This afternoon I partook in another classic 1939 file Gone with the Wind.
This is just one of those movies that no matter how many times you see it there is always something new about it. My mom and I love this movie! It's one of the greatest to have ever been created. As Much as I love The Wizard of Oz I will say that Gone with the Wind really deserved to win best picture of 1939.
I have to say that watching it while being stuck at home really gave a little bit more perspective on Ashley Wilkes. Normally, I can not stand him. I love the actor, Leslie Howard, but I can never really stand Ashley. I think he is a man with no backbone that can't get over the idea of life that he had in his head. I never really made sense to me as to why I woul never tell Scarlet he didn't love her in that way.
That is until today. This great scene, the one that is shown in the GIF actually, is where Ashley basically says that his idea of life is in the past, and that he doesn't really fit in with what is happening now. That the way of life he knew was never going to happen and be the same agin. It reminds a bit of how I think everyone is feeling now. For the most part, everyone is trying to act like everything is great a normal. However, we all now it's not, and don't want to address it too much until we can all enjoy life again. However, we aren't really sure how this is going to change us, and society, once we are free again. Ashley always seems to live his whole life like he was in quarantine. He never straight up tells Scarlet that he is not really in love with her because that is the only think from his life before the war that is still the same. The fact that Scarlet never got over him is the only thing that is current, in the here and now, that was also in the life he once had and the life he wants to go back to. Melanie, his wife, brings the comfort of love, and shared memories and hopes of what they wish they could have been with her but she also see the reality of what is. She knows that they can't look too far in the past because they will never survive in the now.
For Ashley, Scarlet is the only thing that has always remained the same to him. That she is a wonderful dream to have before the war and a wonderful living memory to hold on to while adjusting to a new reality. He never really says how he feels because he knows that she will move on to fall in love with someone else, but he can't because then he would have to fully acknowledge that his old life is dead.
Then there is Mammy. A most deserving Oscar winning performance from Hattie McDaniel. She has the best lines, facial expressions, and truly one of the best performances to come out of the film. She has less screen time than the rest of the stars but her performance can rival that of the rest any day of the week! I love her sass toward Scarlet for being a spoiled girl, but her best performance comes at the end of the movie. She is talking to Mellie about how Rhett won't let them bury Bonnie. She talks about how upset he and Scarlet are at each other. How she cries, and prays for them. How she loves that whole family. How it must break her heart that she brought three generations of girls in this family into the world and in such a small few years time buried two generations of them. I also love to the fact that she is respected by those who are supposed to be "Superior" to her. Rhett tells Scarlet that she should buy her a present while they were on their honeymoon. When she refuses he says he is going to buy her one himself and that she is one of the few people that he wanted respect from. I love how it's put because he doesn't want respect from her as a demand because she serves them. He wants to earn her respect and have her give it to him willingly.
To put it plain is simply Gone with the Wind is a masterpiece.
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