| The Movie Mystic by Stephen Simon Family Man Rated PG-13, 125 minutes As our attention this begins to turn to the Holiday Season, I want to highlight a film that many of you may not have seen when it was first released in 2001 and that, for me, very much personifies the feelings of love -- and often longing -- that surround this time of the year. The world of the second millennium is fast-paced and demanding for most of us. In our constant striving for fame or money -- or both -- it is often difficult to maintain perspective. Very often, we feel like we have to choose between our careers and our families. How important is that business meeting if you have to miss open house at school? Can you balance love, family, and career so that no one, including you, feels cheated? Many people have made choices in the last 10 or 20 years to forego having families to focus on their careers. This is a very recent phenomenon. Until the sexual revolution of the '60s and '70s, men didn't have to forego anything. They just pursued their careers and basically left the raising of children to their wives. The revolution changed all that. Women quite rightfully said, "Hey, we deserve and demand our own identities, too." So DINKS were created (double income -- no kids) and those couples with children try valiantly to find the right balance. Even more extreme are the individuals who forego relationships altogether, because they want to focus on their work. Single-parent households also now represent almost half of all American homes and single parents find that taking care of their children and working leaves little time -- or energy -- for other relationships. This challenge exists for traditional two-parent families as well, because both partners now work and they have to find equitable ways to share responsibilities. As a result, children live in very different climates today than they did with the traditional nuclear family of 30 or 40 years ago where the father generally worked and the mother raised the children. This societal upheaval in traditional roles and the place of love in modern society just might be the single biggest cultural challenge of this moment in human events. We know we can't go back to the way it was (and most of us don't want to), but we haven't quite figured out how to balance all of our needs and desires. Simply put, what are our priorities? In Family Man, Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage), kisses his girlfriend (Tea Leoni) goodbye after they graduate college so he can go off to London for a year of work. She begs him to stay but he promises to come back. He never does. Twelve years later, Jack is a wealthy, successful president of an investment house, lives in a New York high-rise, sleeps with women whose name he either forgets or never asks, and drives a Ferrari. Just before Christmas, he gets a call from Kate that he chooses to ignore. One night, he is present at what he thinks is an attempted robbery, and makes a deal with the thief whose name is Cash (Don Cheadle) to thwart the "crime." He then tries to convince the thief to seek help. Cash looks at Jack with a mischievous look that says that Jack's life may not be as perfect as he thinks it is and warns him to remember "that you brought this on yourself." The next morning, Jack wakes up in bed with Kate in New Jersey. They have two kids and a dog and he works selling tires "retail!" for his father-in-law. He races to New York to find that his old life there never happened. Cash finds him to tell him that he is getting a "glimpse" at a life he might have had if he had made other choices. Cash then leaves Jack to deal with the discovery of the ramifications of the decision that he had made twelve years before. Jack then discovers what his life would have been like if he had stayed and married Kate -- a dead-end job, living in Jersey, no money (Kate's promising law career became pro bono work), etc. He also has two kids with whom he has no idea how to interact. Slowly, he learns more about the children, going from horrified to charmed. It is with Kate, however, that Jack discovers what he truly lost. He becomes aware of how much he loved her and that he never really stopped. Just as he begins to realize that his love for Kate and his family is more fulfilling than his old obsession with another kind of success, he wakes up again in his old life. Try as he might, he cannot go back to his previous lifestyle. He seeks Kate out and finds that she not only became a successful lawyer, she is now moving to Paris to head her firm there. He follows her to the airport and, in a lovely, romantic scene, tells her about the glimpse he had of who and what they could have been. He apologizes for having been so wrong and begs her not to go. The message of the power and preeminence of love is obvious but still very timely. Movies like Family Man emerge from the depths of our souls and challenge us to look at the issues they illuminate with different eyes. When a film can entertain us, stir our hearts, and, at the same time, gently empower us to re-examine our priorities, then that is the highest possible use of the art form we call movies...particularly at this time of the year. MovieMystic Chakra Rating for Family Man Chakra 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Rating 4 4 4 4 4 5 4 Total Chakra Points: 29 of 35 Stephen Simon has produced such films as Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come and also has served as president of three different film companies. Stephen's first book, The Force is With You: Mystic Movie Messages that Inspire our Lives, has recently been released by Walsch Books/Hampton Roads. For more information, visit MysticalMovies.com and Stephen welcomes your comments by e-mail at Stephen@MysticalMovies.com. Copyright (c) 2002 Stephen Simon |
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