How did you first love the movies? Did you begin to love them because you had a special moviegoing experience with a person whom you loved? Or did you love them first because you read the writing of others who were themselves enamored by the cinema? Was it a certain film that wooed you, that made you discover that a work of the cinema could be near and dear to your heart?
I am certain it was all of the above for me…
-I will never forget my Dad taking me to see Platoon, which was the first R-rated film he let me see. I don’t know what I would think of the film today, but when I saw it with him at age 11 it was like my Dad was trusting me enough to invite me into the adult world. He, along with the film, was saying to me that there were unspeakably harsh things in this world but that we could be unafraid to talk about and contemplate them. The cinema, I understood from him, was a place that such harsh things could be approached and considered. Why approach them? Perhaps so that we can understand the harsh realities better and maybe even come to a place of wisdom as we feel their cold winds in our face.
-As for writers, I found fine film reviews in Time magazine and Entertainment Weekly and our hometown Detroit News. EW’s Owen Gleiberman was a writer I could not stop reading in my teen years; for some reason the fate of the world seemed to hang in the balance as I waited to see if he would give the new Spike Lee film an A or a B-. But none of those writers could possibly take the place of influence over me that was held by the beloved Roger Ebert. I would not be surprised if half of the movie-lovers out there would share similar stories about Ebert’s impact on their film love. For me, it really meant something that Ebert came to movies not to tear them down but to find meaning and joy in them wherever such things could be found. Sure, he would tear down a Jaws : The Revenge here and there if he had to, but only so that the path could be cleared for other film joys.
-Then there were films like 1992’s Into the West. I can’t remember details about where I saw the film, but Into the West was one of my first experiences of a film whose every scene was so perfect from every angle (dialogue, performances, music, camera, emotions, laughs) that I would be satisfied to just sit here and watch this film over and over. Forget Casablanca, forget Apocalypse Now, and forget all of the other films I am supposed to love. Just repeat this film experience over and over, and I will be fine forever, thank you.
So how did the film strike me in 2024 when I watched with my family? This film about two Irish boys and their adventures with a fantastical white steed is surely still a wonderful film. It is still a magical realist story out of time with the enchantment of an old Irish fable.
It is a magnificently efficient piece of film writing, one that leaves you feeling as if screenwriter Jim Sheridan and David Keating have captured the world and put it into a 97-minute film. I see on Wikipedia that star Gabriel Byrne called this one of the best scripts he had ever read, and this makes us take notice because this guy was in Miller’s Crossing just a few years earlier (still one of the Coen brothers’ greatest films and scripts). Byrne noted that the film and story are, in some ways, about Ireland. Being an American myself and less equipped comment on the film’s relationship to Ireland, the enduring throughline for me is the way the film meditates on dust and eternity.
Are our bodies, our lives, our souls destined to disintegrate into dust before the eyes of our friends and family? It surely seems that way in the folk tale told by this film’s grandfather about the fated Oisin. Worries about this possibility are, in fact, at the heart of one of the film’s most memorable scenes involving one of the children getting down from the horse. Or is there something that will outlive the dust? That question plays at the corner of this script and this film. It is a lovely script to be sure, but the reason it is also a lovely film is because of the way Byrne, the cast, and everyone else involved breathes it to life on the cinema screen.
And, as you know, I love the cinema screen.
