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Sometimes after a few days of depressing news about world, national, and local events, I need an attitude adjustment. Without it, I start wishing I lived in a cave in a forest with only the bears and squirrels for companionship. This is especially true after trying to find something to watch on TV after a long day only to find the fanaticism of competitive and reality TV programming. But I have a secret that always brings me back from the brink and then once again I am proud to call myself human. Watching the movie How Green Was My Valley does this.[i]
This movie came out in 1941. I wasn’t born until 1945. I don’t recall how old I was the first time I saw this wonderful, heartwarming movie, but it has always lessened my concern about the serious decline in human behavior. The story is simple. It’s about a coal mining family in South Wales. The story moves from relative happy times in the community to troubled times. Coal mining communities have always been tight knit, hard working communities, and always one step away from disaster. Mining improvements have been made in some parts of the world but we continue to hear of explosions and lost lives from poorly regulated mining operations.
The storyline of HGWMV, however, is about character and honor and dignity and hard work and devotion to family and neighbors and friends. It takes place in a mining village but it could be any village (or any community) anywhere where struggling for survival and a decent life is the driving force behind every action of every person. The bond in communities such as these spreads as the communities send forth their children to make their way in the world, children raised to care about the world and other people and the land and how it’s all connected.
John Ford directed this movie. In two hours he presents a saga of this village through dialog, music, and action that transports the viewer in such a way that when the movie concludes we feel we know these people, we feel we have always known them, and we love them.
I have the added benefit of a side story to this movie. I have a friend from Wales. We’ve discussed this film many times and she has confirmed that the story is realistic based on the history of the coal regions and other communities within Wales. My friend has been in the U.S. many years now (and is a citizen) but still has the faint accent that is so distinctive to the Welsh. People have often asked her where she is from because her accent is different from others we hear in that part of the world. We have often discussed life in Wales (though of course she was born many years later than the time period of the film). This “back story” she has provided simply makes me love the movie even more.
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I work in my home office each day and watch movies on my computer provided by Netflix and their “instant play” selections. Depending on the craft I’m preparing on a given day, I select movies accordingly. Yesterday, I had detailed handwork on my task list and was able to select a movie that I could watch closely and still work at the same time. The news as usual has been depressing with kidnapping victims being found (happy news in one respect if your brain is able to delete the 18 years she was held in captivity), the healthcare debate, the housing mess, the wars, the loss of wilderness areas due to environmental changes, the “anniversary” of 9/11 approaching, and so forth. I dug in to my Netflix selections and there it was. I have no idea how many times I’ve watched this movie but it’s easily more than 20.
As we get older we sometimes look at our childhoods as places of infinite joy and happiness and see the world then as perfect. How many times have we listened to a senior citizen wax and wane on the good life in the “old days”? I suppose it’s nice to look back with fond memories but to look back and not see the world that was around you is problematic in the ongoing struggle to improve life today [those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it].
I have not gone in that direction. I was born at the end of World War II and times were very difficult for most of our parents and their parents before them. I have not looked at my childhood life with rose-colored glasses. I do not believe they were the “good old days” globally or locally. My personal childhood was good but I was aware of families around me who were not living the life I lived. In fact, few of us ever truly had the good old days. Life is tough. We are sometimes tricked into thinking it isn’t because we have so many wonderful modern things to help us travel and live in decent homes and food is plentiful in progressive nations. But everywhere in life, even in our country, there is despair and unhappiness.
This is also the theme of HGWMV but we are so fractionalized in our modern society that it’s hard to find the bonding and support systems found in this film. It’s here and I know it is, but it’s just harder to find. In the movie it was all around them. Today, especially when flipping through the TV, we see horrific examples of humanity on Jerry Springer, Big Brother, Kendra, The Kardashians, Dr. Phil, and countless others. Did these people exist in some form in How Green Was My Valley? Were they omitted from the storyline to keep the movie clean and wholesome? Surely there were blaggards and scoundrels in these communities. Were they as evil as Phillip Garrido?
When we read the classic heart-wrenching stories about the human march from cradle to grave (Dostoevsky, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Dickens [the master of blaggards and scoundrels]) we are reminded that all of the Phillip Garridos and his like were there then as well. Dickens’ stories are full of hateful, nasty people. But the old masters also wrote about the heroes, the ordinary heroes that pull us through as a society. Many of these heroes in classic literature were poor, wretched people, with tremendous strength of character. In Dickens’ weekly serials people could get a taste of good and evil that would last them for another week to help keep them going.
Today the march continues to be tough, quality TV programming (our primary source of entertainment) is spotty, movies are often disappointing and movie theaters are filled with smelly foods and rude people, neighborhoods are places where people live solely within their homes and do not know their neighbors (mine included), employment is full of disingenuous people trying to defeat the efforts of their coworkers, road rage, parking lot rage, murders, religious superiority contests, shootings at schools (yesterday at a college), kidnappings, pedophiles, home invasions--and I have to stop.
It isn’t good to dwell on the horrors around us. In earlier times people left the harsh realities of life by joining together at the end of the day, shutting out the struggles they faced before they began the struggle all over again the next day. They didn’t watch reality TV or have world events streaming to them all night. They were together and that was what they wanted and needed.
I needed that recently and found it (again) in How Green Was My Valley. Try it.
[i] How Green Was My Valley [1941]; Novel by Richard Hewellyn; Directed by John Ford; Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee, Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall (as the child storyteller, Huw Morgan)
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