pllc15

This story came across from some friends who brought a DVD of "Hachi" for us as a gift. I knew of the story having lived in Tokyo in the 80's quite near where this great dog's statue is located today.

I believe this story is everyone's story at one time or another, especially my Dad who under the same circumstances took in a stray Collie, he called "Dick", that wandered on to his Dad's farm one day when he was 12 years old. Fast forward 9 years later, while a senior in college Dad received a letter from his parents that Dick had died. By accident rummaging through our family heirlooms after Dad died several years ago, I came across a diary book of his and in it was an handwritten eulogy he wrote upon learning about Dick's death. He wrote this in 1934 (excerpts) : ...." No truer friend did I ever have than this dog. She had much to with shaping my character that is the virtue I possess for I learned from Dick much of the valuable principles of good living...." This movie is for those who had a strong and stirring attachment with their dog and it does bring tears to our eyes because of it. There was a Hachi in our life at one time another that made this story so compelling. Richard Gere deserves all the credit for a wonderful story.

By chance I watched ELR some months ago because there wasn't any other program that interested me at the time about this dysfunctional Italian family ( poetic license expressing the universal problems that all families have and had at one time or another ) and I recalled at first how charming and loving the family was in trying to straightened out some domestic issue along the lines of the "Cosby Show" of which I was fan at that time.

It took me about 3 episodes before I realized how wrong I was about the show and its characters centering on controversial subjects that skewered the relationships between the Barone family members and all of the conniving they did to maintain the upper-hand over each other. I will say this that Patricia Heaton (Debra Louise Barone) regardless of what others have not said about her, is the key to making this comedy work. She's terrific. The show is addictive to watch unfortunately.

Without going into the plot of the movie as many of the comments from this website have impeccably done so already, I came away at first blush that the writer and author of this story - Richard Yates - provided a moral about relationships in a marriage and how fragile they can turn out to be, when couples, who impose an emotional overload upon each other in their marriage, are doomed to failure. Leonardo and Kate's performances were excellent and well tuned to the moral behind this story. The most telling to me was the final scene between the senior couple - Howard Givings ( Richard Easton ) and Helen Givings ( Kathy Bates ) - when Howard subtly revealed a good deal of anger at Helen during her trash-talk about the Wheeler family, but then thought the better of it by tuning her out by shutting off his hearing-aid. Richard Easton's performance from this scene was the most telling about the entire movie as far as I was concerned. Perhaps I was reading too much into this scene about avoiding emotional overloading a relationship.