Untamed Heart

At the end of the movie, Stand By Me (made from Stephen King's short story, The Body), the writer writes on his computer screen something like, "I never again had friends like I did when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" Well, that's sometimes how I feel about movies. The movies I saw between the ages of 11 and, say, 14 were (and remain) the most profound of my life. I guess it's because I was asserting my real identity that was some-what independent of the role my family had given me. My favorite movies at that time always had a female lead character in her twenties. And, inevitably, I identified with her. Like, I WAS her. It sounds like my ego was gigantic, but, really, I was just looking for someone with whom to identify as I was coming into my own.

That age was really lonely for me because my parents were divorcing and, really, my whole life was changing. I had no control over it. Looking back, I held tight to some principles (such as women's rights and pro-protest, Joan Baez music). I thought that by latching on to a movement or a cause, I could feel a part of something while giving myself an identity that seemed to be slowly slipping away. Well, one of those characters that I really loved was Caroline from Untamed Heart.

Marisa Tomei played Caroline, a waitress/beauty school student, in winter-time Minnesota. She was in her twenties and lived at home with her mom and step-dad. Her family used to buy a real Christmas tree every year. They stopped doing that. Caroline and I were so much alike--both female, both living in snowy places, both living with our divorced moms, both uncomfortable with all the change in our lives, both not knowing how to go forward, but both coasting okay. Yes, Caroline was a cigarette-smoking waitress who could barely afford a car, and I was a 12 year old who swam two hours per day just to calm her racing, sad mind. But, I understood her. I understood that she was a person just trying to find her way in this world that kept on disappointing her.

I know. I know. I'm not talking anything at all about the plot. Sometimes, one performance really makes a movie, and the rest is just filler. Well, she meets Christian Slater. I guess he represents a sort of fragility that was lacking in Caroline's world. She responds to his goodness. She loves him; he loves her. He teaches her that she does deserve such care and love. It was a nice lesson--a lesson a 12 year old girl really appreciates, especially when the world seemed kind of cruel to her.