‘Stand by Me’
Sometimes I cannot put my feelings into words. This would be the case as I have watched the movie ‘Stand by Me’ probably twenty times and afterwards I am always left with the same feeling that I cannot describe or coherently verbalize. But I feel that in some way, somehow, I must.
If you have not seen the movie, I highly recommend it. It is based on a short novella by Stephen King called ‘The Body’. The setting is in the 1950s and centers around the adventures of 4 friends as they hike out to find the body of kid they know who they heard was hit by a train on the “Back Harlow Road”. The movie has several, now well-known actors like Kiefer Sutherland, River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton (who does an incredible job) and Corey Feldmen. I would be fair to say that this movie was certainly a good kick-start to the careers of some of these actors.
So what it is about this movie that really resonates with me? I was not born until the late 60’s so the time period is unfamiliar to me and I have little association with any of the trends and music of that time. And yet, something about that time and about this movie makes me yearn for something I do not have or sorely miss.
When you look at Stand by Me as a whole, the movie is about friendships and the loss of innocence. And while the narrator (played by Richard Dreyfuss as ‘The Writer’) talks primarily through his own experience and how this adventure was about dealing with the death of his older brother, we also see how it is about the close bond between friends and what it means to lose that bond as well.
And THAT is where it resonates with me. I have always watched this movie and gone into a sort of reverie of my own childhood. Even though the time period is before mine, it still reminds of the the innocence that I once had, that free feeling that that you can only now look back on and appreciate because at the time you just assumed that life was….what life was… and you had no real idea how to appreciate the freedom of not worrying about anything except getting punched for flinching from your friends.
I watched the movie again last week and looked at it with the perspective of being a father to a son who is just reaching the age of the characters in this movie. The last line in the movie is from the narrator as he finishes up the story: “I never had friends later in life like I did when I was twelve. Does anyone?” This gets right to the heart of it for me. Does anyone have that innocence anymore? Does anyone still have the kind of friendships that are built on who can spit the farthest or run the fastest? Friendships built on the glue of snails, the wood of tree houses and the foundations of mud slinging contests?
What will I do, how will I react when my son loses that very innocence? He is almost there; it scares me because I do not know how to tell him that getting that innocence back is almost impossible. All I can tell him is to remember those days with a smile, and when he gets older to watch ‘Stand By Me’.
