It's 4 in the morning - can't sleep. Might as well write.
I got halfway through a post a few minutes ago, but had a Microsoft moment - the laptop just locked up. Doesn't happen often, but it sure sucks when it does.
We saw Tuck Everlasting last night, based on great reviews at The Grid. Tuck didn't disappoint. It was a beautiful movie, a future classic.
It's not giving too much away to say that the movie is about living forever, and the bittersweet reality that would be. There's a scene where William Hurt is explaining to someone why living forever isn't as great as you might think, and it's one of the best scenes ever. (I've always liked Hurt, and his acting in this is very, very good.) He says something to the effect of "Don't be afraid of death. It's dying that gives meaning to living..."
The movie and its theme reminded me of Brad Pitt's melancholy character in Interview With a Vampire, or Christopher Lambert in Highlander. Movies and the stories behind them always seem to equate eternal life with a serious price to pay. A quick search on imdb yields 35 movies with the theme "eternal life", and they're all about vampires, flesh eaters, a few gods and a lot of monsters. Tuck is different. It's about simple, normal people, unchanged except for the fact that they're completely frozen in time. The price and the gift are just two edges of the same sharp sword - eternal life.
The writing and acting was good enough to make me rethink my opinion on living forever. I've always thought it would be great, even wonderful. Not a day goes by that I don't wish I could see the world 200 years hence, and witness all the wonders of that new age. But would I really want to outlive my wife, my daughter, every friend and acquaintance? The movie drives home the point that the scarcity of life, the fact that there's no guarantee that you'll get any more days, is what makes every day precious. If you were guaranteed an infinite number of days, what's the motivation for doing something (anything) with that day. The Tucks struggle with this.
The movie also made me think about something else. I've always had the opinion that a big part of life's purpose was preparing you for the end. It's a variation of my friend Jim Moore's saying "...growin' old ain't for sissies". The tough, tough things you have to face at the end of life - regrets, infirmities, loss of strength and mental capacity - are only tolerable due to the accumulated experience and wisdom of your years.
Tuck has me rethinking that opinion. Perhaps it's too negative. Perhaps we age simply because all things in the universe, including all life, experience entropy. It's just part of the design, and a fundamental part at that. The fact that we get three score and ten rather than 3000 is unfortunate, but...the design seems to work.
In any event, it's a movie that delivers the goods - it entertains and inspires. Go see it.
4:46:25 AM 
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