I have so much to-do, yet so little time. I feel death coming a step closer, each time I blow that candle off my cake. Then I look at my parents, and I see eyes filled with time. They have all the time in the world, yet they are 40 years ahead of me. Why am I behind them, yet feel ahead? This disconcerting question is what this film portrayed using a simple metaphor, one which I still think about.
Around 55:20 mins in the film, Mick Boyle played by Harvey Keitel hikes up a mountain with his screenplay actors who are youngsters, probably in their late twenties. At the top, he points to a telescope and tells them to view the mountain through it. They see the mountain up close, filling the entire frame with grandness. He says, “this is how young people view their life”. He then flips the telescope around and tells them to view the mountain again, this time, everything is stretched and far away; “this is how I see my life”.
The first scene shows how youngsters, including me sees life as a short burst, with limited time and limitless activities. We get so caught up, trying to do everything before our demise that we forget the miles in between. But when he flips it around, the image is a long stretch, implying the sufficient time he and others, including my parents, sees in their life. They know life is not a sprint, but a long mundane marathon, with sufficient time to make mistakes and learn to live with them.
The film doesn’t explain any of this of course, or even comment at it in the future. This is just a filler scene in-between, that simply states this fact and makes us do the introspection. For some reason, this hit me on a deep level. I’m chasing this high, doing everything at once, biting more than I can chew and pushing life back. But that’s the exact opposite, this film teaches you. You can’t push life back, you can only allow it to flow. For me, the film is ultimately about letting life win, which is evident by the ending. Accepting that life will never go the route you planned and it’s better to let life take it’s course, than trying to derail it to your liking. Even though these are my words, I still haven’t truly internalized them. I guess this is one of those things, that I can’t truly take in, until I’m older.
