Recently, I watched The Intouchables movie after being on my watchlist for a long time. Many friends told me it is a great movie and boy oh boy it was great! I really enjoyed the movie’s atmosphere. The music (by Ludovico Einaudi) was incredible, the comedy was cool, and the movie, in general, was mesmerizing. After that, I started to think about the reason for my enjoyment of this movie. Apart from the factors I mentioned, I think there is one specific factor that is noticeable for me in the movie: The movie gets really close to being cliche, but elegantly avoids it.
Avoiding Cliche in such movies is very difficult. The movie is full of potential cliche themes. Poor/rich, money, royal becomes commoner, commoner become loyal, and so on. The film evades all of them smartly and tries to tell its own story. However, it utilizes them at the same time. Yes, that’s the elegant part. Using the cliche factors, getting close to them, but not becoming a cliche. Here, I name some of the cliches and the way this movie use/evades them.
Case1: Noble becomes Commoner / Commoner becomes Noble
Here is a common cliche: “A noble who meet a commoner and finds out suddenly the commoner’s way of life is much better”. I think all of us saw this narrative in so many movies, series, and books.
In this movie, we get close to this cliche. The movie has the materials. A rich/noble protagonist meets a poor one. The noble guy gets affected by the poor one (For example, listening to pop music and laughing at the theater). However, in the end, the rich protagonist did change his core identity. This is the way the movie evades the cliche. Affection is there, but we do not see a significant turn. In the end, he is still a noble who listen to the classics and preserves his manner but also enjoys the poor protagonist’s company.
The reverse (commoner becomes noble) is also a common cliche in show business but in less extent of course. But in this movie, even the poor protagonist did not lose his core identity. Yes he starts to paint, he expands his knowledge of art, and he treats people much better, but in the end, he is the same person. A person who goes to a job interview casually and flirts with the interviewer the same way we saw him at the begging of the film.
Get affected but do not change the character identity. This is the trick the movie utilizes to get benefits from the cliche factors but, smartly, evade falling into one.
Case 2: Money is evil / Poverty is sacred
Money is the root of all bad things. This is another common cliche that we encountered numerous times in movies and books. The cliche also has another side that is poverty is good. Usually, we watch a group of poor people who are very happy despite their poverty. They are good because they are poor and evils are all rich. I do not want to judge this cliche but it is a very popular one. I personally got tired of watching this cliche in so many films.
The Intouchables movie does not fall into this cliche. The rich protagonist in the movie is not evil. Not even he is not evil, he is a good guy. The poor protagonist is also depicted realistically: a person from a poor neighborhood who has some bad behavior and habits but deep down is a good guy. The interesting point here is that both of them are enjoying the money and richness. Money actually works as a nice factor here. For instance, the amazing sequence where our buddies go paragliding with a private jet.
The movie also shows us the poor neighborhood where the poor protagonist lives. However, the film does not try to create artificial empathy toward the neighborhood and its people. It just shows as it is without any judgment. This lack of judgment is an essential characteristic of this movie. We do not want to judge. Rather we just want to enjoy the friendship between our buddies.
Case 3: Hate then love
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
This is the last cliche that is very common, especially in comedy movies. A protagonist who likes a woman but she does not like him back or even sometimes hates him. However, in the end, they fall in love.“ Usually, love is followed by sexual intercourse.
In this movie, again, we have the material. Our protagonist likes the secretary but she does not like him that way. We also see some dumb movements by our protagonist to attract her. But again the movie does not fall for it. This is particularly interesting for me since I expected the cliche happens (when the protagonist gives his ex-room to the secretary). But it does not happen. She makes fool of him again with a threesome joke and that’s it! This is very satisfying since you see the director’s efforts to make something unique and not use the common hate/love cliche.
The End.
