As a young person, in my adolescence, one of my favorite books and movies was Random Harvest. Who cannot love a movie with both Greer Garson and Ronald Colman, in black and white? A friend of mine told me it was on line and I found it. Watching this brought back memories of watching classic movies with my mom.
But, the story, written by the same author as Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr. Chips, the great James Hilton, resembles the modern desire for completion in body, mind, and soul.
Hilton's story is about a man who loses his memory in WWI because of shell-shock. Now, as David Jones is my favorite poet, one sees a pattern in my interest here. He also experienced trauma and wrote and painted his way out of it.
But, the real power of the story for me rests in the idea that we have a drive for love which is unquenchable.
The main character is restless until he finds the missing three years of his life, and the woman he loved then.
What he does not know, until the end (spoiler alert) is that the woman who has been his private secretary and hostess wife is actually that same woman.
To me the message is that one must be true to one's self, and also, that mistakes from the past can be undone.
We live in an age of psychology, which complicates our ability to understand simple stories of love lost and rediscovered.
Of course, the story is fiction. But, is this not the story of our life with God? We lose Him through sin and selfish carelessness. We gain Him by persistent and prayer. We become new creations, redeemed, but with the character and gifts given to us at birth.
We are like the Bride who must go into the desert and seek the Bridegroom.
The story is rather modern, as Greer Garson's character truly takes hold of her future.
She decides to suffer. Can you imagine a story popular today about a person choosing selfless suffering for love?
The story ends happily. But, not without years of sacrifice.
Meditations on a movie, without popcorn....