Late in the evening of February 17, 1938 my father was caught sneaking into his house after curfew by my grandfather. My father was unable to explain that he had been taking care of his father’s mother. They had a terrible argument and each retired for the night with the issue unresolved. My grandfather awoke the next day before anyone else in the family and went off to the mine. The afteroon newspaper announced “7 of Eight Entombed Men Rescued Alive: Paul Kuritz Dead”. My father, a senior in high school, had lost his “daddy”, his best friend, and had had the responsibility for his mother and two young siblings replace his planned study of the violin and career as a second baseman. His life would never recover, as the spirits of anger, grief, and fear invaded my father’s body, where they lived and dined for most of his life, affecting all who knew him, all who loved him.
Just down the road from the Pennsylvania coal mining town where my grandfather died , and just a couple of years after the fact, my father watched young Huw tell his story in the dark Wilkes-Barre theater premiering John Ford’s film. Most criticism of Ford’s great film sets it in the category of a midling mid-century working class narrative or defective socialist artifact, and concludes the film falls short. But Huw, the narrator, is “spirit”, if we go by the etymology of the name, not “worker”. Perhaps Mr. Ford’s film is more of a soul’s review of his life on earth, as he passes between this world and the next. Perhaps the film’s epilogue is less Ford’s sentimental nostalgia, and more Huw’s vision of a new life in the New Creation. Through a father, sons, and spirit, the film may be presenting God’s view of our hard, confusing life on earth, in the valley of the shadow of death. Jon Kennedy’s review suggests a non-proletarian look at the film.
How Green Was My Valley: Te Spirit telling of the Father and the Son: The Icon of The Holy Spirit.
Through tears, my father could occasionally speak of his father’s death , but he could never speak of John Ford’s film. The tears wouldn’t let him.
Comments are disabled for this post