Usually, when I go to the neighborhood video store I end up choosing the obvious: big stars, blockbusters. I kind of figure, if Brad Pit is in a film, it’s most likely a great one. Indeed, statistics suggests that it’s not a bad bet. However, using this choice exclusively, may bite you twice. For one you get to watch the first full twenty minutes of “Tree of Life”, until you search for it on the web and find the following sentence: “A particularly bad masterpiece” . You then turn around to the small audience in your living room and suggest that we watch something else. The cheers could have been heard in the next neighborhood. So before you attack me for being a simple, rough around the edges, brute who can’t for the life of him appreciate good cinema, I ask you politely to hold your horses. I can appreciate art as much as the next guy, but this one was just boring. And in order to understand the feeling of life, loss, war, growing older, all you need to do is have a family and live in Israel.
The other reason why choosing films based on ratings and star actors is that you get to miss films like “Dolphin Tale”. And what a miss it would have been. So don’t get me wrong. Ashley Judd is probably the most beautiful woman I’ve seen (Sela Ward shares the lead), Kris Kristofferson is indeed a big star or at least he was, and Morgan Freeman is one of my favorite actors of all times, even though he is two years younger than my dad.
Having said all that, I saw the cover and I figured, what can possibly go wrong with a Dolphin story. And boy, was I right. The film begins with showing crab fishermen collecting traps, eyeing a herd of dolphins swimming around their traps. Sure enough one of the dolphins gets tangled in a trap rope and washes to shore wounded and unable to swim. An eleven year old boy, not socially accepted, academically challenged, son of a single mother, whose cousin leaves for military training is introduced. The boy cuts the ropes from the dolphin while still ashore, and somehow bonds with the poor animal. Slowly, the film describes the rehabilitation efforts made by a local Marine Animal Hospital. The efforts are initially failing, the dolphin won’t eat, and won’t try to swim, until she sees this young boy, Sawyer. The hospital crew engages the young boy in the effort to save the dolphin’s life. I won’t tell the entire story, but I would like to make the following observations.
This is a typical American film: tragedy (in this case multiple tragedies) turned into victory with a happy ending. Actually, even the kids in our small audience could tell the script after 8 minutes of watching. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I hereby declare: I will not watch films with a bad ending. My reality is challenging enough, I see film as entertainment, and as such, I am completely uninterested in bad ends.
While watching, it was easy to identify with almost all the characters. The boy, his mother, the dolphin, the little girl. All except the teacher…
So we were watching the film, Dorit and I were sniffling on occasion, wiping away an occasional tear. The kids sat still clearly engaged with the film. But neither of us could have foreseen what followed. When the film concluded, they showed the real dolphin (Winter is her name) in the pool in Florida. And then it occurred to us, this was a real story, or at least inspired by a true story. My nine year old son Guy, ran to his computer and brought up http://www.seewinter.com/ and started watching the live webcam installed in Winter’s pool. He watched it for hours until it was time to go to bed. Just before he fell asleep he said: “Thanks dad for the film”, to which I said “you’re welcome” and reached for another Kleenex…
It’s the perfect family movie. Go see it.
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