Stand by Me (1986)

 

Sammenhold

“Stand by me” is based on a Stephen King story that was not in the horror genre, which in its own right is worth notice. Instead, it is a coming-of-age story made into a movie by Rob Reiner. Something also worth of notice. Rob Reiner has made a lot of very strong movies, and this was still early in his career.

In present day, writer Gordie Lahanche (Richard Dreyfuss, Will Wheaton) is reminiscing about an incident in his childhood (1959) where he and his friends went to see a dead body.

It is summer and the boys Gordie, Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Vern (Jerry O’Connell) are hanging out in their treehouse (and a really cool treehouse at that). Vern has overheard his older brother talk about a body of a local boy left in the woods and so the boys decide to check that out. It is a long hike through the wilderness and when they finally get there, the body is “contested” by a group of older (and menacing) boys led by the scary Ace (Kiefer Sutherland). That is really it.

The real story however is what is happening with the boys on the walk to the body. It is quite literally an odyssey, both externally and internally.

On this walk the boys are facing a number of challenges. They escape from a junkyard owner and his menacing dog, they narrowly avoid getting run over by a train, they fall into a swamp where they get attacked by leeches and they spend a harrowing night, sleeping and standing guard in the woods before the final challenge in front of Ace.

The interesting journey however is the internal journey the boys are taking. Throughout the movie we listen to their banter and silly talk, but enmeshed in all this is a lot of uncertainty. Teddy is upset because his father is considered mentally ill and it is somehow rubbing off on him. Vern is insecure about everything. To him, just keeping up with the other boys is a victory all on its own. Chris is commonly considered a bad boy out of a bad family and the stigma is very oppressive. He is convinced he will be stuck in that role and that freaks him out. Gordie, himself, has a double problem. His brother Denny (John Cusack) has recently suffered a tragic death and though not outright blamed, Gordie clearly feels that his father would have preferred him to have died instead. Gordie is bookish and an aspiring writer, something his father has no interest in. This also means that Gordie will likely not take the same classes as his friends in the coming years and he may lose them.

Each of the boys will come to terms with their failings before the end and come out of this as better versions of themselves, so when they face Ace and his gang at the end, they know they have each other’s back. Well, at least Gordie has Chris back.

A story like this could be rather tedious and heavy handed. Both the coming of age and the odyssey themes are very old and classic, but, somehow, they are elegantly woven together here so I only realized near the end what was actually going on. Rob Reiner can probably take a lot of credit for that, but so can the four boys playing the protagonists. There is an ease to them assuming their roles that makes me believe that they really are those characters. When you think child actors, the natural reaction is to roll the eyes, but these four are very convincing and the selling point is the ease of their banter and the way they interact.

I also like very much that the tone never gets sentimental or outright silly. It is a balancing act to keep it real and you can sense that at times it must have been tempting to drive it a bit in one or the other direction. Gordie’s loss of a brother or Vern’s hunt for his penny treasure, but it never crosses the line and that makes the story very believable, and this is why I as a viewer care about these boys.

“Stand by Me” did not win a ton of Oscars and I had personally never heard of it before, but in my research, I found that this movie has been hugely influential on a lot of other filmmakers. When Jules and Vincent in “Pulp Fiction” go on and on about French burgers and what not, it is a direct reference to “Stand by Me”.

Definitely a positive experience.