Being A Man

One of my MySpace friends, Lena, is a big movie fan. Like me, she finds it a challenge to find a good movie, at Blockbuster, that she hasn't yet seen. With her birthday coming up, I decided to put together a list of really good rarely viewed movies that I think she'd like. Plus, since women are always wondering what goes on inside a guy's head, these movies would be about what it means to be a man.

I started with a list of great relationship movies about men, trimmed off all the popular ones, trimmed off all the recently released ones (5 years old or less), and trimmed off those that don't seem to make a point about what it means to be a man.

After all that, the list got shortened to only thre recommendation (sorry, Lena). They are "To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)", "Beautiful Girls (1996)", and "High Fidelity (2000)"

1. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
   Many people think that this movie (and book) is about racism in the south. However, this theme is only one of the devices used to illustrate what it means to be a man. The movie is seen through the eyes of a 5-6 year old girl (Scout) as she compares the behavior of the men in her life. The movie opened with Scout's brother's (Jem's) view of what it means to be a man: athleticism (playing football), power (a gun), and risk-taking (boy's idea of bravery). Not in the movie, but in the book, Jem participated in a pissing contest with their neighbor, Dill (competition involving urinating: for distance, acuracy, endurance, and sometime creativity like writing or drawing in the snow). i.e., A man has the right equipment to compete in this contest that obviously Scout can not participate. But as Scout watches the actions of her father (Atticus Finch) who is a lawyer, his black client (Tom Robinson), and the mentally ill neighbor (Boo Radley), and compares their action with those of other men around her, she starts to see that a real man does not get his identity from physical power, political power, finanical power or any other things that most men pursue. She sees that a real man gets his identity from the strength of his character. A character that pursues justice, shows compassion, and sacrifices for the ones he loves. The movie is not only poignant but has a lot of very funny comic reliefs (relieves?). "To Kill a Mockingbird" is considered by many to be Gregory Peck's best movie. Robert Duvall played Boo Radley.


2. Beautiful Girls (1996)
   Girls, if you want to know why men have trouble committing to a relationship, this movie is the one to see. It has an ensemble cast that includes Timothy Hutton, Natalie Portman, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Mira Sorvino, Rosie O'Donnell, Lauren Holly, Michael Rapaport, and Annabeth Gish. The movie follows Timothy Hutton's character as he goes home to a high school re-union and anguishes over whether his girlfriend is the ONE. Uma Thurman and Natalie Portman put in a terrific performance as characters who represent the unknow options. Thurman's character represents the woman who could be the ONE but geographically removed. Portman's character represents the woman who could be the ONE but has yet to grow up to be a woman. Thurman's character shows Hutton's character that while he thinks her boyfriend is the luckiest guy in the world, other guys are thinking the same about him and his girlfriend (Gish). And while Hutton's character pines for the woman that Portman would become, he discovers that his girlfriend (Gish) is already there. This is another movie that is both poignant and funny.



3. High Fidelity (2000)
   In this adaptation of Nick Hornby's book with the same title, John Cusack plays a character (Rob) who doesn't know what it takes to love a woman. Unfortunately, he is surrounded by guys who are just as clueless. Hornby uses the "knowing how to make a great compilation tape" theme as the analogy to knowing how to love a woman. In the beginning Cusack's character describes the techniques that he uses to put together a great compilation tape. At the end of the movie, he is making a tape for his girlfriend Laura, just putting songs, that she likes, on the tape. He learns that love is about putting what's best for Laura ahead of what's best for him. The book provides lots of great material for the movie; on top of that, Cusack makes every movie, that he's in, fun to watch.