I see a lot of movies. Despite all evidence to the contrary in this series, I do see new movies all the time, but mostly I get mired in random phases where I’ll watch anything and everything I can get my hands on starring a singular actor or actress, by a certain director, or in a specific genre. At other times, if I’m just in the mood for something, but not anything in particular, I’ll just go and pick things out at the video store and try whatever strikes my fancy. Because of this, I wind up seeing a lot of crap, but nearly as often I find gems that I would have never come across otherwise. So with this last meme on the 31st and final day: “A Movie That More People Should See,” I have lots and lots of movies I’d recommend which may have passed a lot of you by. Therefore, I’m just forcing myself to pick one, but if anyone ever wants suggestions… well, you know where to find me.

There’s this delightful movie called A Walk on The Moon, starring Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen, and Liev Schreiber. It doesn’t really break any new ground in film-making, or illuminate about any particular subject, but it’s a very human drama, and its brilliance is all in the telling. Pearl is married with children and in her early thirties. She got pregnant at seventeen, and she and her husband, Marty, grew up and old way too fast. They’ve been happy, they’ve done what was expected of them, and they’ve been living their pleasant, ordinary lives just fine until now. But it’s the summer of 1969, the retreat they visit every year in Upstate New York is very near Woodstock, and the Apollo 11 mission is rocketing closer and closer to the Moon. As her daughter reaches the age of fourteen and begins her first steps toward womanhood and independence, Pearl walks her own path toward reclaiming the youth she lost.

It could be a story filled with pathos and histrionics, with the characters selfishly going after what they want without a care for others and becoming monsters in their anger. What happens instead is that the main players, Pearl, Marty, her lover, and her mother-in-law, all unfailingly act like adults. There is confusion and hurt, of course, and there are painful moments of striking out and times where you don’t agree with everything everyone does. But there is a tremendous amount of love and respect that runs in this family, and they don’t just chuck it all because it would be understandable for them to.

It reminds me of what I remember being taught years ago at Atlantic Theatre Company; founded in part by David Mamet, predictably the message was that the playwright has created the conflict, so it’s your job as an actor to solve the problem. People don’t go into a fight trying to escalate it. In real life, we (most of the time) don’t abuse people just because we can. What we do, however, is maneuver our ways through life trying everything each situation requires to get what we want. Depictions of drama in film and literature can sometimes drive me just batty with the way characters interact, where the writers have created big scenes just because they think the moment calls for them without justifying anything. Maybe it would be dramatic to have one character say something hideous to the other, but are you then going to be able to reason what they accomplish with it? As much as we’ve been lulled into a stupor by sloppy writing in popular film, there’s still something that sticks in our craw when the motivations and relationships of characters just don’t make sense to us. We feel it deep down to our bones, and we’re disappointed. We should demand more.

A Walk on the Moon is a picnic, a beautifully complex look at how a family can grow and change and pull away from each other and then… maybe, come back together. There’s power in a shared history, and there’s love and affection in a life lived together. We don’t have to feel stuck with the lot we’ve been given; we can find a way to make it the life we choose.

So… that’s it! This was a much more fun project to contemplate than execute, and writing all thirty-one of these babies has worn me out. Thank you to everyone who has read and commented and given support. I hope I’ve inspired some of you to see something you wouldn’t have, or to revisit an old favorite.