- Kate McCallister
I thought it be fitting to have Home Alone as the last entry. If you grew up during the late 80's and into the 90's then you remember how big this film was to the pop culture landscape. Watching it again for the first time in a while, I'm awestrucked by many unnoticed things, such as the absolutely overboard use of the holiday colors in every scene and shot. Subtle, this film is not. However, I was more spellbound by some hidden themes and messages that I consciously considered as part of John Hughes and Chris Columbus' intentions.
The film's two plots, Kevin's household isolation and Mom's journey back to Chicago, can both be remodeled and made into theatrical plays. They both have socially interesting and fantastical story structures, have substantial art decoration with the gaudy Christmas decorum and have a limited number of sets. The two also focus heavily on the mental state and anguish of the two main characters. Though the film's slapstick physical humor is more well-known, the surreal memory and morality plays which the viewer gets to see is far more engaging.
The Kevin plot, which is the more important of the two, has a strange thought-provoking quality to it. Many will simple see it as a comedic kids' narrative but it really brings some adult and philosophical themes, at least in my opinion. In my recent viewing, I noticed the progression of the morality and sociability of Kevin and his outlook on the real world. When Kevin is left alone by his family, he is somehow trapped in his ten-year-old body, similar to The Tin Drum, but he mentally moves through the natural human instinct of life. He first overindulges in his normal child behavior with several spastic decisions, like viewing "big kids" movies and eating a monstrous ice-cream marshmallow sundae. The next day, he is showering and "shaving" before enacting his rebellious teen years when he inadvertently steals a toothbrush. Christmas Eve brings him to adulthood; He surveys coupons before shopping at the grocery store, flirting with the female cashier, doing his own laundry and making a proper dinner. His previous childhood fears, the basement and the scary furnace, are easily dismissed with a "shut up!", as his new fears turn to the ills of humanity. This hidden message reminds me a lot of the ending to the 1980's film The Night of the Comet, which also had its previous immature children and teenagers become "normal" adults and the new nuclear family.
What stops this progress from continuing to an destructive mental decline of Kevin's psyche is the church. Even when I was a kid, I always seemed to enjoy the church scene the best. Mainly, the reason seemed to be that it made me fall in love with "O Holy Night." Looking at it now makes the scene more powerful, as Kevin is one of the very scant people there. As can easily be seen in the film, the traditional values of Christmas no longer are tied to religious Christian views. Instead, many of the inhabitants learn them from a different kind of church, television. One of the few bystanders is Old Man Marley, Kevin's neighbor and a former-possible serial killer. By conversing with him, exchanging stories of their troubled lives with family, is Kevin able to reclaim his childhood again but enhanced for the better.
Kevin's mom Kate McCallister, played expertly by Catherine O'Hara, goes through her own mental journey though she doesn't fear losing her childhood. Instead, she dreads that her proper motherhood and total well-being is gone completely due to her child's absence. O'Hara plays the character as if she was a glass doll in a glass menagerie. She struggling to hold all her emotions within; She wants to present herself as a normal citizen, handling the problems she faces instead of a distressed loon. Columbus emphasizes this rational battle by placing Kate in alternating backgrounds that either engulfs her privately (the airplane, phone booth) or out in the open (the various airports). Many point to the Scranton scene as O'Hara's finest acting moment, which it is, when she finally loses it on a ticket agent. Sadly, the film quickly ends this story to give more weight to Kevin's battle with the Wet Bandits than explore any further of Kate's mission. She is simply given a comedic trip with John Candy and some polka players.
Home Alone is a movie that really was heartwarming to me as a child and now into adulthood. It is a very sentimental and surreal view of a child's Christmas spent alone. I really wanted to focus on the new meanings I saw in this film as an adult, even though they may seem odd. But I will leave you with a question: Where is all of the damage to the house and the tools Kevin used when the Wet Bandits invaded? The only thing to survive as evidence is a gold tooth. And how come the rest of the family didn't slip on the iced front stairs? Maybe it was all a Christmas nightmare for Kevin before family came to the rescue.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
No comments:
Post a Comment