The Art of Returning Home

I cannot think of anything more fulfilling than going on a superb vacation, except, of course, for coming home from a superb vacation. There is just something about returning to the comfortable and the well-known that is so completely satisfying. Like listening to a preferred standard, reading a beloved classic, or re-watching a favorite flick, going back home offers a sensation of genuine familiarity that is just so right.

Since returning to North Carolina from our recent roam through central California, Elaine and I have been reinserting ourselves happily back into our day-to-day life, which for me includes the consideration of a weekly topic for this blog. Not wishing to overuse my free pass, the round about ramble, I have been trying to steer this week’s topic back in the direction of the movies. However, considering I spent the last ten days vacationing on the other side of the country and not watching a single new movie, that task has not proved itself entirely uncomplicated.

But then as I sat reflecting on home and how it feels to return to a place you know so well, I began to think about a movie that I return to again and again for a similar sort of comfort and rejuvenation. A movie that, no matter how many times I watch, manages to never lose hold of its power and its timelessness. A movie that has never fallen from its position way up on top of my list of favorites. A movie that I love like home. Ernest Thompson’s 1981 adaptation of his own play, On Golden Pond, so perfectly encapsulates the perpetual themes of age and time, loss and death, family and strength, that I have stopped waiting for anything better to come along.

The return of Norman and Ethel Thayer to their summer home in Maine is the beginning to one of the most beautiful and moving stories ever committed to film. I have never found an equal in its mesmerizing ability to portray with such flawless authenticity the sheer emotion that results from a life spent growing old with somebody, who knows you better than you know yourself. Director Mark Rydell utilized a very straightforward and idyllic approach to his filming of the story, which was absolutely the correct approach to take. If he had chosen to grandstand in spectacle and effects, the subtle glances and nuances of character along with the clever quips and jabs throughout the rich and believable dialogue would have been lost in the glare.

And then there is the cast. Nowhere will you find a more stunning example of motion picture acting than within the trifecta of awards-worthy performances captured by Henry Fonda, Jane Fonda, and Katharine Hepburn. Henry Fonda won a long overdue Academy Award for this performance, which ended up being his last. He died shortly after receiving the award. His rendering of the octogenarian, Norman, who fears his approaching death but discovers a small reserve of youthfulness after befriending a young boy, is hilarious one minute, heartbreaking the next. Katharine Hepburn, as his wife Ethel, is wisdom and strength incarnate. Hers is one of my absolute favorite performances of all time. It is breathtaking. Jane Fonda was never better than she was here, acting beside her real life dad, as the daughter of a man who was never able to make her feel wanted or loved. If you ever want to watch a movie strictly for the purpose of seeing great acting at work, look no further than this film.

With all due respect to Thomas Wolfe, I believe you can go home again, and recommend, from time to time, you give it a try. It can be a rejuvenating experience. Just like watching On Golden Pond.

Until next week, here is my hope that we all find our Shangri-La. Good night.

Like Lemonade from Lemons

The children have been warned of the lurking danger outside the small school building and have quietly made their way out the side door. As they approach the calm street running along the front side of the building, the camera pulls back and frames the schoolhouse in an imposing, wide-angle shot. Suddenly the sound of running feet rat-a-tat-tat’s across the soundtrack, and the abrupt disturbance sends a swarm of black birds up into the air from behind the building. The horrific chase begins.

The scene I have just described is probably the most famous scene Alfred Hitchcock ever filmed for one of his movies, second only to the infamous shower scene from Psycho. The attack on the small seaside village of Bodega Bay by thousands of birds in Hitchcock’s The Birds to this day remains a stunning thrill ride and cinematic masterpiece. I wanted to begin this week’s post with this particular movie remembrance, because today I walked in front of that very same schoolhouse, and stood in roughly the same spot where I imagine Hitchcock must have stood and peered through his viewfinder, in order to frame what would become such a legendary movie image, roughly 47 years ago.

Now those of you who read my blog post last week know that I promised then to be sending my post forth into the blogosphere this week from Paris, France. And those of you who have seen The Birds know that the small seaside village of Bodega Bay isn’t located in France but resides approximately 65 miles north of San Francisco, California. And I am further certain that those of you who have not been living underneath a rock for the past week know that the entire continent of Europe has been all but unreachable since last Thursday due to the April 14 eruption of Mount Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. All of this is to say rather verbosely that this post is not in fact coming to you this week from France. Alas!

