War of the Worlds
I came home after a tough day of work, showered…because after a day of dealing with the situations I deal with I often feel like I need a shower…pulled on my jammies and climbed into bed. At 7:20 in the evening. I reached for my book. I’m reading Corvus, A Life With Birds, by Esther Woolfson, which is a series of engrossing tales about her feathered friends and how they’ve come to be integrated into her home, her life and her heart. Meanwhile, my own two birds, their cage covered, were murmuring in their sleep as they do, kind of pillow talking. Occasionally I could catch a distinct word, usually not. And of course, suffering from ADD as I do, I flipped on the TV - sometimes I find that I concentrate better if I concentrate against something. In this case, that something turned out to be Steven Spielberg’s relatively recent version of H.G. Wells, War of the Worlds.
I must admit I didn’t enjoy the movie when I saw it in the theater. Yes, the special effects were impressive, but it was the story that disappointed me - I found it too embellished and gory, too unnecessarily convoluted and too far removed from the spare original versions, written, radio and film. But I noticed something last night, other than Tom Cruise’s short thighs and Dakota Fanning’s unusually large, wide-set eyes. There is a common thread running through many of our popular movies these days - the archetype of the hand of man. Yes, we screw things up. Yes, we ignore warning signs. Yes, we behave in stupid, self-destructive ways. And yet…when our backs are against the wall, we, as a species, have the capacity to square our shoulders and find within ourselves unexpected courage and compassion. Of course as the movie shows us, we are also equally capable of killing each other in our haste to steal a car, an action that will just get us killed in turn.
Gory or not, the archetype of the hero has survived the ages. Men and women who rise above their station in life to achieve the unexpected, the sublime, even if they lose their own lives in the process. Think Greek mythology, Norse mythology, Beowulf, the Mabinogion, the dream of Camelot.
Thus we have the romance novel - not so different from Tristan and Isolde, the triad of Lancelot, Arthur and Gwenevere, Abelard and Heloise, Romeo and Juliet, Isis and Osiris - all tragedies, but heroic love stories nonetheless.
So, how did I get from there to here? Hmm…I think it was as simple as watching Tom Cruise play an unlikely hero in a lousy movie. Even schmucks can rise to the occasion.
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