Stand By Me Rewatched
Jul. 23rd, 2010 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakLast night I revisited one of my favourite films from both my teenage years, and to feature teenagers. (Well, kids somewhere between the kid and the teenager stage.) Of which there aren’t many. I was the right age during the 80s, but I never connected to any of the John Hughes movies emotionally when they hit the screen, nor to Heathers, though I thought it was witty and brilliant. To me, there was always a sense of artifice, and of alien-ness; American high schools seemed to be exotic places featuring stylized creatures not like the ones I actually got to meet when I participated in a student exchange program at age 14. No, if I have to think of a film not focused on adults but exclusively on kids which I completely fell for before being an adult myself, one immediately comes to mind: Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, based on the novella The Body by Stephen King. Not having seen it for quite some time, I wondered whether it would hold up to my sentimental memories.
First of all, Reiner is obviously one of those directors who can get good performances out of children and teenagers. Which in a film where there are no adults to carry some of the acting burdens – the adults all exist only in cameos, like Gordie’s father, or the drugstore owner, and Richard Dreyfus at the start and the end as adult Gordie gazing soulfully in the distance – is pretty crucial. But you believe in Chris, Gordie, Teddy and Vern – or, for that matter, their nemesis, teenage hoodlum Ace, played by a young Kiefer Sutherland – because the young actors embody them so well, never appearing stilted. All of them, which is important. While there is a slant towards Gordie (Wil Wheaton) and Chris (River Phoenix) in terms of dramatic weight, the other two aren’t merely background decoration; Teddy (Corey Feldman) in particular, whose father, as Gordie’s matter-of-fact narrator voice informs us, once burned his ear, is one messed up kid.
It’s a film with a deceptively simple plot – our heroes find out where the body of a missing boy is, hike through the woods, end up finding not just what they were looking for – and not much in the terms of outward action (the only “classic” action sequence is the one where they cross the bridge when a train shows up, though I suppose you could also count Gordie’s run from the dog Chopper, though that’s played for laughs, not danger, and the big confrontation with Ace & Co. at the end); the kids simply laugh, argue, alternatingly enjoy themselves and try to deal with their emotional baggage. And there’s not a boring minute, including the silent sequence where Gordie, before the others wake up, watches and is watched by a deer.
Nostalgia (the late 50s soundtrack) is a part of the appeal, yes, but childhood in this coming-of-age story is by no means presented as an idyll, and while neither King nor Reiner do the sharp class satire thing, they’re keenly observant. When Chris, in one of the film’s key scenes, admits to Gordie he did steal but tried to return the money via a teacher, who simply kept the money herself, secure in the knowledge that nobody would believe a child from a family of alcoholics and criminals, the indictment of adult cynicism and status difference is blistering.
And it’s with this background that Chris’ appeal to Gordie to go to college instead of ignoring school work in favour of continuing to hang out with his friends gains its power. Stand by me is, as has repeatedly been said, an ode to friendship, but not an unqualified one. (I’ll get to the epilogue.) Most of all, it’s unabashedly romantic in the way it presents friendship as a lifeline; there are two scenes which today in fanfiction terms would be called pure hurt/comfort, one where Gordie, whose older brother died and who suspects his parents would rather it was him, is comforted by Chris, and one where Chris (after confessing the money stealing episode) is comforted by Gordie; and yet it never comes across as mawkish, seeing how these scenes are embedded in a lot more of relentless teasing.
Gordie is rather openly a youthful Stephen King alter ago, the kid whose talent is storytelling (“but not one of your horror stories”, protests Vern when Gordie is about to tell them a story over camp fire), and storytelling is essential in this film; both our heroes and their somewhat older rivals initially are motivated by wanting to make themselves admired local heroes, the confrontation with Chopper the legendary dog is comic eye opener for Gordie about the difference between myth and reality, Teddy rewrites the reality of his father by repeating the story of his father storming the beach of Normandy again and again, Chris is keenly aware that he, Teddy and Vern are written off as doomed already, Gordie tries to change that story, and so forth. And of course the entire film is a story that adult Gordie tells to cope with, as we find out, adult Chris’ death. The moment of transition near the end between main plot and framing opening and closing images uses a visual trick that was already poignant at the time when the film was released but with the passing years and the fact the actor playing Chris, River Phoenix, was to die young became incredibly sad on a meta level as well; Chris takes his leave from Gordie, adult Gordie’s voice informs us that Chris did manage to go to college, to defy expectations and become lawyer… and that he was killed a few days ago. At that moment, without the usual slow disappearance or a fadeout, Chris literally blinks out of existence on screen. It’s wrenching, and, admittedly also because of some personal losses, it made me cry. Again.
Stand by me, which is discreet about the Stephen King connection because at the time films based on King novels had a bad reputation, The Shining excepted (and thus “based on The Body by Stephen King” is in the credits, but the name wasn’t mentioned anywhere else during original release), is also a remarkably faithful and yet cinematic book adaption. There are only minor differences to the source material (one of the stories Gordie tells is left out, the roles of Chris and Gordie during the final confrontation with Ace are reversed), with the exception of the epilogue, which in the film informs us that Vern and Teddy ended up in dead-end jobs, estranged but alive, whereas in the book the narrator tells us they both died young like Chris does, and, to make things even more depressing, that he recently saw Ace, alive and repulsive as ever. This would have been too grim a conclusion for what is a bittersweet but essentially optimistic film, so I understand why Reiner changed it. In an interview, he describes showing the film to Stephen King who loved it and cried, because, he said, here were his dead friends, alive. It’s a cinematic sleight of hand which rarely feels as earned.
