Out of the Furnace

Direct multilayered sociocultural oppositions contend, contrast, and coalesce as unpredicted vilified variables resuscitate/implement ancient/contemporary retributive, abysmal, and vindictive plaques, steady as she goes, reap the whirlwind, orderly disciplined straight and narrow paths, wild wanton adventurous tracts, unambiguous bucolic depth, heartbreaking rules, honourable clefts, Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace, reasonably welding an ethical framework for subverting the law, according to a specific social set of incendiary standards.

The key to my interpretation comes from the fact that Russell Baze (Christian Bale) may lose his job at the mill, the very same mill where his father worked for his entire life, due to management's decision to move operations to China.

The film's villain, Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), has lived off-the-grid selling narcotics in the hills throughout his life, as his father presumably did before him.

DeGroat's survival suggests that an income can be earned out of the furnace, characterized by an alternative set of non-traditional denominators.

Should the mill close and no alternative well-paying job not requiring an education present itself, Baze will still have to earn an income.

Taxes from such well-paying jobs can be used to create sustainable public schools, hospitals, and transit systems.

If well-paid jobs not requiring an education continue to disappear and aren't replaced, and prices don't suddenly decrease significantly, the tax base required to support public schools, hospitals, and transit systems will decrease significantly as well, thereby increasing public deficits.

Food, shelter, and automobiles will still be sought after, however, and DeGroat's character demonstrates that they can indeed be gathered.

Now, Baze outwits DeGroat in the end, and likely doesn't go to prison, thereby suggesting that if North American workers who find themselves regrettably jobless must embrace underground economics to continue to provide for their families, then they can adopt the strategies but not the methods generationally applied for centuries by DeGroat's contemporaries and descendants, potentially replacing their narcotic provisions with more wholesome contraband goods and services, divergent ecotours catered by moonshine for instance, using portions of their profits to fund schools, hospitals and transit systems, as respectable industrialists (the good bourgeoisie) find ways to once again supply strictly legal employment, at home as opposed to somewhere in Asia.

From one Christmas to the next.

Incisive film forged with coruscating interpretative flames.

Disposable incomes that won't result in jail-time build thriving communities.

It's an old idea, I know.

But it still steeps an effervescent collective brew.