Then Who Is It, Martin?

I was watching Grosse Pointe Blank two nights ago, and I reached the scene at the reunion where Martin does battle with Felix La PuBelle, the assassin that already attacked him at the convenience store earlier in the film. After an intense (and entertaining) hand-to-hand battle, Martin kills Felix by stabbing him in the throat with a pen. Points for creativity, Mr. Blank. About that time, Debi comes up the stairs looking for Martin, and comes across Martin kneeling over a dead body. As you might imagine, Debi is a bit shocked by all this, and all Martin can say is, 'It's not me.'

What the heck does he mean by that, I wondered? He said it once before in the movie, during a job in Miami. At that point, his target is pleading with him, promising to stop doing whatever it is he's doing that's made Martin decide to kill him. In that situation, 'It's not me' ostensibly refers to this being a job to Martin, and that the person the target needs to be talking to is the one who hired Mr. Blank, whoever that might be. So that frames it as an excuse for Martin. I don't think he's explaining himself to the target, so much as reaffirming his choice with himself. He can do it because it's not personal. He's calm about it, clothes are neat, hair in place, it's just no big thing.

The second time, though, he's speaking to a witness to his killing a person, a witness he happens to like quite a bit. Quite how this is supposed to work as a response to Debi's look of shock and horror, I'm not sure. Is he trying to say he didn't do this, he just happens to be there in front of this corpse, holding a bloody pen? So I think Debi (and the earlier target) are supposed to represent Martin's inner self, an inner self that's grown tired of killing for money*.

This time, well, it's still an excuse, but now he's trying to convince himself that all the violence around him isn't something he's actively contributed to. He's a bystander, caught in a maelstrom of blood and death not of his own creation. Which, of course, is a load of crap, and I'm sure he knows it. His clothes are a mess, his hair is mussed, he looks sweaty, clammy, generally unhealthy. Whatever disassociation he's built up internally to do the jobs over the years is falling apart, and it's taking its toll on him.

And it only gets worse as things progress, because then the guns that are there because it's a job start getting pointed at the people he cares about**, which rather forcibly reminds Martin that he's been subjecting people to this kind of loss for years, and even if it wasn't personal for him, it certainly was felt on a personal level by those assignments' loved ones. And by the end of that skirmish, Martin doesn't look good at all. He's not only sweaty and pale, he's bleeding himself this time. The barriers he built keep falling, and he keeps looking worse. Ultimately though, that unhealthy, injured state was transitory, because he looked fairly healthy by the end***. Which suggests the wounds had to be uncovered before healing could begin, suggesting Martin's been damaged for awhile and just hasn't recognized it, visits to a psychiatrist or no.

The question in my mind now is, when did that start? He says he was sitting there on prom night and realized he wanted to kill someone. And he chose to leave town and go somewhere (the military) which would presumably help him harness/come to grips with it in some useful way****. Was the problem something predating all of that, something that allowed Martin the, as he put it, moral flexibility to recognize he wanted kill someone, and yet not be terrified of that realization? Or was it something that built up gradually over the years of doing that, when he'd learned something from the killing? I have difficulty deciding whether some of Martin's reasons for what he's done are rationalizations, or if they're somewhat sound reasons. There are times he sounds as though he's certainly thought things out, but I suppose that doesn't mean it couldn't all still be horse hockey.

* Or killing in general more likely.

** Well, I'm not certain how much Martin actually cares about Debi's father. Like he said, he might be saving him because he has a newfound respect for life, or it might simply be due to his being in love with Debi. Of course, by choosing to save Debi's father, and take him home, Martin does put Debi in the line of fire, so he ends up with someone he cares about as a target. Though I suppose if Martin had just driven off with Debi's dad, Grocer would have gone after Debi to try and lure them back.

*** And it occurs to me that rooting for Martin Blank is not unlike rooting for the Secret Six. After all, he was a hired killer. Like Debi said after the reunion, he shouldn't get to be with her, should he? That gets into whether or not the taking of a life removes any "right" one might have to happiness, and whether that depends on circumstance. I throw that in because I imagine there are at least a few people in the world who would say taking a life is always wrong, reagrdless of the circumstance, and yes, one would forfeit the right to any happiness at that point. Though that raises the question of whether it's within our control as to who does and does not get happiness, doesn't it?

**** I guess. I've never been in the military, so I don't know if it helps people with certain impulses actually harness them. And then there's the question of whether harnessing it is the right move, or whether it's better to find some way to excise it entirely.