A Perfect World: Every Encounter Feels Like a Reunion After a Long Separation

A Perfect World: Every Encounter Feels Like a Reunion After a Long Separation

After the story ends, throughout all the years of little Philip’s growing up, he will never forget that man lying quietly on the grass, dollar bills lifted by the wind and scattered across his face, and not far away, a Halloween mask wearing an innocent smile. Philip will probably regret that gunshot deeply; that regret may stay with him for a very long time. But in the end, he will understand that Butch’s escape was doomed from the very beginning to fail. And yet, because he met Philip, Butch’s soul was able to complete a real escape. Just as he told Philip, “If it has to happen, I’d rather it be you.” By the time the story reaches its climax, the feelings between them have already gone beyond what words can clearly describe. And the innocent yet conflicted expression on Philip’s face as he confronts Butch at the peak of the story feels so real that it is painful to watch.

This is not merely a simple pair of people who resemble father and son. Their bond, shaped by fate and by the identities forced upon them, is destined from the start to end in tragedy. As viewers, all we can do is pray again and again that the inevitable moment might arrive later—just a little later. Watching the sheriff set out so calmly, only to be left behind by Butch and Philip time after time, our hearts tighten and ease by turns. Every time they slip away, it means their warm companionship can last a little longer. But no matter how much it is prolonged, its limit can never extend beyond the running time of a film. And then there is the stern-faced sheriff and the brilliant female criminologist, who keep us constantly on edge, always worried that something will go wrong wherever Butch and Philip are. Something is bound to go wrong—it just turns out very differently from what we imagine.

Without Philip, all Butch could have shown us would be the traits of a calm, mature criminal. The warmth buried deep inside him would have had nowhere to go. And if Philip were not the kind of child who needed love and protection, then all he might have shown in front of Butch would have been fear and panic. It is precisely because of all these unseen arrangements of fate that the two of them were destined to share this journey—perfect for both of them in its own way. As if every encounter were as beautiful as reuniting after a long separation. Butch keeps fulfilling Philip’s small, lovely wishes one by one, while also, like a father, teaching him what is right and what is wrong. Most of the time—almost all of the time—we forget Butch’s true identity and simply see him as an ordinary father.

The episode in the Black family’s home shows Philip another side of Butch. It is different from the earlier moment when Butch shot the useless fellow escapee in order to save him. This time, he is facing ordinary people who, only moments before, had been perfectly friendly. But it is precisely the casual brutality shown by ordinary people that stirs up the darkest memories buried deep inside Butch—things that eight-year-old Philip has no way of understanding. In Philip’s mind, the world is still clearly divided into black and white: people are either good or bad. He is not yet capable of understanding the lessons Butch tries to teach him when they take the Halloween costume.

In the waitress episode, Butch feels more like an awkward father who has no idea how to explain sexuality to a child. Desire is simply not something a prepubescent child can understand. It reminds me of how Haruki Murakami, in Dance Dance Dance, uses the narrator’s voice to explain physical desire to a twelve-year-old girl through a metaphor: “Suppose you’re a bird, and you love flying in the sky and feel very happy doing it. But for some reason, you can only fly once in a while. Maybe because of the weather, the wind, or the season, sometimes you can’t fly. If you go several days without flying, your energy builds up, and you become irritable and restless, feeling unfairly diminished, angry that you can’t fly.”

But Butch could never come up with that kind of metaphor. Other than Murakami, perhaps no one else could make such an apt comparison. And so, in order to keep Philip from coming away with too distorted an impression, Butch can only claim that he is in love with the waitress they met by chance. Philip, as if he understands everything, starts teasing Butch about it, and the two of them burst into laughter. It may well be the freest, happiest laugh in the entire film.

The film’s portrayal of the sheriff and the female expert seems understated at first. Though neither character is given much space, both gradually become more vivid as the story unfolds. By the end, after they each in their own way teach the sniper a lesson on behalf of the audience, we suddenly realize that these two characters have not so much been chasing Butch as slowly coming to understand him, just as we have. In that sense, they are more like two audience members standing inside the screen.

Sadly, every feast must come to an end. Every story eventually closes, and this ending—always destined to be tragic—has surely drawn countless tears from audiences over the decades since the film’s release. Perhaps that is because, in our hearts, there lives both a Butch and a little Philip.