I have never been able to hear the old B. E. King classic without the images from this movie appearing in my mind. The fondness for the actors remained with me (one of the reasons why I never hated good old Wesley Crusher on TNG), and Stand By Me was why I later kept watching Rob Reiner movies as well. It still makes me smile, cry and everything in between. Yes, I think it's true love.
First of all, Reiner is obviously one of those directors who can get good performances out of children and teenagers. Which in a film where there are no adults to carry some of the acting burdens – the adults all exist only in cameos, like Gordie’s father, or the drugstore owner, and Richard Dreyfus at the start and the end as adult Gordie gazing soulfully in the distance – is pretty crucial. But you believe in Chris, Gordie, Teddy and Vern – or, for that matter, their nemesis, teenage hoodlum Ace, played by a young Kiefer Sutherland – because the young actors embody them so well, never appearing stilted. All of them, which is important. While there is a slant towards Gordie (Wil Wheaton) and Chris (River Phoenix) in terms of dramatic weight, the other two aren’t merely background decoration; Teddy (Corey Feldman) in particular, whose father, as Gordie’s matter-of-fact narrator voice informs us, once burned his ear, is one messed up kid.
It’s a film with a deceptively simple plot – our heroes find out where the body of a missing boy is, hike through the woods, end up finding not just what they were looking for – and not much in the terms of outward action (the only “classic” action sequence is the one where they cross the bridge when a train shows up, though I suppose you could also count Gordie’s run from the dog Chopper, though that’s played for laughs, not danger, and the big confrontation with Ace & Co. at the end); the kids simply laugh, argue, alternatingly enjoy themselves and try to deal with their emotional baggage. And there’s not a boring minute, including the silent sequence where Gordie, before the others wake up, watches and is watched by a deer.
Nostalgia (the late 50s soundtrack) is a part of the appeal, yes, but childhood in this coming-of-age story is by no means presented as an idyll, and while neither King nor Reiner do the sharp class satire thing, they’re keenly observant. When Chris, in one of the film’s key scenes, admits to Gordie he did steal but tried to return the money via a teacher, who simply kept the money herself, secure in the knowledge that nobody would believe a child from a family of alcoholics and criminals, the indictment of adult cynicism and status difference is blistering.
And it’s with this background that Chris’ appeal to Gordie to go to college instead of ignoring school work in favour of continuing to hang out with his friends gains its power. Stand by me is, as has repeatedly been said, an ode to friendship, but not an unqualified one. (I’ll get to the epilogue.) Most of all, it’s unabashedly romantic in the way it presents friendship as a lifeline; there are two scenes which today in fanfiction terms would be called pure hurt/comfort, one where Gordie, whose older brother died and who suspects his parents would rather it was him, is comforted by Chris, and one where Chris (after confessing the money stealing episode) is comforted by Gordie; and yet it never comes across as mawkish, seeing how these scenes are embedded in a lot more of relentless teasing.
Gordie is rather openly a youthful Stephen King alter ago, the kid whose talent is storytelling (“but not one of your horror stories”, protests Vern when Gordie is about to tell them a story over camp fire), and storytelling is essential in this film; both our heroes and their somewhat older rivals initially are motivated by wanting to make themselves admired local heroes, the confrontation with Chopper the legendary dog is comic eye opener for Gordie about the difference between myth and reality, Teddy rewrites the reality of his father by repeating the story of his father storming the beach of Normandy again and again, Chris is keenly aware that he, Teddy and Vern are written off as doomed already, Gordie tries to change that story, and so forth. And of course the entire film is a story that adult Gordie tells to cope with, as we find out, adult Chris’ death. The moment of transition near the end between main plot and framing opening and closing images uses a visual trick that was already poignant at the time when the film was released but with the passing years and the fact the actor playing Chris, River Phoenix, was to die young became incredibly sad on a meta level as well; Chris takes his leave from Gordie, adult Gordie’s voice informs us that Chris did manage to go to college, to defy expectations and become lawyer… and that he was killed a few days ago. At that moment, without the usual slow disappearance or a fadeout, Chris literally blinks out of existence on screen. It’s wrenching, and, admittedly also because of some personal losses, it made me cry. Again.
Stand by me, which is discreet about the Stephen King connection because at the time films based on King novels had a bad reputation, The Shining excepted (and thus “based on The Body by Stephen King” is in the credits, but the name wasn’t mentioned anywhere else during original release), is also a remarkably faithful and yet cinematic book adaption. There are only minor differences to the source material (one of the stories Gordie tells is left out, the roles of Chris and Gordie during the final confrontation with Ace are reversed), with the exception of the epilogue, which in the film informs us that Vern and Teddy ended up in dead-end jobs, estranged but alive, whereas in the book the narrator tells us they both died young like Chris does, and, to make things even more depressing, that he recently saw Ace, alive and repulsive as ever. This would have been too grim a conclusion for what is a bittersweet but essentially optimistic film, so I understand why Reiner changed it. In an interview, he describes showing the film to Stephen King who loved it and cried, because, he said, here were his dead friends, alive. It’s a cinematic sleight of hand which rarely feels as earned.
I have never been able to hear the old B. E. King classic without the images from this movie appearing in my mind. The fondness for the actors remained with me (one of the reasons why I never hated good old Wesley Crusher on TNG), and Stand By Me was why I later kept watching Rob Reiner movies as well. It still makes me smile, cry and everything in between. Yes, I think it's true love.
