Then there are the two sisters, Reese Witherspoon and Emily Warfield.
And Gail Strickland, as the boy’s mother, creates moments that are as difficult as they are true.
#Man on the moon movie with reese witherspoon how to
There is a moment when Harper intuits something about her older girl, and the way she acts on her intuition is so tactful we feel she is giving the girl a lesson on how to be a mother. There is a moment when Waterson hugs his youngest girl, and the way it arrives and the way it plays are heartbreakingly touching. Tess Harper and Sam Waterston are convincing parents here they aren’t simply stick figures in a plot, used only to move events along, but people we believe could really have raised these girls. Of the performances, it is enough to say that each one creates a character that could not be improved on. Although, in retrospect, I can see how carefully the plot was put together, how meticulously each event was prepared for, as I watched the film I was only aware of life passing by. Usually I am aware of the screenwriter putting in obligatory scenes. It flows so smoothly from start to finish that it hardly even seems like an ordinary film. “The Man in the Moon” is like a great short story, one of those masterpieces of language and mood where not one word is wrong, or unnecessary. And then the magnificent concluding passages of this film are about how deeply one can be hurt, how hard it is to forgive, how impossible it is to share the deepest feelings. Now something happens in the story that I cannot tell. Life is so direct sometimes in the way it hurts us - and the younger we are, the more universal the hurt. Another, inevitably and painfully, is that when Court sees the older girl, he forgets about the kid sister with whom he shared the perfect kiss. Another is that their father ( Sam Waterston) is fairly strict - not because he is mean, but because he loves them. Another is that the older sister has just has a particularly nasty date with a crude local boy. One of them is that the girls’ mother ( Tess Harper) is in the last weeks of pregnancy. There are some complications surrounding that “perfect” kiss. Maybe it is the direction, by Robert Mulligan, whose long career includes another fine movie about a young girl, “ To Kill a Mockingbird.” Or maybe it is because everyone involved with the film knew that the script, by Jenny Wingfield, was not going to sell out at the end, was not going to contrive an artificial ending, or go for false sentiment, or do anything other that exactly what the material cries out for. Maybe it is because of the acting - Reese Witherspoon as Dani, here, and Jason London as Court, do justice to the slightest nuance of the scene. The way the scenes between Dani and Court are handled is typical of the entire movie, which takes material we may have seen many times before, and makes it true and fresh. Yes, the Meaning of Life, which is a topic teenagers discuss a good deal as their insides churn with hope and doubt, and which adults discuss less and less, the more they could benefit from it. The moment is perfect, too, but there is an even better one, when she tells him, “I want to know what your hopes are.” This isn’t just a movie about teenage romance, it’s a movie about idealism - about how we idealize what and who we love - and a movie about the meaning of life. Then Court kisses her, and she confesses it was the first time she has ever been kissed by a boy.
Dani asks Maureen how to kiss, and Maureen gives her lessons. They fight at first, but then they make up and become friends.ĭani of course develops an enormous crush on this boy, and for a day or two he seems to feel the same emotions she does.
One day he happens upon Dani down at the swimming hole. Of course all kid sisters feel that way.Ī widow moves onto the farm next door with her son, Court, who is about 17. On hot summer nights they sleep on the screened-in porch and have girl talks, and Dani laments that she will never be as beautiful and popular as her sister.
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