![]() What themes or images from the opening monologue occur in the closing monologue? What is their significance? What about this film was done well? Were there any aspects of the film you found lacking? If so, what were they?Ģ. Why is it that the people who need the most help won’t take it? We can love completely, even without complete understanding. You will go to church this day and pray for forgiveness… Boys, what have you done? But poor with Christ, they are princes and kings of the earth. The poor without Christ are of among all men the most miserable. My brother stood before us not on a bank of the Big Blackfoot River, but suspended above the earth, free from all its laws, like a work of art. He simply knew he was tougher than anyone alive. Paul’s toughness came from some secret place inside of him. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. The river was cut by the earth’s great flood and runs over the rocks from the basement of time. But I still reach out to them… When I am alone in the half-light of the canyon, all existence seems to fade away to a being with my soul and memories of the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River, and a four-count rhythm, and the hopes that a fish will rise.Įventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. Now, nearly all those I loved and did not understand in my youth are dead, even Jessie. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us… But we can still love them… We can love-completely-even without complete understanding…. Either we don’t know what part of ourselves to give, or more often than not, that part we have to give… is not wanted. I remember the last sermon I ever heard my father give, not long before his own death:Įach one of us here today will, at one time in our lives, look upon a loved one in need and ask the same question: We are willing Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true that we can seldom help those closest to us. ‘You know more than that,’ my father said. Maybe all I really know about Paul is that he was a fine fisherman. To him, all good things, trout as well as eternal salvation, came by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy…” My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. Unlike many Presbyterians, he often used the word ‘beautiful.’ Listen.Īnd if Paul and I listened very carefully, all our lives, we might hear those words.Īs a Scot and Presbyterian my father believed that man by nature was a damned mess and had fallen from the original state of grace, and that only by picking up God’s rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. But even before that, beneath the rocks are God’s words. Long ago rain fell on mud and it became rock. And it was there he felt his soul restored, and his imagination stirred. He almost always chose a path along the Big Blackfoot, which we considered our family river. In the afternoon we would walk with him while he unwound between services. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fisherman and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry fly fisherman… ![]() We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. However, rich discussion over this film can be had any time. This film takes some time to digest, and so the discussion need not follow the film immediately. He concludes with, “I am haunted by waters.” I am haunted by A River Runs Through It. Much of the power of this film, I believe, lies in the bookend monologues Norman offers as he reflects on his life. Yet this film did something profound that really shook something inside me awake. As the credits rolled and I reflected on what I had just witnessed, I just remained in my seat, silent… waiting… for what I could not say. ![]() Movies A River Runs Through It (Robert Redford, 1992)Ī River Runs Through It was the first movie that really taught me about the power of film.
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