With a title like Death on the Streets and an opening sequence that combines a score of heavy drone music with sweeping shots of endless cornfields blowing in the wind, the common assumption would be that you were about to watch a horror movie. But what Johan Carlsen and Micah Magee created is not a horror film, not in the traditional sense. It’s about unemployment, homelessness, and the American Dream.
Kurt (played by Zach Mulligan) is the protagonist of the film centered in the Bible Belt and although he has a whole community looking to help him when he faces unemployment, he doesn’t want their help. He’s embarrassed that everyone knows he needs help. It doesn’t stop people from trying, there’s a scene early on where I’m pretty sure his father-in-law purposely turned off the water in his sink so that Kurt could fix it. An attempt by his father-in-law to give him money while protecting his pride, an attempt that is rejected.
Even though it’s already established he is out of work it’s unclear whether the family needs his income, the wife is working, and his lack of contribution is viewed as personal failing by Kurt. I bring this up because the kids were eating Cheerios instead of an off-brand cereal. If they aren’t able to support their family on the wife’s income this choice could for a few of reasons, parents often try to hide money problems from their kids so while they might sacrifice for themselves, they don’t for their kids. Kurt keeps telling people that there is no problem when they try to offer him aid so this could be more part of the lie. Pride seems to be a big thing in this movie. Kurt’s pride. This is tied into a philosophy that has been drilled into people, especially men, that accepting aid is weakness. That accepting welfare is weak if you’re able to work. At one point a character even says she doesn’t think people have been giving Kurt the respect he deserves, and all these people she’s referring to are just people trying to offer him aid in his time of need.
He eventually does take assistance; in the form of a job his father-in-law found him in another town on the instance of his wife. Probably part of the reason she was able to convince him to take even that assistance was that the job was in another town. If it worked out, he would be away from the people that know their business and the well-meaning meddling, and if he failed, no one would be around to see him if it did.
However, there is no “job” waiting for him, it was a misunderstanding, and the only thing on offer is on-call temp work. Instead of going home to his family, he abandons his truck by a river and disappears without letting anyone know where he was going, leaving his family and friends worried about his whereabouts.
Two weeks later, now in Atlantic City, we find Kurt going to a shelter. However, after one meal, he abandons that, choosing to sleep on the streets. Kurt manages to get a day labourer job working construction. Even though he’s making money, he can’t send any back to his family because he doesn’t want to give a return address. He still doesn’t want them to know where he is.
The future owners of the home that he’s helping to build come across him sleeping on the street and take him for a meal to meet their other wealthy friends. The man loves that Kurt’s hard-working and not sleeping in a shelter or on welfare that he gives him his Purple Heart. This glorifying of struggle is the problem. Accepting aid in the form of welfare assistance or a homeless shelter is not weak. Getting help from the people that cared for him back home until he got back up on his feet would not have been weak; their offers were not a sign of disrespect but a sign of care. However, it’s not something many in western, particularly American, cultures are taught to believe and neither Kurt nor the people at this lunch have this belief. To them, Kurt’s choice is one of strength.
When Kurt puts on the Purple Heart everyone starts giving him respect, the respect he’s been craving.
He finally sends money home to his family but still makes sure they can’t contact him. Until this point, his family had no way of knowing if he was alive or dead. Then he dies in the streets with no one to notice or care.
Death on the Streets is a rebuke to toxic pride, to the American Dream.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.