When I asked two of my roommates what I should write about for my column (a question I ask them almost weekly), they gave me some suggestions I didn’t like (as they do almost weekly), and then one wonderful suggestion: One of the girls proposed that I write about the movie “Casablanca.” “Casablanca” is my favorite movie (followed by “Gladiator,” in case you’re interested), and my roommates just recently watched it and loved it too, thus the suggestion.
It would break my heart to ruin “Casablanca” for those of you who haven’t seen it, so I thought I’d write about one of my favorites aspects of the movie, rather than about the story. To manage this without giving away any plot-ruining details, I’m also going to talk about two other movies: one of the movies I assume most of y’all have seen, “Saving Private Ryan,” and the other probably none of you have seen (unless you have a deep and abiding love for TCM like I do), “Tonight and Every Night.”
My roommate originally suggested that I write specifically about the ending of “Casablanca,” which she finds upsetting and sad. I won’t describe the ending, but I will take issue with her appraisal of it. The movie ends on a sad note for some of the characters, in some ways, but to me that is the beauty of it.
The ending of the movie is an ending for us but not for the characters. As the camera pulls back for the final shot, two individuals are walking off into the night. One of these has just faced considerable disappointment and emotional turmoil, but rather than crying in a corner or giving in to his/her pain through self pity (which is what I would have done, let’s be honest), the character decides to live through the pain and take one step after another (and join a resistance movement against the Nazis). It is, in fact, the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
For those of you who don’t watch TCM regularly, “Tonight and Every Night” is a love story centered around a theater house in London that never closed during World War II, even during the worst of the German blitz of London: Apparently the theater in the movie is loosely based on an actual theater in London that remained open through the entirety of the blitz.
The cast and crew of the theater in “Tonight and Every Night” complete their performances every time, entertaining troops and regular Londoners, even as bombs fall around the city and rafters in the theater catch on fire. In a heartbreaking scene at the end of the movie (during which I always cry), they continue with the show after the death of two of their company members in an bomb explosion that occurred across the street moments before. This may seem callous, but the sentiment expressed, the spirit of “carrying on” that lived in the British people during the blitz, comes through in the film.
And now a final movie tie-in, because as I was thinking about what to write, I walked in on another of my roommates watching a scene from “Saving Private Ryan.” In it Tom Hanks explains to his men, who were in a mutinous mood, why he is going to continue on with their mission to find Private Ryan, despite the danger and casualties they’ve faced in looking for one man on the Western Front.
Hanks talks calmly, but nostalgically, about his wife and home, and then says it’s not Ryan as a person that’s important, but what he represents; that if finding Ryan “earns (Hank) the right to get back to (his) wife, then that’s (his) mission,” no matter the questionable logic of the order.
I like that all three movies embody that sense of “carrying on,” of going through with what is hard, not because that’s what you necessarily want to do, but because you have a responsibility, whether to your friends, your community, your country or to something higher. I have trouble subordinating my personal interests and desires to external claims on my time and energy, so I admire selfless dedication to duty and a determination to “carry on” when I encounter it, whether in real life or film. How many people can say honestly that their own problems don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world?
— Leigh Dickey is a junior in global studies. She can be reached at [email protected].
