The initial thought which may come to mind with this casting is a clash of egos, but regardless of the truthfulness of this possibility, the result is far from catastrophic. Both actors have seemingly limitless charisma and onscreen presence, a shared trait which benefits this production greatly. Merely by chance, or perhaps by divine intervention, Black is there on the deck to save White from his untimely demise. This becomes the basis of this dialogue-driven film, a philosophical inquiry into the nature of faith, God and the purpose of life.
Written with a fervent dialect, precise and calculated yet uncompromisingly organic, I was fully drawn into this intimate conversation. In the beginning, White is a sad, pathetic man; an educated man whom Black refers to as The Professor. I noticed that the overwhelming emotion was to feel sorry for White, given that despite his education and success [as made evident in a bit of dialogue] he finds no joy or cause for happiness in the world.
Black is no shallow preacher for his cause. His approach is subtle, skillful and profound, and at various points it seems as though he may be reaching a part of White that may even be taking White by surprise.
As the final act—a span of perhaps 20 minutes—begins, we learn that there is a more entrenched truth to be understood by Black and the audience, though it is not what the street evangelist had hoped.
White opens a well into his darkness, and it is so all-consuming that Black is struck speechless. We are witness to the abyss brought to bear with terrifying precision by Tommy Lee Jones. Not only is White committed to suicide as the proper end of his existence, but to not end his life is a betrayal against all that he once loved and lost—a final salute to a dying culture without hope for renewal.
McCarthy leaves us with few guesses. Whether one believes those words are spoken to him by God, or reads the words on the pages of scripture, or consumes the words spanning a universe of literature—or simply uses words to survive on the streets. Words define that which is meaningful to us—that which we are willing to devote our lives to despite tremendous odds or dire consequence. Metaphorically, to ride the sunset limited is to take the mythic train west, to go to the western wall, to sail over the edge of the world.
Its narrative arc depends on the dynamic interchange between two characters, Black and White, whose names suggest their allegorical function as starkly contrasting metaphysical orientations. Although the philosophical gravity of the work lends itself to the leisurely reading and re-reading given a novel, McCarthy provides his allegorical characters such realistic grounding that the dialogue works equally well in dramatic presentation. The Sunset Limited takes place entirely in the subway tenement apartment of the ex-con, Black, who has forcibly prevented the college professor, White, from casting himself in the path of an on-rushing subway train.
Black is no stranger to the violence of human nature.
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