Marshall and the Movies

Today’s factoid serves as an entry to the Wet Blogathon over at “Encore Entertainment.” Andrew K asks us this:

Isn’t the rain lovely? And more lovely than actual rain….isn’t movie rain lovely? Gene Kelly devoted an entire number to it, after all. What’s your favourite moment of rain on screen? Don’t tell me…keep it to yourself and save it for the weekend. Nothing big, just a picture and a word, a line, a paragraph, an essay (if you’re loquacious) on why you like that particular moment of wetness.

I thought about my moment for a while, really just going through a list of my favorite movies and trying to remember if any of them had any scenes in the rain.  It took me a surprisingly long time to sift through all this information, and then the obvious answer hit me.  My favorite moment in the rain comes from one of my all-time favorite movies, “American Beauty.”

It’s not so much a scene that takes place in the rain, more like the entire climax of the movie.  Obviously, I can’t talk about it without ruining the entire movie, but I can make a list of adjectives that describe it.  Really, the end of “American Beauty” perfectly recaptures every emotion that runs through the entire movie.  There’s happiness and tragedy, grief and sorrow, tumult and calm, satisfaction and disappointment.

But most of all, there is beauty.  My school did away with senior yearbook quotes this year, much to my disappointment, but I definitely would have included this remark from Lester Burnham at the end of the movie as one of my three:

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me, but it’s hard to stay mad when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain. And I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.

I wouldn’t have used all of it simply due to length, but I just think that those words are some of the most truly profound things a movie has ever said to me.  To all of you reading, I hope that the quotation inspires you to seek out and appreciate some of the beauty lying all around your own life.