Majorly English

That may be a little strong, but after watching this film, which is held up as a pinnacle of cinematic achievement, a Best Picture Oscar winner, found at the tops of every Top n Movie Something-or-Other List put out by a variety of media outlets, and the inflation-adjusted top box-office buster of all time, I have to say I’m a little disappointed.

To be fair, I didn’t know a whole lot about Gone With the Wind before watching it this Saturday, taking a break after 3.5 hours, and finishing it Sunday evening.  All I knew about it was the quote “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and the racial insensitivity.

Nonetheless, I was interested in sewing on a few more merit badges onto my felt sash of Cultural Awareness, so the Lovely Wife ™ and I decided to rent it this weekend.

To start with, I had been led to believe by decades of fawning and glorification that this movie would be a dramatic story of love conquering all and such.  I remember, in the montage that concludes “The Great Movie Ride” at Walt Disney World’s MGM Studios, they show the scene of Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett O’Hara up the stairs in a passionate embrace.

Turns out that scene is really about a drunken Rhett Butler dragging his wife upstairs to presumably rape her.  My confusion over the distinction should be evident.

I thought the movie was about the Old South, struggling with its loss in the Civil War, trying to keep things together, and somehow, some way, through it all, love finds a way.

I had always envisioned “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” to be a reference to Scarlett’s concerns that this crazy world would never accept their pure, unadulterated love.  Rather, it’s a big giant “f*ck you” to Scarlett, the last thing he says to her before he leaves into the fog, presumably to pay a visit to the genial elderly prostitute whose company he enjoys.

This movie is not a story of love surviving in the land time has passed by.

I was surprised when I put the movie in, to discover that it was nearly four hours long.  A movie had better be outstanding for me to commit 1/6th of my day to.  The film has an Intermission, for God’s sake.

But, assuming the entirety of film criticism history couldn’t be wrong, we forged ahead with the movie.  And it wasn’t terrible.  A little dated, to be sure, but it is approaching a vintage of 70 years.

And like, I said, out of sheer exhaustion, we had to stop the movie with about 45 minutes to go.  When we resumed it the following evening, it was like a gallon of milk we had left out overnight, it had turned and what I was to believe was nutritious and wholesome was now rotten and disturbing.  The first 3.5 hours involved the Civil War, some widowing, a childbirth, some latent racism, a raging inferno, horse abuse, and Scarlett shooting a Union soldier in the face with a lethal red paint gun (spoiler).

In the last 45 minutes, we’re privy to Scarlett having a baby, then getting pregnant again, only to fling herself down the stairs in an effort to attack her estranged husband after he hopefully suggested she’d have a miscarriage.  Naturally, she has a miscarriage. Now, that first child, now grown into a young girl, is promptly flung face-first into a series of wooden boards by a nervous pony.  She dead.  Rhett and Scarlett trade brandy and insults, and at some point he drunkenly drags her up to the bedroom for unseemly behavior.  But he apologizes the next morning, and seems downright sheepish about it, so all’s forgiven.

Oh, then there’s the part where Rhett keeps his dead daughter’s corpse in her room for days on end, refusing to bury her.  Fortunately, Scarlett’s dear friend Milly manages to convince him to stop acting like a sick combination of Hannibal Lector and the World’s #1 Dad.  Unfortunately, Milly dies in the attempt, taking her unborn child with her to the Great Beyond.

Then Rhett leaves Scarlett, but not before telling her he couldn’t give two monkey flingings what she does with the rest of her life.  So she moves home, the site where her father was killed in another horse-related catastrophe, and where she shot a man in the face.  Fin.

But make no mistake, by no means am I an ageist.  This weekend, as said cultural merit-badge foraging, we also watched Casablanca, which I consider to be an outstanding film.  Dramatic, funny, romantic, and exciting wrapped in a smoky exotic package.

Maybe it’s a case of mistaken identity; I thought Gone With the Wind was a love story, but in reality it’s more of a life story filled with tragedy and heartbreak.  Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.