Star Words: Episode VI, Part 50

[matril]

Luke's plea does not go unheard. After years of bondage, Anakin at last breaks the chains of the Dark Side and steps forward to rescue his son.

Brief aside -- why does this mark a return to good, when all he's doing is killing someone? Killing is violent and aggressive, right? Isn't that just another fruit of the Dark Side? Sometimes, yes. The intent is very important here. Vader is not overthrowing Palpatine to take his place as Sith Master. He's not performing an act of vengeance or a power-grab or a hatred-fueled attack. Doubtless he's wanted to destroy the Emperor for years (claims he can do it all the way back in Episode III, in fact) but he knows he's not strong enough to survive the attack. This time, however, it's not about triumphing over his master. He knows he'll die, and that doesn't matter anymore. His son's life is more important than his own. The fate of the galaxy is more important. All of the hunger for control and power that has driven Anakin to such darkness, he finally lets it go. Palpatine unleashes the full force of his electric power and wracks the mechanical body that has sustained Vader for twenty years, but that doesn't matter. Luke, exhausted but alive, goes to him in silent gratitude.

Meanwhile, Lando's team is well on their way to destroying the Death Star. With the Emperor no longer holding him captive, Luke hurries to find an escape for himself and his father. Anakin, however, knows he has but moments left. He has one last request.

"Luke. Help me take this mask off."
"But you'll die!"
"Nothing can stop that now. Just for once, let me look on your with my own eyes."

Anakin teaches his son the lesson that he himself only learned at the very end. There are some things you cannot change, sorrows you cannot prevent no matter how powerful. His death is inevitable. With his short remaining time, he seeks something more powerful than any purported Sith ability -- the chance to connect with Luke as he never could before. Discard the trappings of the Sith Lord and be with his son, face to face.

Of course the symbolic power of this moment cannot be overestimated. Masks are deeply evocative in the Star Wars saga, a marker of hidden or shifting identities. Vader is inhuman, more machine than man. With the return of Anakin, we see his face again at last. He has become his true self, the self long forgotten and restored by a son's love.

Next time, another short but powerful exchange....

Comments

[krpalmer]

There's a lot more weight to this exchange after the other half of the saga showed up and we learned just what had helped pull Anakin all the way over to the Dark Side. (In the "Annotated Screenplays" book, it's mentioned that during "story meetings," there'd been concern removing Vader's helmet just amounted to killing him.)

As for the whole issue of "turning back," I suppose you did bring up a wrinkle I don't often seem to notice among the burbling indignation about "so how is one good deed supposed to make up for all that villainy?" (A part of me got to remembering something in J.R.R. Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" saying "For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy," although when I looked it up I realised it was a quote from G.K. Chesterton.) I suppose I keep reflecting on how my own religious background was such that I'm ready to think "salvation is a matter of universal grace, not 'earned' by some sufficient quantity of deeds (or, as it sometimes goes, believing hard enough in just the right thing)," although I guess immediate cautions have to follow that to not bother with good deeds is to turn down and deny the grace. As for the movie itself (and steering back onto safer ground), a part of me keeps thinking Vader had cast down the Emperor without any sort of "so what's in it for me?" calculation, tying back in a sense to how Anakin hadn't expected any sort of reward for himself when entering the podrace. (Maybe I'll push it all the way to "he's not calculating his way through it the way fans with too much time on their hands seem to...") I've also pondered whether "being saved through doing something for one person" is a better counterbalance to "falling through self-centred selfishness" than to old speculation and current dissatisfaction that "the fall should be a matter of 'trying to do something widely good through unfortunate means."

[matril]

Same here, from a religious standpoint. There's nothing Anakin can do to expiate or balance out his past sins, but that's not the point. He's not "earning" his place as a blue ghost. He's trying to be a good person again, after giving up for so long. And the trying matters.