In a society where all supposedly have a chance at the American dream, it seems strange that poverty within the United States is on the rise, and many not gripped in its clutches are still dissatisfied with their lifework. How are these seemingly unhappy destinies determined compared with those that are happy, wealthy, and successful? The mystery of fate and its determining force for each individual continues to be one of the great American struggles. Far prior to the establishment of the U.S.A., theologians were arguing about the interplay of divine predestination and human free-will.
Philosophically speaking, Doc Hollywood (1991) is about a young doctor destined by providence to leave the interstate for a short time during his journey to the American dream in the West. This detour opens the "Doc's" eyes to an aspect of American life he never knew existed: the small town. After his discovery, he is fated to leave small-town life and move onward to Los Angeles. However; after arriving at his destination in the West, the doctor has a choice to make about the combination of wealth and happiness. Is his choice of whether or not to return to small-town life a decision made entirely freely, or is it a choice already dictated by providence?
Thus arises the ongoing conflict between destination and free-will intertwined within the film's plot. Perhaps the earliest writings which may aid in bringing a theological perspective to the way these seeming contradictions play out are those of Saint Augustine:
Film director and screenwriter, Paul Schrader (Cat People, The Last Temptation of Christ), writing about Robert Bresson's, Pickpocket, has this to say about the interplay of free-will and predestination:
Translating the ancient idea of theological predestination and free-will from the pages of doctrine to the American celluloid of Doc Hollywood may seem quite a jump. However, it is important to realize that film speaks a visceral language all its own.
Films, like literature, convey their profoundest meaning indirectly. The deep questions of the human spirit are inseparable from the stories we tell about ourselves. In order to hear the question, we must hear the story, and watch it, and "feel" it. In this way we begin to discern the values we hold most dear. (May 202)
Based on the story, the director is not only given the responsibility to make the narrative cohesive, but according to Bywater and Sobchack:
Motion pictures can be analyzed from the perspective of composition and images, and this is every bit as legitimate as writing about the themes contained within the drama. Timothy Corrigan states in Writing About Film: "composition of a scene through the film image is what distinguishes film from drama, and is another important dimension of the movies that a good writer should be able to discuss" (60). The driving force behind the images in Doc Hollywood comprehends this concept quite well.
Scottish director, Michael Caton-Jones (Memphis Belle, Scandal) understands that one of the major themes of Doc Hollywood is about the interplay of free-will and predestination and the American dream. His film utters insight through the visceral language of its images and the "mise en scene" of its compositions. The function of the film determines its "mise en scene" and the subsequent framing of the images (Bordwell and Thompson 177). Specifically, Caton-Jones creates what shall be referred to as "moving depth" or the "mise en scene" of motion. His moving and changing compositions on the screen often represent the character, the obstacle, and the final character destination.
The director used movement, defined by Roy Paul Madsen, in two different ways: by the subjects in front of the camera and movement by the camera (or its lens) (140-141). A moving camera, a moving actor, or both are frequently used in order to bring shots into full compositional formation. Going a step beyond mere static compositions of complexity, the film continues to pave the road of filmic evolution and brings the element of movement to create constantly changing complex compositioning.
Doc Hollywood uses movement to give the viewer a new point of view or to clarify the obstacle of the narrative situation. The theme of journey toward destiny (whether by free-will or predestination) is reflected and echoed in the film's compositions of motion. This flowing cinematic staging is used to create "feelings and thoughts" through kinetic patterns that relate to the literal or symbolic ideas of the plot (Bordwell and Thompson 137).
This film is primarily a comedy about the strangeness of genuine smalltown life in the south; but the comedic element does not detract from the film's strong visual communication. Ben Stone (Michael J. Fox) is a young doctor just finished with his residency and moving on to interview with a plastic surgeon in Los Angeles. On the way, he has an accident and destroys the fence of a judge residing in Grady, S.C. The judge sentences Stone to thirty- two hours of community service in the Grady memorial hospital. During his stay, Stone encounters mayor Nick Nickelson (David Ogden Stiers), who tries to convince Stone to stay and replace the aging Dr. Hoak (Barnard Hughes) as the town doctor; a beautiful young ambulance driver, Lou (Julie Warner), who vows never to leave Grady; and many other odd local patients. The young doctor spends most of his time trying to get himself out of Grady and attempting to have a one night stand with Lou before he leaves. Along the way, Stone discovers an important truth about himself and about humanity.
