dual personalities

Another Friday and another snowy week. I ventured out once for a doctor’s appointment and the driving was okay. I have driven so infrequently over the past 11 months, that I always worry that I will have forgotten how…and in the snow!

Recently I was reminded that the movie The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) was based on Glory For Me, a novel by MacKinlay Kantor, which he wrote in blank verse. I bought a used copy online and read it this week.

It is about about three service men, honorably dis­charged for medical causes toward the end of WWII, who re­turn home to the same town where in peacetime they had not known one an­other. The Oscar-winning screenplay, written by Robert Emmett Sherwood, uses much of the book, but softens it up for the postwar audience. The book is quite graphic in parts, as books can be where films dared not be. I liked it and it reminds one how hard veterans returning to “normal” life have always had it, even after a “popular” war. I’ll have to watch the movie–which is a great one–again soon.

Earlier in the week the OM and I watched the movie Robinson Crusoe (1954) based on the novel written by Daniel Defoe and published in 1719. Everyone knows the story about a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued, but I had never read the book or seen any of the movies based on it. I was interested in the 1954 version because it was directed by the famous Luis Bunuel, the Spanish director who is considered the “father of cinematic Surrealism.” It is, however, a straightforward telling of the story with Dan O’Herlihy as Crusoe and Jaime Fernandez, the Mexican movie star, as Friday. Both are engaging. They develop as characters and that is, after all, what we look for.

It is a much better movie than Castaway (2000), that’s for sure. So check it out. It’s available on Amazon Prime and Youtube.

“I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He has not given them.  All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

Robinson Crusoe

I will note that yesterday was the anniversary of Martin Luther’s death in 1546. This article about his death is interesting. Even Episcopalians mark the day on their calendar of saints and well they should.

Behold, Lord
   An empty vessel that needs
      to be filled.
   My Lord, fill it
   I am weak in the faith;
   Strengthen me.
   I am cold in love;
   Warm me and make me fervent,
   That my love may go out
      to my neighbor…
   O Lord, help me.
   Strengthen my faith and
      trust in you…
   With me, there is an
      abundance of sin;
   In You is the fullness of
      righteousness.
   Therefore I will remain
      with You,
   Whom I can receive,
   But to Whom I may not give.

Martin Luther

Enjoy your weekend! Daughter #1 is taking the train home later today so she can fetch her car. Some fun is in the offing.

*Frank Loesser