Forgive me for breaking in here folks, but it is late and I wanted to get this posted....
I want a ramble from you about this movie before the month is over. Oh yes...that's an order, Ms. Ro-ha-na-ka.
OH my golly, Miss Maven, ma'am. Your directive put the ?Fear of Maven? in me (ha) and I did something I should have thought of on my own anyway.... I don't know HOW many times I have thought of this only AFTER I open my yap about "I've never seen this film but will look for it someday, blah blah... IT"S ON YOUTUBE for crying out loud. (all except for about 10 minutes that is missing near the early part of the story. I don?t know just what happened, but there is one segment that is gone. But the rest of it was there)
Golly, as many times as I have FOUND a movie on youtube after wishing for forever that I could see it.. you'd think I'd be smart enough to just LOOK there first... but alas... I am not known for my brainpower these days....
At any rate... I watched it all the way through today... and... well.... wow. I am sort of all choked up at the moment, but will try to put my thoughts into some sort of coherent ramble here. (But did I mention wow??) And I say that in a hushed and reverent tone.. not a big loud WOW, by the way.... just wow.
OH Ms Favell... you were ever so right... I DID need the kleenex. I didn't even last past the first ten minutes or so and I was already bawling.... when Homer got out of the cab and his little sister came running to him... OH me.... the water works just started overflowing.
I know so many of you have written VERY eloquently on this film already, so by rights I likely should respond to all your comments FIRST instead of flooding you with my own... but if you will permit me... my heart is just so heavy with all these thoughts and emotions... so I will try to make comments about your previous posts at a later time.
Right now I just want to say... (and as you know... I am very much a "this is what I saw and this is how I felt about it kinda gal) this film just took over my heart. I cannot recall a time in the recent past where a story affected me on such an emotional level as this one did.
In reality, it is almost like three seperate movies all in one. (but it is also very much ONE movie about three seperate men just all tied together beautifully.) And it is not just about the men.. it is about them.. their families... and also about ALL of us. (did someone already say that?) I always personalize movies that affect me this emotionally and I can tell you I had a LOT of personal moments in this film. The "what if... what would I do... that reminds me of..." thoughts were running rampant in me as I watched this story unfold... but more than that... it really affected me how TIMELESS this story was as well. This same film could be made this very moment about the men and women who are serviing today and all the various themes, emotions, and even the side stories that go along with it would be JUST as accurate now as they were back when the men in this story came home from that war.
It hit me on a very emotional level to think how much like modern times some of these scenarios must be. Trying to relate to your past life after being gone so very long in such circumstances as a war must bring about is beyond me. And yet people that I know and love have done this in the past... and are doing it yet today. And the families that waited (and those who did not) for their loved ones to return... the struggles they must face too as they try to adjust to their loved one being home... but having been changed forever by their experiences. OH me. I appreciate all the more the sacrifices my own parents made (when I was a child and my dad did two tours in Vietnam) just thinking about how it must have affected them.
If I can put this on a very personal level... and forgive me, but I am going to be doing that off and on in this ramble so bear w/ me... but some of the things in this story remind me so much of stories that my parents told of my dad and mom... and the first days after he came back home the first time... we'd been living w/ my grandmother while my dad was gone... and so that was where he came back to meet us. And my Grandma lived in this tiny town that had a whistle that blew three times a day (think of the modern day Tornado sirens.. that was the sound of the whistle I am referring to) It blew early morning, noon, and evening.... And early that first morning.. whistle blew and my dad (who was still asleep) was up out of the bed like a shot, and had turned over the mattress and had my mom on the floor pinned under his chest for safety before either of them knew what was what. They laugh about it now... but I imagine it was a very emotional and traumatic thing for BOTH my parents... and I can only try to imagine the thoughts that must have been racing through my dad's mind... as he realized he was home and safe and that he had just responded by instinct to the training he once trusted to save his life on a daily basis.
I don't know why... but I thought of that story as I watched this film and tried to imagine the life these men led... on the battlefield.. in the air... on the lower decks of a big aircraft carrier.... and the rigors they must have faced on a daily basis and all they endured.. and then to be sent back home.. to pick up where they left off, almost as if nothing had ever happened. And yet... knowing full well ALL that had happened to them...and their brothers in arms... and perhaps only realizing (as Al did while looking at his children) how MUCH they had missed out on back home while they'd been gone. (I said it earlier... but will say it again.. with the same hushed reverence... wow.)
And what about the women? OH ME. All very different. All very specific in the way they had gone on with their lives while still marking time waiting for their loved ones to return,(well all of them but one was "waiting and marking time") They each had a story representative of what likely were countless scenarios that took place before, during, and after that war. I LOVED the way they were all played... even the selfish, self centered, wife. She was who she was... and although she was not the sort of person I could ever say would be my favorite character in a film... she was a true sort of character... and she seemed very much like I would imagine a lot of women in her circumstances may have been like.
It makes you wonder what sort of lives these men would have had if they had never left. Al likely would have gone on in the same role as wealthy business man/family man... and I imagine his wife would have stayed w/ him as the years rolled along.. but would they have stayed together? I like the story that Millie tells Peggy about all the different times they hated one another and took each other back... I imagine there would still be days like that for them, but who knows how much deeper their relationship will be now that he is a changed man. (or if it will someday crumble due to his drinking?) I like to think that he has found the courage to be a better man than the one he might have been had he never left... but I also think he has still got a ways to go to get there (due to all the drinking) and I like that she was mindful of his need to drink. And I imagine someday there will come a day when he will no longer be so dependent on alcohol... and that her influence on him will start to prevail in that regard. Perhaps even by the end of the film that day was getting there. It seemed like it anyway...
