The Muthah
I watched the movie The Finest Hours about the greatest small-boat rescue ever executed in the history of the U.S. Coast Guard. Like most good stories, this film has a primary conflict of man against the sea (one of the oldest and most primordial tales), but it has several other secondary conflicts that add texture and interest that keep the viewer engaged while the next primary conflict scene gets set-up. Think about that for a moment in the context of any story you enjoy. There is an arc to the story where the tension builds and gets foreshadowed. It then reaches one or more climaxes that are followed by eventual resolution leading to denouement. It is the classic storytelling path of engagement and while some writers or storytellers try different paths, I would contend that the best stories that consistently satisfy their audiences take the more normal path. But it is always hard to move through a story from one jarring moment or event to another and few stories lend themselves to a totally smooth arcing path. There is most often a series of events that can either be linked together directly in a “this then that then that then that” manner, or can be more seamlessly connected with the help of backstories that are both supportive of the plot but also interesting in their own right.
In The Finest Hours, there are two subplots of note with a few mini-stories. There is the subplot of the protagonist (Bernie Webber) having been unable to save a ship and its crew a year before this fateful night. That subplot involves a still-grieving family who are both bitter and sad. The bitterness is embodied in the victim’s brother, who serves the main plot by notifying the Coast Guard that he has seen and heard the foundering tanker’s distress call where others have not. The other family member is the victim’s widow, who is sad, but forgiving of the incident and of Bernie Webber in his supposed complicity of failing to make the rescue. This widow enters the picture by virtue of encountering Bernie’s girlfriend on a snowy road, where she has become stranded as she tries to get to the Coast Guard station to advocate for the recall of Bernie from the treacherous seas. That encounter is, in many ways a complete story unto itself. The widow and orphaned children of one victim coming to the aide of the fiancé of the agent for salvation, the self-same agent of past blame and the agent of current hope.
What a beautiful thing it is to see a well-woven story like this, especially one that is at once so basic and yet so historically significant and noble. In addition, the setting of this drama is on the yankee coastline of Massachusetts, off Cape Cod and Nantucket. The accents there run as distinctly regional as anywhere in the United States. The only region that competes for distinctive verbal recognition would be an accent of the Deep South. Sure enough, the storyteller brings that element in to further accentuate the nor’easter accent by having the authority figure of the Coast Guard Station Commander, Warrant Officer Daniel Cluff, be a seemingly detached southerner with a strong southern accent. The undercurrent in the station is that this southerner is a station officer who neither knows the sea nor the specific hazardous waters off Chatham Harbor at the southeastern corner of Cape Cod. Of course the truth is that it seems Cluff does understand more than suits the immediacy of the dynamic tension of the story. He actually orchestrated several important small-boat rescue operations that same night, had served many years as a lifesaver in the boat, so to speak, as well as a naval veteran of WWII. But for this story, he represents blind authority and obligation that has no time or care for the immediate safety of his men or the emotions of their loved ones. Sometimes management is a no-win and it sucks to be in charge.
An important character in its own right in this story is the nor’easter accent, which screams of steady, conservative, humble stalwartness. It is most dominantly present in the few words of Bernie Webber (that would be Burnee Webbah to nor’easters), but his fiancé Miriam, his shipmates, and the Chatham locals like Carl Nickerson (Caall Nickahsohn). Even his saved victim, Casey Affleck struts his native Southie accent. Here’s the thing, besides Pahking the Caaa to shine their lights out to sea for the returning heroes, all of these people had Muthahs.
I also rewatched The Fighter at B-I-L Jeff’s (in his nemesis manner) suggestion. It stars a native BeanTown guy, Mahk Wahlbeurgh and an actor with excellent and diverse elocution, Christian Bale. They share a Muthah played by Melissa Leo, who’s Lowell accent is as Yankee as they come (interesting as she is a native New Yorker). These two films are not the Muthah of all New England films over the years. From The Perfect Storm to The Cider House Rules to Manchester by the Sea (Casey again) to The Town (Markie again) to Good Will Hunting (Casey again), all the way back to The House of the Seven Gables.
Today is a very strange Mother’s Day. It is strange because none of us can gather with our mothers or the other mothers in our lives to hug them and celebrate them. I’m told that this celebration of mothers dates back to 1908, but that before that for some forty years, there was a post-war celebration of mothers in general in the United States for the role of mothers in managing the post-carnage recovery from The Civil War. Mothers are nurturers. Mothers aspire to love rather than prosperity or grandness. They want peace and happiness for their children. This is not, nor do I suspect it was ever meant to imply that mothers did not seek achievement or human advancement. Quite the contrary, they have generally believed that prosperity and humanity are not mutually exclusive and may be rooted in the same approach to life. When I think of the movies quoted above, I see qualities of men and women that distinguishes their role in the world. No one would dare argue that life can progress without either sex. But what many are recognizing is that each sex has strengths that are best deployed in different ways at different times. In times of healing and recovery, I sense that the inherent greater compassion evident in the female psyche (is it a stereotype, yes, but is it probably generally true, yes again) is more valuable than at other times.
The world is very raw right now. Like a battle with the sea, a battle with a powerful and invisible opponent like a virus is an epic battle. There is no villain in the primary struggle, there is only man against nature, both in the generic sense. It is a Muthah of a fight and will be for quite some time. Now, more than ever, we need the help of Mother Nature and all the female tendencies we of both sexes can muster. We need more compassion and more love for one another globally than perhaps ever before in most of our lifetimes. On this day dedicated to love, let’s all be Muthahs.