So, the tax accountant got back to me today and told me I owed Uncle Sam a couple of thousand dollars and because of that I had to pay some kind of penalty. Well that really sucked and I had to go adjust my deductions on my paycheck and blah, blah blah … it ate up half my morning. So, I was out of sorts today.
Because of all that, I needed to do something fun this afternoon. Camera Girl and I decided to watch a movie we both like and haven’t seen in a long while; Ernest Hemingway’s, “The Old Man and the Sea.” It’s the one with Spencer Tracy as an old Cuban fisherman who catches swordfish. He’s recently become “unlucky.” He hasn’t caught a swordfish in 85 days and the boy who used to help him has been told by his father to find a luckier boat. So, the old man is all alone and he goes out to try his luck one more time. And the story is a folk tale about a three-day odyssey to land and bring home a giant swordfish, bigger than his little sailboat.
In a way it’s a meditation on life and old age and fate. It’s a simple story and mostly takes place between the old man and his mythic prey. Most of the dialogue (or soliloquy) is the old man talking to the fish (or himself). Occasionally he remembers (or dreams about) his past, when he was a valiant man of great strength and skill. And often as the strain of fighting the fish becomes unbearable, he exclaims, “I wish the boy was here.”
And slowly and painfully the story unfolds and the old man finally plays the fish in and kills it with his harpoon. But because of the size of the fish, he must lash it to the outside of his boat and eventually sharks are drawn to the smell of blood. The old man fights them off the fish with his harpoon until it is lost, then a makeshift spear, then the gaffe hook and finally a club. But as his weapons become cruder and less effective the sharks increasingly mutilate his prize until finally all that is left is the head, tail and a naked backbone. When he reaches home on the morning of the fourth day, he is utterly exhausted and defeated and barely crawls back to his hut to sleep.
That morning the other fishermen are astounded at the colossal size of the carcass and remark to the boy how amazing the fish must have been. The boy brings coffee to the old man and tells him that despite his father’s order not to fish with the old man he will defy him and bring his luck to the old man’s boat. So, the story ends with the continuity of life as the torch is passed from the old to the young. But in this case youth partners with the heroic efforts of the past instead of pushing it out of the way to replace it.
It’s a very strange story and plays out as something of a fairy tale. Mercifully, the fish never speaks but the old man treats it as if he wouldn’t be surprised if it did. The old man taught the boy to fish and so they have a mentor/pupil relationship but it appears more like a grandfather/grandson bond between them. And that is the only major character dynamic going on in the story.
There really isn’t that much to this story. Most of it takes place in a boat on the water with only one person present. I really don’t think I could justify why I like this movie that much. Maybe because I like watching it with Camera Girl. Her father was an avid salt water fisherman. And I think the movie is evocative of that connection. Well, anyway it brightened up our day.
