What is masculinity?
Is it an outdated and overall destructive construct?
Or is it a necessary aspect of our humanity and the maturation of the individual?
These are some of the questions that pervade the work of Michael Mann in general and his
film Collateral in particular.
Because even though its story of a cabbie being forced to drive a contracted killer
from hit to hit during one night in LA might seem shallow on the surface level, I believe
its symbolic and thematic structure provides a meaningful meditation on what it means to
adopt a healthy masculinity and what happens when we attempt to repress it within ourselves
and our societies…
In one of his early seminars, Dr. Carl Jung discussed the mythological symbol of the man
or the rider and the bull, and the necessity of taming one’s inner bull, one’s masculine
and animal nature.
When we’re first introduced to Max we initially get a sense that this a man who’s got his
life together.
He’s the cabbie who goes above and beyond to keep things orderly and clean.
He’s the driver who knows his routs by heart and aims for maximum efficiency, but he is
also a people’s person, perceptive in his ability to put himself in his passenger’s
shoes, compassionate to their struggles.
Max is a man who excels at what he does, who plans on doing so much more… and who even
gets the number of the girl he likes without even having to ask for it, Max truly, seems
to have it all…
It is not until after a mysterious man from out of town enters his cab, that the façade
begins to crumble…
Suddenly, Max’s excellence and orderliness as a cabdriver are exposed to be part of his
weakness.
For in reality, Max is all order, no risk, a chronic flunker of life, like a faceless
rider missing in action.
He has become complacent, stuck in a routine, afraid of getting dirty, of taking a chance
with the girl he likes, of delving into the unknown, of facing his inner bull.
His realistic ambitions have turned into an escapist dream, meant to deceive himself as
well as others from facing his reality.
For it’s when we repress our inner masculinity, when we don’t listen to our instincts, forfeit
our assertiveness, our healthy aggression, and when we don’t take responsibility for
our lives that life itself becomes rigid, constricting, claustrophobic even, the car
becomes not a symbol of freedom, but one of bondage in a world seemingly indifferent to
our existence.
Like Max, we might dream or deceive ourselves and others into believing that nothing is
wrong, but in reality when we repress our inner bull we become small, dependent, harmless
and therefore vulnerable, not much more than cogs in a machine, marionettes stuck in an
endless loop, naively waiting for the universe to give us our due…
“You can avoid places where bulls are to be found, and if you don’t see them, you
will not be bothered.
But you must be dodging all the time in order to avoid every possibility of arousing the
bull; and since life provides endless opportunities for the emotions, there is no end of dodging,
which amounts to a panic or a chronic flunking of life…”
Vincent is in all aspects the opposite of Max, his shadow.
He embodies all the masculine aspects of the symbolic bull, everything Max is not.
He shows himself to be assertive, alert and most of all aggressive and unpredictable…
If Max is constricted by too much order and routine Vincent relishes in chaos and improvisation…
And yet Vincent is not the perfect manifestation of the rider who has tamed the passions of
the bull.
He believes the compassion and emotion of Max to be a hypocritical weakness of character…
To Vincent, who grew up in an abusive household, life has no inherent meaning or value, and
the people who claim the opposite are lying to themselves…
Vincent is a product of modern urban society, an extreme rationalist nihilist, his grey
and colorless attire revealing his inner hollowness, he ultimately acts only to prove his resentful
belief that the world is disconnected, cruel and indifferent to existence by bringing death
and misery to others.
Vincent has become possessed by, what Robert Moore termed, the archetypal shadow warrior,
the destructive side of masculinity.
He has become detached from emotion and human relationships, he is disgusted by human-pettiness
and weakness and lives only for his mission.
Pain and death are the only things that are real to the shadow warrior.
To him the emotional passions of the bull are but silly constructs of society or the
human imagination, ultimately holding one back from taking unrestraint action to achieve
one’s goals.
He takes what he needs from this symbolic animal for his own egoistic needs and thinks
he can leave the carcass behind
to rot…
And so as these two opposites embark together into their murderous night, an interplay of
personalities ensues.
Visually, Max’s self-contained window into the world, is cracked, and his life is thrown
into chaos after he realizes the true identity of his diabolical passenger.
As he drives Vincent from hit to hit his own insufficiency becomes clear as the veil of
his lie is slowly being lifted…
And as much as he’d love to escape his reality, his dependence on others will only bring him
and the world more pain.
He’s stuck in the cab, in the enclosed arena, with his bull beside him.
The only way out is to move forward into the unknown.
And it’s in spending time with him that he slowly becomes more comfortable, more level-headed,
and begins to learn from Vincent’s behavior, slowly becoming more assertive… and improvisational…
The realization dawns on Max that the only way to survive the night and to beat Vincent,
is to be like Vincent, the only way to tame the dangerous bull, is to consciously act
like the bull…
In embodying his inner Vincent, his inner bull, Max has discovered a newfound power
he didn’t know he had…
But by acting like the bull or the warrior, there’s always the danger of becoming or
being seen as its opposite, seemingly blurring the line between the warrior and its shadow
counterpart, confusing the police on who the real hitman is supposed to be.
It is only through the murder of Detective Fanning that Vincent’s true pathological
nature is exposed…
In complete shock of Vincent’s nihilistic worldview, Max makes a final move towards
the completion of his inner journey, by taking full responsibility for his life…
His own hesitance to act, his passive dependence have caused him to stagnate in life, his weakness
and lies have not only held himself back, but have also contributed to the suffering
of others.
Max’s veil of deceit has now been lifted completely, and can therefore exist no longer…
His deliberate crashing of his cab then becomes an image of a symbolic death and resurrection,
a shedding of weakness.
The marionette dies and the rider arises.
The bull has been tamed and the shadow warrior has failed in his attempt to convert him into
his ranks and thus leaves his side.
But there’s one more step needed for Max to complete his inner journey…
Max transcends his own being by sacrificing his own safety in order to save the woman
he cares about, who also comes to represent the society as a whole in her role as assistant
attorney.
And so by taking responsibility, by embodying the archetype of the warrior, Max is not only
fighting for another individual, but for the good of society as a whole.
He surprises the shadow warrior in his newfound ability to take decisive action.
But he also exposes the weakness in Vincent’s character.
Max ultimately does not win the final clash because of his competence with firearms or
his through his aggression, but by improvising on the spot whereas Vincent sticks to his
rigid and pathological nature.
His inability to emotionally connect with others and the one person who made him self-conscious
of his flawed nature ultimately become his downfall.
He stoically accepts death almost as part of his job, and yet in his final words we
hear the voice of a broken man, a forgotten child…
For Max life begins again.
The repressed, passive man who started the night is no more, in his place stands a rider
with a bull in his net.
He has not killed it for he now knows it to be impossible, naïve, immoral even.
And so he has tamed his masculinity without becoming possessed by it.
By embodying his inner bull not for chaos and destruction but for the good of himself
and those around him, he opens the door to a meaningful life, to an existence
with purpose, to a new beginning.