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Reflection for January 22 2006

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Thanks to the suggestion of a fellow parishioner, I watched a film called Wrestling Ernest Hemingway. It takes place in Florida, where retirees abound. Richard Harris plays a resident of a seniors' motel by the ocean. He's seventy-five but won't admit it, doing push-ups, flexing his tattooed muscles. He's a loud ex-sailor, longhaired, unshaven, still a flirt. His son sends him a silly hat with visors front and back as a birthday present. Harris is hurt but bravado is his way of concealing pain.

And then there's Robert Duvall, who plays a retired Cuban immigrant barber with a pleasant Spanish accent. By contrast with Harris, Duvall is a quiet, dignified fellow who dresses casually but neatly. He has a set routine each day, stopping at a coffee shop to order a bacon sandwich and enjoy the presence of the waitress who serves him. He then spends time on a park bench carefully working a crossword puzzle, pausing on schedule to carefully unwrap and eat his bacon sandwich. It's here he meets Harris who loudly intrudes upon Duvall's routine. Reluctantly at first but then patiently Duvall begins to socialize with Harris, always politely appalled at Harris' unkempt appearance and loud ways.

But soon his graceful manner begins to impact on Harris. The process comes to a climax when Duvall suggests that Harris do something about his shabby appearance and offers to give him a haircut and shave. Then occurs one of those beautiful moments in film. In Harris' run down apartment Duvall has him sit down and puts a sheet around him. The camera then dwells upon his snipping Harris' hair, quietly, gently; combing and snipping along around the ears, the back of the neck. You can sense Harris relaxing under the remote touch. Then we see Duvall honing his flat razor on a belt, back and forth slowly; testing the sharpness lightly with his thumb. Then we focus on the lather, the brush stirring in the foaming cup, the lather applied to Harris' face, applied by hand to the upper lip. And then, with a quiet, "I won't hurt you," Duvall begins to run the razor down Harris' cheek, under the chin - in soft, sure strokes. It's as though Duvall were sculpting a new man out of the old, a work of art, bringing out the latent beauty of an old man who misses his youth.

Having toweled away the excess lather, Duvall then goes to his barber's kit and pours a generous amount of aftershave lotion into his cupped hand. He bears it dripping to where Harris sits entranced and applies it carefully, firmly, slowly, affectionately massaging his cheeks and neck, his whole face. You can almost sense the experience yourself as you watch, smell the aroma and feel the sting. It seems as though the scene lasts about fifteen minutes though it's no doubt less. And as Harris emerges from the experience, a fine looking, smooth, peaceful man instead of loud extrovert, you realize you have just been mesmerized by the performance of an ordinary, everyday deed - a haircut and shave - but performed by a man of grace and majesty who has turned this ordinary deed into a quiet ballet. No need for special effects or the usual shoot-'em-up finale or a bedroom scene cliché. This scene, similar in wonder to the French dinner prepared and served in Babette's Feast, will be memorable long after Rambo has become as dated as Hopalong Cassidy.

When the video came to an end, even though I'm already old I knew what I want to be when I grow up: a man of grace who deals with himself and others and a bacon sandwich the way Duvall does - with pride, reverence, dignity and a style reflective of the gracious, divine artist who made me - a man of grace who dances life in the stately way Duvall dances the Tango at the film's end.

Reprint from 1998.

-- Geoff Wood