The Yearling

[Hollis]

Good evening all,

I'm well on the far side of 50, with a lot fewer birthdays ahead of me than behind me, so I'm supposed to be a rational, mature individual. I said "supposed to be". I know that when I see something excruciatingly sad on film, I'm supposed to know that it's just that. A film. So tell me why do I still find it so hard to sit through to the end of "The Yearling"? I know the boy doesn't really kill the fawn, not any more than "Old Yeller" was really put down when he was found to have rabies. So why does it still make me cry after all these years and a dozen or more viewings? And I don't mean misty, I cry, audibly and painfully. I guess that maybe the more important question is that knowing what will happen to me, why do I continue to watch it? Is it for some other reason than that it's an exceedingly well made film? I've known enough pain in my life and have certainly seen more than my share of suffering and death. I've seen it in real life, happening to kids who had no earthly reason for dying so young and so painfully. I didn't cry then because there was no time to, and doing so might have meant not saving someone's life. Yet here I sit, still trying to hold back the tears over what is only fantasy. Is it because I didn't , or couldn't cry then, that I do now? I'm not going to go see a psychiatrist about this, because it's not as though I suddenly break out into uncontrollable sobbing for no apparent reason. I've always thought that I'd been able to reconcile my feelings about what I saw and did when I was seventeen and eighteen years old. Just doing my job, my father used to say, himself a decorated combat veteran of WWII, including landing in the first wave at Omaha Beach. Maybe I'm in some way releasing the sorrow that I subjugated back then. Any takers in helping me understand this irrationality? I'd really like to understand it a little. Thanks

Hollis