Questions about this films meaning

I suppose Hud has done a lot of work for Homer. ... This movie is pretty much true-to-life and thus the choices of the characters are the choices of everyone. Hud is a realist and a hedonist, not an idealist. ... Ron Howard and others shot a herd of Holstein cows in the 1981 TV movie Bitter Harvest.

"What does Hud mean by he helped Homer as much as Homer his father helped him ?"

To understand, consider how a son is raised in a barren, demanding, bleak place in a motherless household. Imagine him from age 9 to age 20. Correction, criticism, occasional punishment (corporal and verbal) from a pillar of goodness. This "Hud" characterization is typical of thousands and thousands of young men brought up in hard working, remote, almost desperate circumstances. They are taught from near birth to never worry about being "poor" or being "rich", but only to "be ready to work and be up on time". Exposure to another side of life prompts rebellion. From Hud's point of view, his father had put him through a lifetime's worth of chores, harder work, and he endured it and stayed to ensure that what had to be done on the ranch got done. Never mind he was becoming more emotionally distant from his father while maintaining proximity. His aberrance was not acting out, in the sense kids today do it. It was a purposeful course set years earlier to make sure he did not end up anything like his father. Of course, deeper inside, some instincts still guide one about right and wrong, suitable or unacceptable .. then decisions get made.

"Do you think he feels guilt/Shame deep down for the way he treats people ? "

OMG no! I don't know your age. I was an adult when I saw the movie first run in 1963. I could directly relate. I was 26 at the time. Not guilt, a sense of satisfaction at making his mark. And underscoring all aspects of the scripted behavior, lies the fact that you can't hurt anyone who doesn't give you permission to do so. To be fair, so much of 2005's imagery of youth and young adults in search of role and purpose has become comparatively shallow, cowardly, de-intensified and lacking in self purposeful forays ... well, I'll leave that alone. A generational thing.

Nice review FlorenceLawrence. Your questions are great ones and central to this film. Here are my short takes, for what they are worth:

- Hud helped Homer as much as Homer helped him, simply because Homer never helped him at all (atleast not in terms of the one critical issue that matters to Hud, which I will elaborate on in a moment)

- Hud does not feel any guilt/shame at any conscious level, at least not for long.

Hud isolates himself from all human beings. He does this for a simple reason. It is the only way he has found to survive in this world. We know that he was responsible for the death of his brother whom he looked up to. In a truely chilling line he laughs "my momma loved me,but she died".How could anyone not be crushed by these two events? He was, but he transended them at a monumental price; complete alienation from all of humanity.

In the final moment of the movie, after flipping the top of a beer, he gives that amazing "Aw, shucks" grin. That says it all. He has lost his father, possibly the love of his life and a friend/son that could have redeemed his soul, all in a few days. And yet he has still survived, confirming in his mind, his hopeless, heart breaking strategy.

I see this as a coming of age film, with Lon being the principle character. He always asking "Grandad" about Hud and wants to his friend and even maybe, emulate him. (Especially after the baroom brawl) Grandad always punctures Hud's attractiveness to an impressionable youngster. " Even Hud gets lonesome sometimes." and of his ability to get the women he says "That ain't necessarily company, and that ain't necessarily much." "He can make a man like him and a woman want him, he's got his share of guts." When Lon asks if Grandad has been to ####### Hud, he replies maybe but states that "The look of the land changes by the kind of men we pick to admire." Ultimately Lon shares Grandad's opinion that Hud " Ain't fit to live with." And he heads out alone to make his way. When Lon leaves, the film is over. THAT'S how we know it was about HIM and not Hud. GTREAT performances by all the actors BTW.

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Hud represents modernity, and his father the past. His father really is "past it," as Hud explains. The idea of not having oil wells on his land (like Rock Hudson's character in GIANT -- but Hudson's character is a multi-millionaire who doesn't need the income) is just stupid. Homer is refusing to change. And he apparently learned nothing from the past (the foot and mouth disease epidemic he mentions from the 1930s, that he saw the slaughter of the cows). He has bought the cows that infected his herd.

This is a more subtle film than even the filmmakers probably intended, good Hollywood liberals. Or is it? Martin Ritt was briefly blacklisted. Old Homer seemingly is the "liberal" in the piece (though essentially conservative in his belief in law and order; but head, as Pauline Kael pointed out in her interview, is the Goldwater conservative of the early 1960s, who scoffs at the federal government, which his father trusts as being a force of order). Yet, the good Homer has f---ed up massively.

Rather than relying on himself, the old American self-reliance (which Hud represents), the stuff that made him in the past, he is now leaning on the government (which will pay him 25 cents on the dollar for the detroyed cattle). HE IS PAST IT. THE OLD WEST THAT HE IS NOSTALGIC ABOUT IS GONE, AND HAS BEEN GONE SINCE THE 1930S. YET, HOMER WANTS TO PLAY THE GAME THAT IT STILL EXISTS.

He is willing to kow-tow to the government and take its subsidy, yet he dreams of the old past, and that was a past when the government left you to your own devices and to hell with you. When somebody like Hud flourished.

Hud actually represents the man who he once was, and the type that built those ranches. As Hud points out, for all his piety, Hud essentially is Homer and Homer is Hud.

But there is a subtle criticism of these people, and of Goldwaterism. Goldwater rose to power denouncing the federal government, the very government whose aid made Arizona possibly, made his family's personal fortune possible, and which pumped far more dollars into Arizona than the citizens of Arizona contributed in taxes. Goldwater and his people took money and then bit the hand that fed it.

This is all in the movie. Newman and Ritt were very political people.

The point is: HOMER IS PAST IT. Hud was right. He cannot run the ranch anymore. He won't led Hud run it, and Hud would be unable to kiss his old man's jaxie and pretend that he was still in charge while Hud runs things. As Homer would never let Hud actually run the ranch. He would run it into the ground -- which has -- rather than give in to Hud.

It's a familiar generational/sucession/Oedipal conflict. Because Melvyn Douglas is such a great actor, we feel sympathy for him, but he's really a prick. He has been a prick towards Hud since before the car crash. He never loved his son, and we don't know why. (Was Homer cuckolded? Is Hud his real son? Hud says his mama loved him. Was he like his mother? Did she have a lickerish spirit like Hud?)

Hud's path isn't crooked -- he is really honest and unhypocritical. He has provided his father with a whipping boy, a scapegoat, to take out all his frustrations on.

Lon says that Hud has robbed him of his will to live, but Homer has lost his will to live because of the terrible error he made -- he bought the Mexican cows that infected his heard, not Hud.

Homer has effectively committed suicide (what's he doing riding a horse at night at his age, with all the ruts and potholes in a ranch field that can trip up a horse?).

Read Pauline Kael's review of Hud. It is one of the most brilliant pieces of film criticism. (Her opinion is different than mine.)

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"Why do people always laugh in the wrong places?"
--Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr.

A few years later, but here goes.

To the OP, I think you're overstating the despair angle. Homer and Hud were hardly in despair. Despite their bad luck, or poor managemet, they still owned a big Texas ranch. Like the public health guy told Homer, it might be good for him to slow down a bit, maybe sell some land to oil drillers. THAT'S where the true meaning of the film came out.

Homer is the old West, which was fading away in the 50's. He didn't want that kind of money. He was proud of creating something - raising his cattle. He didn't help create the oil that might be under his land. America was moving away from an economy that produced goods to an economy of users and speculators - making money from using up resources and manipulating markets. Hud didn't care about creating anything. Like Homer told him, "You don't give a damn!"

Homer is what we like to think America used to be. Hud is the souless country we have become.

"Push the button, Max!"