Rocket Gibraltar

1988 US
Dir: Daniel Petrie
Str: Burt Lancaster, Bill Pullman, Kevin Spacey


Rocket Gibraltar's poetic atmosphere is excellent.
This movie's rather poetic atmosphere is excellent. Considering the subject, the story has every element the film could become a very mawkish one. Because it depicts the relationship between a grandfather (played by Burt Lancaster) and grandchildren (one of them is played by Macaulay Culkin), and eventually the grandfather dies. But the film carefully avoids becoming a total tearjerker by emphasizing a poetic epic tale aspect. Especially, the last scene where the grandchildren hold a funeral of their grandfather by laying his body in a Viking-like boat and launching it to vast ocean that is considered to cleanse his body and soul while shooting fire arrows into it from the beach in order to burn his body completely so that nothing of his trace will be left in this mundane world, which has long been the grandfather's desire and occasionally talked to the grandchildren, succeeds in evoking rather poetic emotion in audience's mind. This approach is felt fresh compared to the sentimetal ones they usually like to employ in this kind of movies. Though, probably this movie might be mainly meant for rather younger audience who usually don't appreciate sentimental stories so much (after all, this video is included in family collection series), and, by this reason, has succeeded in excluding too much sentimentality that sometimes ruins the integrity of some movies, even so, I can strongly recommend this movie to the audience of all ages.
The relationship between a father and his sons/daughters
are regulated by communal restrictions. But the one between a
grandfather and his grandchildren is not.
But, there is another aspect I would like to talk about this movie. I consider the movie explicates the issue of the difference of generations quite well. In this film, there appear three generations. First one is grandfather generation whose sole member is Burt Lancaster (hereafter may be called the first generation), second one is his sons/daughters generation that includes Bill Pullman and Kevin Spacey (heareafter may be called the second generation), final one is grandchildren generation (hereafter may be called the third generation). As is often the case with real life families, Burt Lancaster becomes emotionally involved more deeply with his grandchildren than with his sons/daughters generation. Therefore, the grandchildren come to know their grandfather's real thinking and desire very well through such direct and intimate communication as is not allowed to form between him and sons/daughters generation. The reason why it is not allowed to between these generations is because the relationship between the first generation and the sencond one has always communal connotations. So the statements that have an element jeopardizing the stability of community (in this movie's case, that is a family) must be carefully avoided between these generations. The Viking-like funeral is such a one. As a proof of this, I can mention the members of the second generation are considering whoever the person in that family must be buried in a family plot after his/her death. So they never understand the grandfather (i.e, their father)'s real wish, though, anyway, they have never been told it by the grandfather. On the other hand, the relationship between the first generation and the third one is free from such communal restrictions, or rather it might even work complementarily to the first-second relationship. Therefore, regarding the first generation, there are the things the third generation could know, but the second one couldn't. One of such things is the grandfather's craving for Viking-like funeral.
Also the beautiful movie "On Golden Pond" handles this issue quite
well.
For an further example, here I am going to refer to another famous movie describing the issue of generations. The movie is On Golden Pond that is a very beautiful movie in itself made in early 1980s and I think is the last movie Henry Fonda appeared who got the Oscar by this one along with marvelous Katharine Hepburn. In this movie, Jane Fonda plays a daughter of Henry Fonda (Of course, they are father and daughter in real life, which makes the movie all the more curious), and she is always worried about the fact she cannot get along with her father who seems to have long been very conservative and stubborn. But her future husband's son Billy manages to get along with this intractable father, though firstly he also feels difficulties with him. So she utters such question like how he has been able to befriend him when she saw them fishing together joyfully. I think this question can be easily answered. Because Billy belongs to the third generation for Henry Fonda, which means they are allowed to be friends, being immune from communal restrictions. On the other hand, for Jane Fonda who belongs to the second generation, situation is not so simple as Billy's case, for their relationship is regulated by the rules of community both consciously and subconsciously. Thus, the difficulties arises beyond personal likes and dislikes, which makes the matter very complex. Whereas, in Billy's case, once he overcomes his personal dislikes toward Henry Fonda, he will rather easily befriend him without any presence of communal manacles.
This communal restrictions might be derived from the nature of
human beings insofar as they form society.
Anyway, this issue seems to be universal one, though I had assumed, in English spoken countries, the issue was not so complex as in Japan before I watched these movies. The reason why I was thinking so is somewhat related to the nature of Japanese language that forces its speakers to make careful usage of personal pronouns. Do you know how many words the Japanese has, that are corresponding to the English words "I" and "you"? Even I cannot fully enumerate those words here. In Japan, according to the situation one is in, or the person one is talking to, an appropriate word must be carefully chosen among those vast amount of selection list items of personal pronouns. I guess this language system in Japan has fostered the tendency Japanese are tied down by communal regulations more tightly than other countries' cases. Nevertheless, by watching these movies, I could well notice the fact the situation was not so different in English spoken countries too, where individualism was supposed to be more ubiquitous compared to the country like Japan. Probably, it might be true that social structures couldn't be so different country to country, which means these are the basic natures intrinsic to human beings as long as they form society.
Don't worry. This movie is not so dreary as you might think by the
subject.
I don't think this is an issue everybody wants to discuss willingly, for there might be an element one could detect also in his own life, and has been ashamed of. So some scenes in this kind of movies might be embarrasing for certain audience. But, in the case of Rochet Gibraltar, its main focus resides in positive aspects in the relationship between a grandfather and his grandchildren. Therefore, in spite of the subject, this movie is not dreary, and you can even appreciate the flavor of aforementioned poetic element.


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