Doc Hollywood is not religious in content. In fact, it seems to purposefully avoid religion (strange, considering the church is a strong social factor affecting small Southern towns). The only mention of the Bible at all comes when Stone is reprimanded for his language, and told to try to use other "F'" words such as "fiddlesticks" since Grady is in the heart of the Bible belt. Additionally, the judge later in the film claims that he could not call himself a "Christian" if he did not commute the rest of Stone's sentence in exchange for saving Dr. Hoak's life.
From the glaring absence of religion in this particular movie, one is unable to take providence literally; therefore, it must be viewed in transcendent symbolism. There is an unseen force working the strange events of Ben Stone's life that will save him from his miserable career choice and bring him an understanding about the true joys of humanity.
Composition reveals the symbolic meaning behind Doc Hollywood's plot. One of the film's first scenes borders on subtle surrealism, but echoes the approaching destiny for Stone at the end of the film. The scene plays out in a locker room in a Washington D.C. hospital as Ben's friends give him a farewell party. The scene opens with the friends scattered variously in the locker room forming no strong compositional patterns, but the friends say "good-bye" and move offscreen right, leaving Stone at the bottom left of the frame and Stone's best friend at the bottom right of the frame. Between the two of them is a bench that cuts the screen in half. It stretches from the bottom of the shot directly back in depth and up in frame to lead to another set of lockers in the background placed at the top of the frame. Caton- Jones uses "color to contribute to the three-dimensionality" of the scene (Boggs 176), thus creating purposeful depth within the frame. Shining on the back lockers right where the bench cuts the shot is a mysterious, surrealistic, pinkish light that seems to have no source.
In the course of the conversation between Ben and his friend, it is obvious that Ben is not at complete peace with his decision to move (even though he would claim to be). The friend, on the other hand, does not suffer from internal anxieties created by his own destiny. Ben wants to be internally where his friend is. However, there is an obstacle in the composition that divides Ben and his friend: the bench. From the viewers' point of view the only way around the bench is to move backwards towards the pink light and come around to the other side where Ben's friend is standing. Granted, it seems that Ben could merely step over the bench or move to the front of the bench (which is not seen on screen), but the compositional pattern laid out on the screen specifically represents Ben's destiny. In the story, Ben will apparently take a step backwards on the career path, instead of a step forward. Ultimately, this step will bring him out of the Deep South and into the West. The clinic that Stone will work at in California is filled with many pinkish colors that purposefully resemble the color of the light shining on the back lockers in this early shot of the film. This frame foreshadows that Ben must come to the pink light, the clinic in L.A., before he can arrive on the other side of the bench where lies inner peace, represented by the friend.
The inciting incident that precedes Ben's accident clearly indicates that Caton- Jones is attempting to show providence at work in the life of the young doctor. The frame opens from a high angle (giving an omniscient point of view) looking down on Stone's car as he passes a hay truck on his way to the interstate and the west. The camera cranes up after the car has passed to reveal what providence has done. By craning, the viewer no longer believes, as Stone does, that he is on the way to the interstate; rather the viewer now knows that the hay truck, which came along at precisely the right time, blocked Ben's view, causing him to miss the turn off for the interstate. The composition enhances the call of destiny in Ben's life, spoken mockingly by Mayor Nickelson as the voice of providence a few scenes later, "Get off the interstate Ben Stone."
Ben Stone has an odd accident in which he swerves to miss a cow and runs his car headlong through a white picket fence, freshly hand-painted by the judge of Grady. When Ben gets out of the car, he is surrounded by human obstacles symbolically and literally within the frame. In the last shot of the scene, Ben is standing at the left rear tire of his car gazing at the wrecked piece of metal that is his prized possession. Stone symbolically stares at his journey which has been sidetracked. In the same shot, Caton- Jones dollies the camera to reveal what Ben is looking at to the right of the screen: four standing human obstacles in a diagonal line beginning in the bottom right of the frame and moving up to the top middle. Again the director has used motion from the camera to create a strange sense of "mise en scene." The composition has become a skewed triangle formed by the four residents of Grady on one side and Stone on the other. The wrecked car separates the compositional triangle. Symbolically this composition defines the entire film. Caton-Jones moved the right side of the frame from being a wrecked car to becoming a set of diagonally placed humans; and these four humans form a symbolic wall.
