an interesting take

 I've written before about the (evergreen, now) Christmas movie "Home Alone."

Basically: I was surprised by how much I liked it, given that I am not a particular fan of slapstick. 

Anyway, I ran across this article today: basically a summarization of the movie and we're promised "this is how it relates to adulthood" though except for a discourse into Marxism and that a well-off suburban kid is torturing two petty criminals over....defending his house?

(I dunno. Maybe it hits different for a woman who was raised from tweenhood to watch out for men who might come after me, wanting to take something much more personal than access to a house, and also someone who's lived through what could be considered an attempted home invasion. I would definitely defend my person, if I could, against someone else. If they want my vintage-2007 tv,, they can have it, and the only jewelry really valuable to me is sentimental pieces with little market worth).

Perhaps also because I am "Home Alone" almost all the time - thrown on my own resources to do things, whether it's turning off the water from the street when a leak happens, or figuring out how to get food when I have no time to shop (and the only restaurant delivery in town is pizza), or arranging for repairs of stuff that breaks and then waiting the usually-interminable time for the repair person to show up after their promised window, there is something reassuring about Kevin's ability to shift for himself.

And yes, he's kind of a brat, but then - his whole family seems mean! His uncle berates him as a "jerk" and no one steps in to defend him; everyone else eats all the cheese pizza (the only kind he likes) and no one cares about that. And I think he DOES take the "left alone" part harder than that writer lets on - after all, he goes and sleeps in his absent parents' bed, and that's got to be a comfort-seeking thing. And he decorates the house all by himself for Christmas (the family did not - they were all going to be in Paris, so why bother).

I'm not really sure that Kevin "hates" adults, too. I mean, yes, most adults in the movie do him dirty in some way - the Wet Bandits, of course, but his own parents are so distracted that they accept a mis-count of the kids and leave him, and a shop clerk is suspicious. But he's kind to the "old man" who his brother originally claimed was a mass murderer, and probably what Kevin said to him was instrumental in his trying to reconcile with his son (which, we see at the very end of the movie, seems to have worked out). 

I guess my take on it is less cynical. Maybe because I'm a less-cynical person, or maybe because I've had more than my share of being "home alone" and feeling basically like I'm playing at being a grown up when I really just want someone to come and take care of me a little and make sure there's cheese pizza for me and milk and that I don't have to go out to the grocery store all by myself with what cash I can manage to scare up....

At any rate, I do agree that the soundtrack of the movie is solid (It's John Williams, after all). I've pulled my Christmas piano books back out and am refreshing "Somewhere In My Memory" (which is a gorgeous, and surprisingly pensive, song) and am also trying to learn "Star of Bethlehem" (which is what the children's choir in the movie sings, when Kevin goes to the church - presumably for companionship, and yes, perhaps, spiritual comfort (you see him saying grace over his lone dinner, and even crossing himself. I don't know if that means the McCallisters are canonically Catholic (perhaps some Episcopalians cross themselves? Given the milieu and the SES, it "feels" to me like they could be Episcopalian - or at least, a lot of the well-off families in the NE Ohio town where I grew up, which was not unlike Lake Forest or where ever the movie is set, were). 

I hope it's on some time soon, I would like to see it again. (The second one in the series is also not bad. The later ones.....not so much)