High Society

I don't know why I try to watch movies for entertainment.

One exception worth mentioning is that Darren and I just watched the movie version of Louis Sachar's book "Holes." If you aren't familiar with "Holes," then stop reading this post right now, get thee to a library, and check out a copy of the book. After you've read the book, get the movie. Like pieces of a puzzle, the story starts out disjointed, only to lock into an extremely satisfying big picture by the end.

Back to my regularly-scheduled movie rant.

(This post originally was much longer, but I snipped it.)

I watched the last fifteen minutes or so of "High Society" last night while folding clothes. It's unusual that I watch movies by myself, but I'd been seeing this one in pieces and decided to finish it. It stars Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby, and is a jazz-musical remake of "The Philadelphia Story," which featured Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and a young Jimmy Stewart. (I'm in love with Jimmy Stewart.) I've seen both movies a few times before, always with the hope that *this* time I'll understand the story. I never do.

Basically, Kelly plays Tracy Lord, a rich young heiress with implacably high standards. When anyone -- a husband, a father -- fails to live up to her expectations, she shunts them aside. On the eve of her second marriage, to the equally high-minded George, Tracy evidently has a drunken fling with a visiting tabloid reporter. She can't actually remember what happened, but unfortunately both her husband-to-be, and her husband-that-was (Dexter, who hangs around because he's still devoted to her)witness her midnight return to her rooms, with the reporter, wearing nothing but bathrobes.

George of course is shattered, while Dexter (illustrating how he loves people Just The Way They Are) takes everything in stride. Tracy herself is devastated that she possibly could have committed such a moral travesty. It's the morning of the wedding, and all of a sudden Tracy is chastened and apologetic. Now she knows what it is to be flawed. She sees everyone -- including her unambitious first husband and her adulterous father -- in a new and charitable light. It turns out and she and the reporter didn't do anything, but she and George call things off anyway. Instead, she marries Dexter again. It all ends in a jazzy wedding march and kisses all around.

Generations of movie-watchers file out around me, satisfied with a happy ending and beautiful clothes. I'm left holding an unmatched sock in my hand and apparently the only one who can't believe that this would all end happily. Tracy is now forgiving and full of grace for flawed mankind? Dexter really can make it as her husband a second time? And am I the only one who noticed that a running moral of the story is, If a man has flings with other women, but says he's sorry when it happens, then he should be forgiven and beloved again? The story doesn't deliver what it promises, and I'm left chewing on it over and over again, trying to make it fit.

Everyone else replies, "Then stop trying to make it fit! What does it matter anyway?" It doesn't matter, of course. Except that movies reflect accepted attitudes, and movies mess with our reality, so we sometimes think that a ten-minute life change really is possible and happy endings our due. Still, why do I do this with forgettable movies? Probably because I don't watch heavier ones, ones that really warrant thought and energy. If I get this involved in "High Society," imagine what I was like after seeing "Braveheart" years ago. I was exhausted for a week.

-- SJ