The director then cuts to Stone's point of view, to give a clear view of the four human obstacles that Ben must overcome. Each human represents the four separate conflicts that the doctor must confront before he can move on in his journey. At the bottom fight of the screen, after the camera has dollied light, stands the judge. He represents the sentence of time in the town and gives Ben the thirty-two hours of community medical service that must be performed before he can leave Grady. Next to the judge stands the sheriff who represents the township of Grady. The young doctor must overcome the wiles of the town and mayor Nick Nickelson trying to keep him on as a new residing physician. Ben must stand up and fight the townspeople (represented by the sheriff) and show them that he cannot be convinced to stay before they will allow him to leave. Next to the sheriff is Malvin, the head auto- mechanic. Ben must get his car fixed before he can leave; and, in Grady, finding the parts for his old Porsche will not be an easy task.
Finally, standing next to Malvin the mechanic, is his young apprentice, Lane, who has romantic ideals about fixing German cars. The apprentice is a symbol of the romantic barrier that Ben will face with Lou. Stone will not leave until love and romance are resolved with her. Granted, the young auto- apprentice, Lane, standing as a symbol for the romance between Lou and Ben, is a more difficult point to achieve. However, the communication barrier of the heart between Ben and Lou is reflected in communicative linguistic barriers of the mouth with Lane. Several examples include Ben screaming at a dog to keep away from his car and the apprentice mistaking it as Ben screaming at him. The young mechanic simply does not realize that Ben is screaming at the dog and not at him. In another scene, Ben arrives at the garage to find Lane speaking German and cannot make heads or tails of what he is talking about until Malvin arrives to translate. In matters of love, Ben and Lou have as much trouble in communication as Ben and Lane.
Since Lou will be the greatest obstacle for Dr. Stone to hurdle, the director reveals her in a cinematic surrealistic fashion that can be interpreted again as the unseen force at work in Ben's life. Prior to seeing Lou for the first time, Ben is sewing a friendship blanket and drinking moonshine with three of Grady's upstanding female senior citizens. These three women bare a strange resemblance to the three witches of King Lear, but they predict a hopeful destiny for Stone instead of a dark one. They promise he will dream of the one he will marry, because he is the first one to sleep underneath the blanket. As Ben falls asleep, his thoughts turn to a beautiful dream. Using backlighting and slow motion, the director presents the character of Lou bathing nude in the lake. The viewer sees no detail of the body, only the curvature of its form. For Ben, this dream is not about sex, but about sexuality and the being of a woman, who is still only a dark form to him.
Caton-Jones follows this beautiful scene with one that has the exact opposite effect of its predecessor. The frame opens with the camera on a stedicam following Ben, who has just risen from sleep. He is moving towards the lake, when from out of the water comes the naked Lou. The doctor uses a series of close-ups and quick edits to elicit a response from the viewer. He shows no shame with the close-ups of Lou's naked body and Ben's staring eyes. By using this technique, Caton-Jones has sacrificed the beauty that he achieved in the previous shot, and has given over to what could be considered lucid filmic tactics. However, there are two points to be made in his defense. Ultimately Ben will take Lou's naked soul back to the lake and will be confronted with choices of her vulnerability. So the scene here with Lou coming naked from the lake completely invulnerable is the beginning of an interesting change of Lou's emotion that will occur. Secondly, the director wants the viewer to feel titillated the way Ben Stone feels staring at Lou now, and the way he will feel during the scene with her in the boat near the end of the film. Dr. Stone must choose to overcome his primal desires because of the new truth that he will discover about himself and this female.
The doorway into the third act of the film begins in the Grady squash parade. Ben stands away from the crowd on a porch and views as the residents march by him. Lou and her little girl come marching along behind the squash band. The director for the second time in the film uses slow motion combined with camera motion in the form of a pan from left to right to view Lou marching in the parade. The camera angle is from Ben's point of view and he watches as a beautiful Lou comes by, giving him a slight glance. However, getting in the way of his view are the heads of undefined individuals in the crowd. He cannot see her clearly because the heads get in his way. The composition with the blocked line of sight signifies that he will not be able to have Lou as much as he wants her, because there are unseen barriers that block his path. These barriers are represented visually by undefined people within the shot.
