An autobiographical journey of the relationship between two brothers expressed through their connection to the region where they fly fish, adventure, and return to, a river as a metaphor for life.
Set in rural Missoula, Montana, primarily in the 1920s, the screenplay A River Runs Through It by Richard Friedenberg is based on the life of author Norman Maclean, exploring his closest relationships, especially the connection with his brother Paul. The 1992 film directed by Robert Redford, starring Craig Sheffer, