this Robert dies from something that anybody in a urban area would have survived easily with one trip to the hospital. If the class pyramid is: ‘Rich man’, ‘working man’, ‘nature’. Than the Charles-character ‘forces’ the Robert-character down the chain to be destroyed by nature.

When they get rescued it is the prize for Charles. Not only did he reshape the playing field by killing the bear. He actually managed (in his mind –yet, I disagree) to use this ‘manipulation’ to get rescued. At the end he feels that his influence saved the day. Even though it killed both of his companions!

The rescue – putting everybody back in place (and crying over it).

Even though they were thrown back several classes Charles always kept the upper hand. And with it he does the one thing he knows how: force people down (literally when you think about Robert’s fate).

Now, to talk about the only woman part in this movie Mickey (played by Elle Macpherson).

She doesn’t get a lot to do in the movie except look pretty (which she does marvellously). But then the final shot of her face. That left me puzzled.

The Robert-character says, as he is dying, that she never knew what he was up to. That she was never ‘in’ on it.

But when Charles gives her the watch she gives him this ‘look’. This could be interpreted as a look of shame because he found out about her infidelity or something more (that she did –in fact- know about the murder plot).

Considering Robert it is rather unlikely that he would come up with this scheme to murder Charles. But he could. So her guilt is left ambiguous. 

However, if I follow my above schema two things become clear. First, she, a woman, wants to rise in class. She’s already married a rich man but he is old. Switch him to a young man and she is as high as she can get (according to the fictional world of The edge).

Second, assuming that people from higher classes sometimes wish to 'help' lower classes (like Charles putting on the cloak of the 'wise old man'-archetype in the wild to take Robert and Stephen by the hand), Robert's dying protective words about Mickey are questionable. He's dying so why should he put Mickey's position in jeopardy?

This is an interesting element that often returns in the movie: A higher class helping a lower class. Either by (Charles) barking orders in a 'father knows best'-kind of way or Robert making sure that Mickey stays safe. Whereas the first example let's Charles retain his position while Robert's dying words (because he's dying) let's Mickey keep hers.

So by giving Mickey the watch Charles tells her that he, basically, doesn’t care about the murder plot or the infidelity. However, she should stop trying to reach the next class because now he knows.

That’s one part of the reason why Charles cries in the end. He learned that he failed in the ‘status quo’ world. He failed to see that those people below him would try to get his position by not following his orders (like the bloody handkerchief).

But he also cries because, when the playing field was levelled, man versus nature, he made a great friend; an equal. Only for this friendship to be destroyed when civilization came into reach. (the loss of his wife –I believe- comes last; even though, I believe, he truly loves her). He laments that moment in time when he didn't have to worry about class struggle.

Conclusion

So what to make of this six-page ramblings of mine?

I wanted to write an interpretative piece! Just looking at something and project my thoughts. Perhaps even invoke some sort of discussion. Of course I don’t have any true evidence to back this up (I only have the VHS of The edge, not a DVD with director commentary for starters).

But that doesn’t matter.

Like the old meme goes: “The curtains are blue”. What your English teacher thinks it means: ‘It represents a feeling of melancholy and despair’. What the author meant: ‘The curtains are blue!’