LETTERS FROM HOME: LOST AND FOUND AT THE MOVIES

Jan. 5, 1995

Dear Patty,

DC and I had an unforgettable New Year's Eve. Unforgettable like bubble gum on your shoe.

First, we made reservations at a restaurant remarkably devoid of other diners. The food was tasty, but isn't conviviality the idea on New Year's Eve? DC's brother was visiting and prophesied that we might be in for a bumpy night.

Then to a dreadful movie -- "I.Q." -- which almost qualified as a private screening. Apparently, a lot of people already knew the worst about this film about Einstein (Walter Matthau!) and his cronies' plot to guide his mathematician niece (Meg Ryan!!) into the arms of lovestruck auto mechanic (Tim Robbins) at the expense of her fiance (the usual British twit), a research psychologist who tortures rats and people for the good of humanity.

"I.Q." tries -- way too hard -- to be funny and romantic while succeeding only in making you wonder why Hollywood thinks the listen-to-your heart message applies only to love. How about casting and directing movies?

DC's brother was laughing when the credits came up, not at the movie but at the deteriorating condition of our celebration.

With only 45 minutes left to salvage the final evening of 1994, we dropped by a bar that was supposed to have a band and instead found a sound system run by a radio deejay. To me, that's as exciting as listening to the radio on your way to work.

By now, our ineptitude at finding a good time was becoming folly.

Finally, a bar with a band was hunted down. The guy at the next table talked on a cellular phone while his date watched and we counted the minutes until the end of 1994. And counted and counted.

When they put on a taped version of "Auld Lang Syne" at 12:05 a.m. on Jan. 1, 1995, it was time to bolt. Dropping DC's brother off, we realized we had achieved a new nadir -- beating your parents (or in-laws) home on New Year's Eve.

I think too-great expectations beget worse New Year's Day hangovers than alcohol. Like "I.Q." we seemed unable to find our fun zone. We kept our bottle of Champagne corked for a special occasion and resolved to spend next New Year's Eve in another country.

But I never give up on the movies. Eventually, one comes along to redeem a string of misbegotten adventures in celluloid. It happened New Year's Day at "Little Women," a work of beauty that made me think about how deeply sexism wounds women and men and erects barriers of ignorance between us. And that those barriers disappear when the otherness of the other sex is embraced instead of feared and rejected.

I'm sure you know that isn't the film's overt message. But I wouldn't have known because, like most boys, I avoided reading any books about women -- heck, BY women -- until, as with most men, what women think became the most interesting thing in the world to me.

Louisa May Alcott wanted us to listen to our hearts, too. But in all things that concern love, most especially those we put our talents to. They are Godly gifts we do well to return to the world.

In the end, Our New Year's Eve of Destruction was swallowed whole by "Little Women," by the artistry of Gillian Armstrong, the director, in evoking Civil War New England and the warm idealism of the March clan, by these actresses' ability to empathize with long-dead characters that become immortal to the audience, and by the luminosity in Winona Ryder's face when, as Jo, she arrives at the realization that melting our resistance to fulfillment and love -- and maybe fun -- is as easy and as difficult as saying yes "with all my heart."

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a member of the Southeast Missourian news staff.