The view from the box office

April 2nd, 2009 Tim Posted in SevenLakes Info |

(Nancy) There’s a scene in The Sound of Music where the 15 year old daughter sneaks back in to her house through the window of her new governess (live-in nanny). She’s soaking wet and is caught but then assisted, comforted and counseled by the governess (played by Julie Andrews) and she realizes that, contrary to what she had previously said, she really did still need a governess. For those who don’t know the story, Julie Andrews’ character, Maria, was the latest in a long line of women sent to care for the seven children of a sea captain whose beloved wife had died. In his grief he had pushed away everything of love and beauty, including his children. Maria and Captain Von Trapp later “fall in love” and marry. It’s based on a true story that happened during World War II.  It’s one of my mom’s favorite movies.

Another “love story” of that time period is Dr. Zhivago, in which the doctor “falls in love” with a young woman and leaves his wife and children on a cold farm in Russia to have an “affair” with Lara. The difference is that The Sound of Music elevates the importance of mothers, wives and home building while Dr. Zhivago elevates “love” (read “lust”) as more important than commitment.

Point of view is so important in movies: we are trained to root for the “hero”, often at the expense of virtue. One of my favorite movies is The Princess Bride and another is Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one, please!). Still, I realize that piracy is elevated as a virtue in both movies. If the first movie had been told from the point of view of one of the widows of a murder victim of Wesley as the Dread Pirate Roberts or the second movie from the point of view of the family of a soldier in the Royal Navy who died fighting the pirates, the stories would be very different. I don’t remember if a name was even given to the wife of Dr. Zhivago but Lara’s Theme plays on music boxes around the world.