The Sound of Music

Katie and I had a blast yesterday at the Sound of Music Singalong. We sang and did hand motions and hissed at the Baroness and barked at Rolf and so on and so on.

The movie is delightful, though the end moves much too slowly. Did we really need all of that footage of Nazis looking with the flashlights for the family hiding in the abbey?

I think the relationship to wealth of the main characters was very interesting. In the musical, there is a song with the baroness and the captain about how hard life is with money and how it gets in the way of love. It is an interesting portrayal - one might think it was the poor Maria who would be conniving; she showed up with nothing but the dress on her back and a guitar. But it is the baroness, herself wealthy, who is the conniving one, attracted to the captain's fortune.

But my problems with the movie, ultimately, are twofold. The first one is basically the same rant as the one I made against the crappy country song a few posts down. Maria and the Captain as they are finally confessing their love for each other sing the song, "I must have done something right." We do not ever deserve the love of another. It is but a gift. Who do we harm more than the ones we are closest too? I have never mistreated another person the way I mistreated Becky. Certainly I did not deserve her love, and there is nothing in my childhood that allowed me to stake a claim to it. Her love was always her gift to me freely given.

And the second thing I detest in this movie is how they treat motherhood. In the very beginning, on the night Maria moves in with the Von Trapp family, the housekeeper shares with Maria the rumor that the captain might be marrying the baroness. (hisssssssss.) And Maria then exclaims to herself that she knows why she is there, to prepare the children for a new mother. Then again, when the captain and baroness announce their engagement to the children, he tells them, "they are going to have a new mother." Finally, after Maria and the captain have married and returned from their honeymoon, Leisl gets some time with Maria to confide her situation with Rolf. And she says something formal - I forget whether she calls Maria "Governess" or "Fraulein," - and then says, "I mean, mother. I like calling you that." And Maria answers, "I like being called that."

I guess I am just too close to this.

I sincerely hope that someday there is a woman in Katie's life that she will feel so intimately tied to that she calls her "Mother."

At the same time, Katie already has a mother. And to me it is insulting to Becky to think that she could ever name another so. It is something I want to happen, and it is also something to which I see no path.

The main thing in the movie that just really bugged me is how cheaply the word mother is tossed around. That moment, when it comes, will be one of the most emotional of my life. I don't like seeing it dirtied.