Guess Whose Coming to Dinner

This classic movie from 1967 seems in many ways dated. However one can appreciate easily how controversial the movie was then. When we think about the conversations that parents have today, perhaps their children are coming out to them, or they are bringing home a partner of a different race.

These questions still bring distress to most parents.

In the movie Sidney Poitier, Spencer Tracy, and Katherine Hepburn star. Tracy and Hepburn as the parents of a young woman who brings home a black gentleman who she is love with and plans to marry.

Her parents are staunch liberals so face a true test of what they have preached in terms of equality.

Of course in this movie Poitier plays a Dr who is a very accomplished individual. This is much different than what many parents might face today. Still the message was delivered and the movie is good.

Perhaps the best parts are the Priest who is a family friend and has a good sense of humor and ethics about the whole thing and Isabel Sanford as the black maid who disagrees with the whole idea of an interracial relationship.

A good movie, perhaps a little dated. Still worth watching and Tracy and Hepburn were wonderful.

The Old Man and the Sea

I watched the movie version of this movie yesterday on Turner Classic Movies yesterday. One of Hemingway's great books the book did not offer much for a movie to be made of on first look.

However it did become a good movie. Spencer Tracy played the old man and the movie is just as the book was. A simple tale of a man, a fisherman in Cuba, who has not been succeeding in the last months who finally on day like all the others hooks a big marlin. The fish pulls him out to sea way out into the current, far away from land. Truthfully too far away from the shore for such a small skiff.

The lure of the big fish is too great. On the third day the fish starts to surface and as the fish loses the capacity to keep below surface he starts to pull it in.

My son asked me if there was a metaphor in the story. There may be several. Of course one can compare the story with Moby Dick and the hunt for the great white whale. One can also remember the story of Icarus and remember the repeated speech of the fisherman " that he just went out too far. Much as Icarus went to close to the sun.

In the end after catching the fish he loses it too the sharks as he brings his catch in. The villagers in measuring the carcass still tell him about what a fish it was and there must be some acknowledgment of his skill.

The man says that are never defeated only destroyed and thus one can infer that as long as he is not destroyed he is not defeated.

One we should all remember in times of trouble.