(Not the usual) Father's Day Movie List

Probably most people's list of favorite Father's Day movies has some version of Father of the Bride on it. I never even saw the Spencer Tracy/Elizabeth Taylor version until a few months ago, and I'm all like, Whatever, dude. Better Spencer Tracy Father's Day choices, to me, are Boys Town and Captains Courageous.

But the best Father's Day movies simply do a good job of explaining fatherhood to me.

The World According to Garp gives us a memorable, controlled Robin Williams performance as a man who adores being a father. Whenever things go wrong in his marriage, all is made well by going in and looking at the kids in their innocent sleep. Garp, a writer, says he will never create anything as lovely as that.

Little Miss Sunshine offers a good case study of the father first getting it wrong about what fatherhood means. Providing for the family and teaching children how to be successful? Um, not really. Let's start with seeing the kids for who they really are, loving them, and always having their back. Lesson learned for the father played by Greg Kinnear.

That's also what Dustin Hoffman discovers in Kramer vs. Kramer, who learns, among other things, that patience is a big part of the parental skill set.

There are also more heartbreaking Father's Day movies on my list, like Ordinary People, and the movie's end with Donald Sutherland breaking down in tears, embracing his surviving son.

The father's missing embrace is precisely what made Love Story the heartbreaking Father's Day tragedy about which I have written previously. The book version got it right: Barretts old and young finally embrace, literally and figuratively. Somehow Ray Milland and Ryan O'Neal were too macho to make the attempt, damn it. On the other hand, John Marley and Ali MacGraw give a crazy sweet father-daughter turn as Phil and Jenny.

Great moments in movie fatherhood are also found in Roberto Begnini's heartbreaking Life Is Beautiful, with the dad's diversionary tactics to conceal from his young son the horrific reality of their concentration camp imprisonment.

In the opposite way, the greatest-father-of-all-time, To Kill a Mockingbird's Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), reveals harsh reality to his children in the gentlest but most effective way possible: the lessons of empathy.

Okay, for dudes reading this blog, I'll give you Field of Dreams. No one can avoid tears when "he" at last appears at the magical field Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) has unknowingly built for his father in the heaven that is Iowa.

More great moments in fatherhood include the revelations of love in Mary Poppins and Sound of Music--those heart-swelling moments when fathers seem to recognize their love for their own flesh and blood for the very first time.

And don't miss Brian Keith's recognition of his new-found twin daughter, Haley Mills as Sharon, in The Parent Trap. (For Mother's Day, you can focus on that same scene played by Maureen O'Hara with Haley's Susan character.)

Then there is the heartbreaking moment when a son realizes his father's pride in him will be more than disappointed, as Ralph Fiennes must confess to Paul Scofield that the Van Doren name will be dragged through the mud on a Quiz Show.

(l-r) Gérard Depardieu, Stéphane Bierry, Pierre Richard, in Les Compères

Those are just a few of my favorite movie moments in fatherhood. But if I only watch one movie for Father's Day, it will be Les Compères, the story of two very different bachelors commissioned to retrieve the runaway teenage son of a woman each had had a fling with in their youth. Thinking he's escaping his own unreasonable father, the boy winds up with two more would-be parents who have no clue what fatherhood is all about. Through their adventures in the underworld of Nice gambling and narcotics rings and police corruption, they all find a way to figure out what the father-son relationship is all about.

There are also probably too many father-figure movies to go into, but I do love Fagin in Oliver! Really, why is that character described as evil? He took in orphans and fed them by whatever means he could. Anyway, Ron Moody begging his young charges to "Be Back Soon" is just one of that musical's many delights.

The list:

Les Compères
To Kill a Mockingbird
The World According to Garp
Kramer vs. Kramer
Little Miss Sunshine
Mary Poppins
Sound of Music
Field of Dreams
Life Is Beautiful
Ordinary People
The Parent Trap
Quiz Show
Love Story (though truthfully I usually watch this at Christmas time. I love the scenes in the snow and where Jenny is leading the boys choir in church).

love, hosaa
missing dad (1920-2007)

Saving Mr. Barrett

Speaking of Father's Day (not that we were), one of my favorite movies about fathers and sons is Love Story.

Right, you didn't know it was about fathers and sons because you probably didn't read the novel by Erich Segal - or, more specifically, the novelization that he wrote after the screenplay was accepted and undergoing the lengthy process of being developed into a major motion picture.

Basic story is this: Rich boy who resents his successful but elitist father falls in love with a poor girl whose relationship with her own father is warm, open, and nurturing. Misunderstandings ensue.

The problem with the WASP elitist father, Oliver Barrett III, is that he wants his son to be equally successful in all aspects of his life--sports, academics, love. (Success is, by man's definition, what happiness is.) Oliver IV is particularly resentful of his father's rejection of Jenny, who is not only poor, but also Catholic.

Though the audience is pretty certain of Ollie 4's love of Jenny, Mr. Barrett suspects that his son is merely rebelling against him by marrying this non-Abigail Adams ("or Wendy WASP").

Jenny tries unsuccessfully to help Ollies 3 and 4 better understand each other, and --- SPOILER ALERT ---

... she dies having failed in the attempt. Meanwhile, Jenny's dad bonds with Ollie 4 over Jenny's deathbed.

In truth, Mr. Barrett was quite charmed by the lovely Jenny and, if Ollie 4 hadn't been so antagonistic, might have put his prejudices aside eventually. When he learns Jenny is dying, he rushes to the hospital to be at her (and his son's) side.

"I'm sorry," says Mr. Barrett to Ollie 4.

"Love means never having to say you're sorry," Ollie 4 retorts.

Here's where the movie is different from the novelization. In the movie, actor Ryan O'Neal retains his frosty demeanor, stalking off to start his flashback about the girl who loved Mozart, Bach, and the Beatles. The "Love means never having to say you're sorry" lesson that he learned from his beautiful and brilliant wife turns into a rebuke to his father, a slap in the face.

Ollie 3 deserved better, and he got better in the novelization. Here:

MUCH better ending, in my opinion. Which is why it's one of my favorite Father's Day stories. If only Ryan O'Neal had let himself cry....

Update June 28: I see by my Yahoo News that Love Story stars Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal have had another reunion. In this interview with Hollywood Reporter, Ali calls her famous line "a crock." Whatever, dude. (Didn't Candice Bergen say pretty much the same thing in the sequel, Oliver's Story? Maybe it was some other parody I'm thinking of.)

Ali: "It's a crock." Ryan: "You'd better say you're sorry." Via The Hollywood Reporter.

I've spent years (decades) trying to understand the line, but I think Segal's ending in the novelization illustrates it well: Love is compassion. Love is understanding. When it's mutual and complete, love encompasses an unspoken forgiveness that doesn't require or demand a statement of contrition.

Love, hosaa
sobbing