When Elaine and I began preparation for our trip to France nearly a year ago (longer if you take into consideration the fact that we both promised each other sometime back in 2006 a vacation somewhere in Europe once school was completely finished for us both), we believed we had thought of everything. Probably not a surprise that volcano eruption was not on our list of possible deal breakers. At any rate, this past Friday, we caught our flight from Raleigh/Durham, and made the first leg of the journey to our two-hour layover in Cincinnati. We were told by the airport official who checked us in that if they were going to cancel our flight to France, they would have already done so at that point. Phew! What a relief! So we boarded, and we flew. The second, and I mean the second, we stepped off the plane in Ohio we were informed that all flights to and from Europe had been canceled, and that the airspace over the majority of the continent had been completely shut down indefinitely.

Shock. Disbelief. Heartbreak. All of our planning, all of our hoping, all of our dreaming gone just like that. In less than a flash, France was snatched from us. We were pointed in the direction of a rather daunting, single-file line leading up to a service counter, where three airport workers sat and slowly attempted to help everyone who had arrived in Cincinnati that day with every intention of flying on to somewhere in Europe. The line crept. As Elaine and I stood looking wide-eyed at each other, we began to hear the familiar and relatable stories of the others in line with us and began to share in our collective explosion of bad luck. A man in the States for kidney surgery trying to get back to his family in the Ukraine. A boy trying to reach a job interview in Paris so that he could move back to France. People stranded. People confused. People who just wanted to go home. Elaine’s and my predicament, however, left us with an interesting and unique set of choices. We could either refund our tickets to France, and have Delta fly us back to North Carolina and disappointment, or we could on-the-spot decide to salvage our vacation (time that we both already had off from work) and resolve to travel some place else.

And so we changed our tickets over to a later flight that evening leaving for San Francisco. Rather than wallow in our misfortune, we decided to make the most of our planned time off, a country full of things we both have wanted to see and do, and a unique situation that afforded us, surprisingly, a great deal of flexibility. We spent two days in San Francisco, and then drove up to Sonoma wine country, where we have been hopping from vineyard to vineyard, sampling some of this country’s best wines. Tomorrow we leave for Monterey and Carmel.

Now I don’t want to give you a false sense of heroics and stiff upper-lippery from this story. There have been occasions during our journey, where one of us, either Elaine or myself, has looked at the other and, with slightly glassy eyes, made the comment that, if things had gone as planned, at that moment we should have been strolling the grounds where Louis XIV once outrivaled extravagance at the Palace of Versailles. We have not always managed the level of flawlessness that I would like to think we are capable of when it comes to rolling with the punches and being good sports about life’s little curveballs. There have been times when we flat out just wish Paris had worked out for us.

However, there was a moment in San Francisco, when we were dining at a terrific seafood restaurant at the end of Pier 39, that I would like to tell you about. We were sitting at our table; I sipping a glass of very fine pinot noir and Elaine nibbling at a mouth-watering plate of Dungeness crab pasta, Alcatraz perfectly visible out a window overlooking San Francisco Bay to our right, the sun setting just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge to our left. I took a sip of my wonderfully aged red, and in that moment, with that remarkable view before me and my favorite person beside me, I think I stopped aching for Paris and decided to let San Francisco in.

Paris was a dream for us, and now it’s our dream deferred. As with all dreams, the possibilities remain endless and our imaginations are free to continue to run wild. One day we will get the opportunity to make that dream come true again. But as it stands now, we may not have Paris, but we’ll always have San Francisco and Sonoma wine country.

Until next week, here is my hope that we all find out Shangri-La. Good night.

Remember the Name Carey Mulligan!

There are many reasons I can list in the coming space to encourage you to see a little movie I just watched called An Education: the beautiful recreation of 1960’s London and Paris; the witty and incisive story of a woman’s carefully observed place in education and society; the sure-handed direction of Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig. However, the raison d'être that is absolutely the most compelling I can think of for you to move this terrific movie to the top of your Netflix queue is so that you can behold the stunning performance of Carey Mulligan.

She plays a young, high school age girl, who loves to read brilliant literature, listen to French music, and talk to her friends with splendid assurance about the many diversions that lie beyond the quaint stone walls of her home in Twittenham. Her goal is acceptance into a literature program at Oxford, believing that such an education is the most obvious door to the world of which she so desperately wants to be a part. And, after all, “there’s such a lot of world to see,” as Audrey Hepburn once sang. Here I pause to conjure up the image of Hepburn’s Holly Golightly not merely out of superfluous dexterity, but rather to provide you with a solid mental reference with which to compare Mulligan’s performance. For not since Hepburn herself graced the great silver screens has an actress possessed such a marvelous spirit and quality of wondrous watch-ability.

