What do you say to a father who suggests to his struggling 16-year-old son that the boy drop out of school, forget about getting a job and just hang around and watch movies with his dad three times a week?
Good job, dude.
David Gilmour's methods don't exactly conform to current parenting theory, but in his new book, The Film Club: A Memoir, he recounts a father-son relationship so close and constructive that many parents of teens might envy it.
He shares a name with the lead singer-guitarist of Pink Floyd, but this David Gilmour is an award-winning novelist, film critic and television personality in Toronto. His unorthodox version of homeschooling was grounded in his own expertise: He has spent much of his career thinking and writing about movies.
Not that Gilmour sat down and formulated a rational educational scheme with lesson plans and goals. His Film Club was a wit's-end reaction to several problems. His son, Jesse, formerly a bright student and well-behaved boy, was suddenly failing academically and committing petty crimes. Gilmour himself was about to lose his job and didn't have great prospects for another one.
Jesse had moved in with him and his wife because Gilmour's ex-wife, Jesse's mom, felt the boy needed to live with his father. But the arrangement didn't seem to have solved anything. Jesse was aimless, often uncommunicative and obsessed with a gorgeous girl Gilmour feared would chew the kid up and spit him out.
So Gilmour proposes the Film Club, Jesse accepts instantly, and they kick it off with a double bill of Francois Truffaut's sublime The 400 Blows and Paul Verhoeven's over-the-top Basic Instinct. Then they sit on the porch, Jesse in a favorite wicker chair, and talk about the movies. By the time the Film Club wraps three years later, they have watched, rewatched and talked about more than 100 films of many genres and periods.
The movies often evoke strong responses from Jesse, which may evoke responses from the film-loving reader. I was ready to disown the kid when he dismissed the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night as "dreadful," then forgave him when he fell madly in love with Annie Hall and was downright dazzled by his wise-beyond-his-years evaluation of Breakfast at Tiffany's: "It's about a pair of prostitutes. But the movie itself doesn't seem to know that. It seems to think it's about something sort of sweet and nutty."
That insight shouldn't really surprise, since Jesse is learning about film at a master's knee. One of the delights of this book is Gilmour's smart, passionate, immensely knowledgeable writing about movies.
His analysis of the uses of stillness in film, from High Noon and The Godfather to "the mighty Clint Eastwood (any stiller and he'd be dead) in A Fistful of Dollars," is worth the price of the book. Readers be warned: You're likely to come away with a long list of movies you want to see, or see again.
But the book is also a refreshingly straightforward look at the joys and sorrows of parenting a teenage boy. Gilmour jokes about it — "At least he knows that Michael Curtiz shot two endings for Casablanca in case the sad one didn't work out. That's bound to help him out there in the world." — but he is serious about his love and concern for his son.
That doesn't mean he always knows what to do about it. In some ways Gilmour is a real helicopter parent, hovering over Jesse to parse his emotional state and particularly his love life. In others he's so hands-off some readers may be alarmed; for example, although he's adamant about Jesse not using drugs, he's blase about the boy's considerable drinking.
But Gilmour doesn't gloss over his own failings as a father (or husband), and he doesn't idealize his relationship with his son. Both of them take away many lessons from the films they watch, but perhaps the most important is to live the way we watch movies: immersed in the moment.
You can't rewind your kid's childhood, and Gilmour's experience suggests that what really counts, for parent and child, is simply being together:
"Such a time! I might have been waiting for a job but I wasn't waiting for life. It was there, right beside me in the wicker chair. I knew it was marvelous while it was happening — even though I understood, sort of, that the finish line awaited us down the road."
Colette Bancroft can be reached at cbancroft@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8435.
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