Again, this time at the squash carnival, Caton-Jones uses faceless, unidentified people in his composition to define the barrier between man and woman. Moving in circles around Ben and Lou, the camera captures them sharing a dance. But the director allows other unrecognizable dancers to get in the way of the shot. These dancers represent barriers between the two as a couple. Viscerally things are in the way of the dance; symbolically things are still in the way of the relationship. Using slow motion, the unseen force again moves in Ben's life, and the filmmaker uses surrealism as the other dancers blocking the view suddenly disappear. The viewer can now see the two together clearly. All of the other people that were on the dance floor and in the background are gone. This is what it would be like if there were no internal barriers in these two character's lives: a perfect but unreal moment. Reality then suddenly sets in again, and all the unknown residents return to the shot as the film returns back to normal speed. The barriers of reality have returned.
Perhaps for a clear moment in this strange sequence the viewer has seen the future; destiny or providence will have them together. On the other hand, maybe insight has been visually presented into the heart of choices for Ben Stone. His ultimate free-will choice will be in Grady with Lou. The balance in Stone's freedom is unclear.
Ben is informed that his car is repaired and his sentence is commuted all in the course of a minute. The mayor then tells Stone that he hopes Ben never forgets the smile that Grady put on his face as he moves on, thus signifying that the town has given up hopes of him staying. Save the relationship with Lou, three of the four barriers are gone and Ben is left alone. The shot of mayor Nickelson leaving Stone is enhanced with a composition making use of foreground and background. Moving with a dolly, Ben and Nick come to stand in front of a traditional Grady home. In the front yard stands a woman and children all watching a barbecue grill that is virtually on fire. The woman calls to the mayor for help. In the frame, he moves into the background to help the woman, leaving Ben alone in the foreground. Then in the next series of shots, Ben is viewed at a distance walking and watching the night celebration of the squash festival. The townspeople remain in frame physically distant from him as they go about their play. Ben sees the life of the town, but compositionally and literally he is not part of it.
Lou has decided to give into a one night stand with Stone. She takes him back to the lake (in a boat) and is ready to give her naked self to him. Caton-Jones composes the boat and Stone in the middle of the frame. On every side they are surrounded with the color of fireworks falling down around them and being reflected back at them in the water. The fireworks not only have a symbolic sexual connotation, but also serve as the light of annunciation from the unseen force into Ben's soul. This composition is not marked by depth, as in many of the preceding shots, but by shape. The color forms a circle and the face of Ben Stone is at the heart of that circle. Grady has given him new insight into life, and the great ladies' man, Dr. Benjamin Stone, tells Lou that he cannot sleep with her. The final barrier is gone and for the first time in the film, he has been given free-will to make an important choice.
Now Ben must leave. He races for the interstate in his newly repaired car. The composition, from a camera placed in Ben's car, reveals in the background at the top center of the frame an airplane billboard with a sign that reads, "Los Angeles ... easy come, easy go." But on the bottom left screen stands a resident of Grady whom Stone has befriended, crying out, in need of help for his pregnant wife. The composition reveals a choice. Ben can move in the background to Los Angeles or his path can turn and he can stop and help. Although providence has created this encounter, Ben now has another free-will decision to make. Life in Grady has had a profound impact; Ben stops to help.
While delivering a child in the back of a station wagon, a sleepy trucker plows into Ben's Porsche parked on the road. Caton-Jones then creates a stunning image of symbolic complexity. Again from a very high angle, an omniscient point of view, on the bottom left frame sits the station wagon with the newborn baby, the mother, and Dr. Stone inside. On the bottom fight of screen, sits Stone's wrecked car. Dividing the two is the highway stretching into the background to the billboard that forms the apex of the compositional triangle. Part of Ben has been given new birth in Grady, seen in the newborn. Part of him has been destroyed on the road to Grady symbolized by the wrecked car. However, both parts are important, although they are separated compositionally by the road. They can only be united in a journey that will begin in a plane, foreshadowed in the billboard. Providence has a new destiny for Stone: the West by way of air travel.