Her Jenny is the trophy of all her teachers, the object of many boys’ attentions, and a constant pride for her loving and supportive parents. But then one rainy day, the older, sophisticated and handsome David pulls up in his sporty car and offers her a ride home. She is immediately taken in by his charm and his carefree consumption of worldly luxuries. He seems to enjoy her maturity and intelligence but mostly is taken by her wide-eyed desire for what he can afford her. This is definitely a movie about seductions and advantages taken, but don’t immediately jump to any conclusions regarding scenarios of older men and their exploitation of young girls’ naiveté. Jenny is naïve, but she is not dumb. David, for her, is a shortcut to the world. The relationship offers them both opportunities for gain. But as with many shortcuts taken in life, ironically lessons are often learned the hard way.

An Education, for all of its tough realities, is a thoroughly enjoyable and often very romantic movie. The magical scenes in Paris will make you want to fall in love, hop on a flight to France, and stroll the Rue de la Paix with your arm around somebody significant. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what I am going to do. And so, I will be posting next week from Paris. So while I make my way to The City of Lights, I encourage you to go and pick up a copy of An Education, and see what I’m talking about when I say that Carey Mulligan is simply dazzling.

Until next week, here is my hope that we all find out Shangri-La. Au revoir.

A Movie Worthy of Your Ovation

A part of me didn’t want it to be good. I think I almost didn’t want to like it. It would have been easier. Easier to not have to go through the whole reevaluation process. Easier to simply know that I just don’t like her movies and therefore don’t have to watch them. And certainly don’t have to take up an entire week’s worth of blogging to talk about one. But then she had to go and win an Academy Award and force my inevitable reconsideration. I just never thought I’d see the day when I would not find one of her movies anything other than completely cloying. I never thought I’d see the day when I would really and truly whole-heartedly recommend one of her movies to you. I certainly never imagined I’d see the day when I would actually type the words “Academy Award winner Sandra Bullock.” Well bust my buttons, by George, for I was wrong and that very day has come.

The Blind Side is an inspirational, feel-good movie that avoids all of the clichés and various other problems that usually make me avoid inspirational, feel-good movies. There are no unnecessary subplots, no character turned cardboard cutout villain to encourage forced conflict, no added sugar for extra sweetness. In my experience, you might just as well hook an IV drip of sucrose up to your arm as sit through one of these usually sappy excuses for entertainment. The Blind Side is just not one of them. This is simply a really good movie, with a good story to tell and excellent acting that wins our affection by earning our smiles and tears rather than stealing them from us. The true story of Michael Oher and how he came to live with the Tuohy family, survive high school and eventually play football for Ole Miss makes for a compelling and enjoyable movie-watching experience. A story that could have easily slipped into cheap emotional trickery and preachiness, The Blind Side succeeds by maintaining throughout its running time a note of absolute sincerity.

Aside from Nick Saban, who gives a comically bad performance in a cameo appearance as himself (you can almost see his eyes moving back and forth as he reads his dialogue off the cue card), the acting is universally first-rate. Tim McGraw as Sean Tuohy, the supportive husband who knows from years of experience what every one of his wife’s looks means, was an inspired bit of casting. By his second scene, I had all but forgotten that I was watching a famous country singer up there on the screen. Quinton Aaron gives a solid and likable performance as Michael Oher. Although he is frequently forced to act in Bullock’s rather significant shadow, his impressive and natural chemistry with the actress ensures that his performance never the less shines through. Jae Head is a lot of fun as S.J., the Tuohy’s young son, who immediately takes to his new role as Michael Oher’s little brother. And Lily Collins offers great support as the teenage daughter who shows a lot of maturity in her ability to see beyond the cruel words that can come out of the mouths of judgmental adolescents.

As for my new friend Sandra Bullock, well, she simply gives a terrific, star re-making performance that guides this movie far away from predictability and right on into sheer likeability. Now, this is not a knock-you-off-your-feet, earth-shaking kind of performance. You will not once forget that you are watching Sandra Bullock playing a part. That is, mind you, not a bad thing here. Leigh Anne Tuohy is for Sandra Bullock what Erin Brockovich was for Julia Roberts. Merely a perfect match between character and actor. I don’t know any other way to put it. I absolutely loved her in this role. In fact, this performance is so good, it goes a long way in helping me in the still ongoing erasure from my memories of any trace of reminder that I have ever seen Speed 2 and both Miss Congenialities. I sincerely hope Ms. Bullock has a lot more movies like The Blind Side in her future.

And so, yes, I was short-sighted and arrogant and I apologize. For there is indeed a Sandra Bullock movie out there that is every bit as worthy of a recommendation as every other movie I’ve promoted on this blog. I guess you could say this one just sort of…blind-sided me. And there goes the remainder of my credibility. Oh well. The Blind Side. If you haven’t already, see it.

Until next week, here is my hope that we all find our Shangri-La. Good night.