That Old Weepy....

Yesterday afternoon we sobbed our way through The Sound of Music for the umpteenth time. That’s both of us. Himself is just as soppy as I am when it comes to this film.

But having seen it so many times, I only recently started thinking what it was all about. Climbing your mountain until you find your dream. Climbing that mountain for as long as it takes. And when things are really lousy, you have to remember, as she did, that, “when He closes a door he opens a window”. Something I must remember, as a writer, when I go through a really lousy stage.

With every film there has to be Good and Evil, and in this instance the Catholic Church is portrayed as a very powerful good force – remember the wedding scene, and the way she walks up the vast aisle? Then the camera pans to the bishop, up and up throughout the church, up to the mountains. God is very much in those mountains at the beginning, running around with Maria (or vice versa). And of course later the mountains are her way of escape, with her new family.

The Nazis are the evil force. As Gretel, the youngest girl so aptly says, “the man with the black spider makes everyone nervous.” You bet he does.

And of course, put a bunch of nuns against a bunch of Nazis and we all know who wins. The nuns prove they’re good at car maintenance as well as praying.

I suppose most of us can identify with the characters – Maria is brave, honest, funny, true and not afraid to stand up for herself, or for what she believes. Captain Von Trapp admires her courage, her honesty and her love for his children that shows him how to love them as well as her.

What is most important to the Captain is his patriotism. (His children at first come second, but they resume their rightful importance later.) It is his love of Austria that runs through the film, and his realisation that Austria is no longer what it was, despite the Germans insisting that, “We will show to the world that Austria is the same”.

And I love the Captain for that. For his refusal to compromise, to give in. As Maria says, “I can’t ask him to be less of a man than he is.”

At the end we blew our noses and had a cuddle. “I don’t know why it’s so emotional,” Himself said, wiping his eyes. “I suppose because Austria had gone and I can identify with that. We’ve lost something too – Britain isn’t what it was.”

Driving through town this morning to walk Mollie, I looked at the American shake bar, the Italian restaurant, the Italian olive shop, the tapas bar and so on. And I realised he’s right.