Old Age Day by Day February 27, 2010

Last night my husband and I watched Gone With the Wind. We hadn't even been born in 1939 when the film was released,and wouldn't be for a few more years, so I never saw it in the theater, and have only watched it four or five times in my life. I do distinctly remember stealing my mother's copy of the novel when I was twelve and racing through, looking for the juicy bits. I no longer have any idea what I thought of the book then, except Rhett Butler was sexy and Ashley was a wimp. I was living in the South, in Virginia, at the time, but my sympathies were all Yankee, as were my parents'. I doubt I was able to see myself in either Scarlett or Melanie. Neither character has much I can relate to in my life. But I understand them better now. I must say, if I identified with anyone, it was Rhett. He was the truth teller, and his bluntness was something I and my father shared. But the thing is, my husband and I were able to watch the whole long melodrama with the dogs, and then sit up until eleven pm discussing the merits of Scarlett or Melanie, the miscasting of Leslie Howard as Ashley, and the goofiness of having the male leads both older enough to be the fathers of the female leads. Olivia de Haviland was only 23 when the film was made, and Vivien Leigh 26. Ashley should have been a Brad Pitt type, not a veteran of the Scarlett Pimpernel. I see Scarlett as a teenager with raging hormones and no ability to choose wisely. Ashley needs to be a hunk. Otherwise no one can stand his moping. Feeling sorry for oneself is not a noble virtue.

We went to bed, then further chatted until almost one am, and it was fun. Now that kind of mind mannered activity wouldn't be interesting to our kids, but when you get to be our ages, a critique of a movie can have the fascination that clubs and djs do not. We analyzed how the perception of what is racist and what is not has changed, what we'd felt about the Civil War when we studied it in school, and who had the better career - Olivia de Haviland or her sister Joan Fontaine? It's old folks talk, but I like it. I enjoy a nice, comfortable relationship of enough decades that you can ramble off topic and your partner doesn't correct you. We bounce from tangent to tangent and it's a delightful ride all the way. And heh, we're still young enough to watch a four hour movie and stay up discussing it. We ain't dead yet!