And what about Fred and Marie... I wonder... if he had not been in the service would they even have married at all, and I doubt it. (as much a "sucker" as she was for a man in uniform) And what sort of future might he have had if he HAD never married her and gone to war? I wonder how long he would have stayed in the drug store and if he would have gone for the job that his former "weasely" co-worker ended up getting? I just don't know what to think about that one... but my guess is no.
I really liked the scene of him in the airplane grave yard... it was like it was HIS grave yard too. (I may have read one of you saying that.. so forgive me if I repeat you) Each of those planes was like an empty shell of it's former 'glory" and I suspect he too felt that way as he was looking out the window while sitting in that plane out in the field... and I like how he suddenly got "new life" in him as he realized that what he only THOUGHT was a junk yard was really a supply yard and that there still WAS a purpose waiting for those planes. Perhaps now HE could have a future too... it was a nice parallel...
And then there is Homer I have more to say about him in a moment, but for now I just want to wonder what sort of young man would he have turned out to be and would he EVER have realized what a TRUE GEM of a wife he had in Wilma if he had just married her as a young man w/ out having the experiences he had first?
To borrow a line from my favorite classic Tootsie Pop Commercial.. The world may never know.. ha
The bottom line is... all three of these men were changed forever and their futures were not ever going to be what they would have been had they never left. And it made for a very interesting thought process to see who these men had become by watching their families (and the men themselves) respond to the changes that were now affixed permanently in their lives.... War really does change everything. Even things we don't suspect.. or expect.
Now getting back to Homer... OH golly. I knew that Harold Russell was a real veteran and that he actually had the prosthetic hooks, but wow... what a performance. Very moving. His role was decidedly smaller than the other two men's roles in this story as a whole... but it was a very well placed character within the story line and extremely well thought out conflicts and situations for that part of the story.
You know... I mentioned this earlier.. I love the way the little sister just ran up to him with love and excitement. OH my gosh... I started crying the moment she came a runnin'. And then when his parents greet him.. and the mom gets a first look at her son's missing hands.. OH ME. As a mother I TOTALLY got it.. she was not "repelled" so much as she was in agony. Her baby had been hurt... and it broke her heart to think of his pain.
(Again with personalizing) When the kidling was not quite two... we had to stay in a hotel overnight when we were visiting somewhere and she got her finger caught in a dresser drawer... OH MY GOLLY was it ugly... we had to take her to the doctor... and they had to drill a tiny hole in the nail to let the blood out... and it was just horrific.. and I tell you... LONG after she stopped crying.. and it no longer bothered her anymore... it was STILL ugly to look at and of course a couple of weeks later.. the nail came off... but I am telling you... EVERYTIME I looked at her sweet little hand throughout that entire process... something welled up inside of me and I cried to think that my baby had had to suffer any sort of pain like that.
So when the mom let out that gasp when she saw Homer... in my mind it was not so much about thinking his "future" was ruined and how he was never going to be the same... but to me I imagine that as much as anything else, it was the sense of pain she must have felt knowing the experiences he must have endured and the pain he must have gone through. It is a "mom" thing...
But it was also likely an awkward time for all of them to adjust to one another and the new reality that was going to be a part of their daily lives... I thought the scene later that evening where the sister was curious about the hooks, and the dad stops her from looking at them was very well done. I thought of all the people sitting in that room... SHE was the only one being honest at the moment. They were all just sitting there struggling to make polite conversation and as the expression goes... totally ignoring that 800 lb gorilla.... I imagine that if the dad had not discouraged her from looking and asking questions then and there... that maybe things might have progressed a lot faster and a bit more easily for all of them... but I also imagine that sort of "open" communication about those sorts of subjects in a family setting were not the norm for that day and age.
And WHAT about that Wilma????? OH wow. I love how she loved him... and I don't want to make TOO big an issue out of it.. because it SHOULD be a natural thing to fully accept someone you love even if they have had a life altering injury like the one he had. But the truth is... it WAS a lot to consider... and not every person has it in them to accept (or embrace) that sort of change in their life... especially when they have not married the other person yet. So... Wilma COULD have been the sort to walk away... but she wasn't. And wow... (there's that word again.... I whisper it this time) wow.... how beautiful.. she was not just in love with Homer... she LOVED Homer... and it meant something to him to see the difference.
When she was in his room and asking him not to send her away... OH GOLLY. It made me think of something (again on a personal level) from my own wedding ceremony. It is a common scripture that gets used in weddings from time to time... and although taken from a story about a daughter in law staying faithful to her mother in law after both their husbands die... the words of the scripture fit SO perfectly with a wedding vow... and the deep commitment that is a part of what real marriage is all about... so with your permission... if I may (close your eyes if you do not want to read a Bible verse) THIS was what I was thinking as I watched that scene play out where Wilma tells Homer she is not leaving him:
*Ruth 1:16-17* (KJV) And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.
THAT to me is what a wedding vow is all about... and that to me is what I saw in Wilma's love for Homer... OH MY GOLLY.. the kleenex box is almost empty now. (I told you that this film really affected me on a LOT of levels)
So.. ok.. if you are still awake now.. I likely have gone on FAR too long about stuff that probably had NOTHING to do w/ the movie.. ha. It is Kathy's old home nostalgia sob fest here.. ha. But gee... I am so grateful for your EXTRA nudge Miss Maven... I truly am glad I got to see this film.
I still want to comment on some of the things you folks have said, but I do not think I will keep yammering on and on and on (and ON) any more this evening... I will save that for another time. At any rate.. thanks for letting me ramble here.... and may I just say again... once more in whispered tones... wow