The next morning Lou tells Ben that they can never be together. She is going to marry her current steady, Hank (Woody Harrelson), claiming that the doctor would only be a shooting star that would bum out if he stayed in Grady. The city gives him a plane ticket and Stone faces the townspeople as they have come to tell him good-bye. Compositionally, they move in behind him as he walks toward the car that will take him to the airport.
Caton-Jones literally gets the entire town to move behind the doctor and compositionally push him out of frame, away from the town. Ben must meet his new destiny. Echoed again in the mouthpiece of providence, mayor Nickelson yells as Stone drives away, "Back to the interstate, Ben Stone. Back to the interstate."
From another high angle, omniscient shot designed exactly like the one with the hay truck that led him into Grady, Ben leaves in the sheriff's car on the road out of Grady. However, instead of seeing the sign for the interstate as the camera tracks across the road out of town, we see sitting in her ambulance a tearful Lou. On the right side of the frame she weeps and on the left side of the frame moving into softer and softer focus, becoming smaller and smaller, is the car carrying the doctor. Both characters are divided by the road in the frame, and Lou is a striking image--left alone surrounded by the hard steel of the ambulance.
Doctor Ben Stone is a new man. His glorious dreams of plastic surgery have changed to become his worst nightmare. As foreshadowed in the early hospital scenes in Washington D.C., Ben again enters a chaotic world. The dichotomy of Stone's feelings are first hinted at when the young doctor is driven into Los Angeles by a crying cab driver, who when asked by Ben if is he was all right, replies, "O yes sir, everything is fine." Symbolizing Ben's inner turmoil, the cabby begins crying again. In another scene, the director places the camera below headlines as Ben follows the plastic surgeon (George Hamilton) into the operating room filled with pinkish colors. The composition begins strongly with symmetry, but becomes chaotic as the two descend into the background of frame, into the human and instrumental confusion of the operating room.
Later, Ben stands gazing from his apartment balcony, facing east. The shot finds Ben at the bottom right of frame, and filling over two thirds of the frame is the wide open space of the east, calling to Ben Stone in Los Angeles. There are no fireworks, no accidents, only the dark night eastern sky and Ben. The shot is placed exactly at Ben's height, not from an omniscient point of view. According to this angle, it can be inferred that the decision to return to Grady will be his own.
Hank has just broken up with Lou and has arrived to return Ben's repaired car to L.A. and take a crack at earthquake insurance. During the course of their short conversation, Hank reminds Stone that, "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do and sometime it's in L.A.", but for Stone, sometimes it's in Grady. Ben makes use of his free-will and returns to his providential destiny in Grady, S.C. The last shot of the film finds Lou and Ben walking together without any other human in frame. They walk into the heart of Grady with their pet pig. The pig is a strange symbol, but it was the first factor in the story that gave the characters a common cause. This cause, placed symbolically in frame, will give hope of the two remaining together in Grady: Ben's choice for his providential destiny and the fulfillment of his American dream.
This film certainly will not illuminate everyone to the intricacies of free-will versus predestination, but it sheds some light into thinking that perhaps, as Paul Schrader alluded, the two do indeed work in tandem. Even Michael Caton-Jones may not be aware of all the complex insights that his film possibly provide. Doc Hollywood, though, must be given more than the simple recognition of "fun entertainment." The fact that the film's images speak as loud as its words, certainly is testimony to the fact: truth of destiny may be understood, but not always expressed in words. In its story and within its images lies a doorway for spiritual and cultural transcendence into understanding the importance of freedom and fate within our own destinies.
Bibliography
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Bywater, Tim and Thomas Sobchack. An Introduction to Film Criticism. New York: Longman, 1989.
Corrigan, Timothy. A Short Guide to Writing about Film. Glenview, IL: Scott, 1989.
Madsen, Roy Paul. Working Cinema: Learning from the Masters. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1990.
May, John R. Image and Likeness. New York: Paulist, 1992.
Saint Augustine. Readings in Christian Thought. Ed. Hugh T. Kerr. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1966. 50-67.
Schrader, Paul. Schrader on Schrader. Ed. Kevin Jackson. London: Faber and Faber, 1990.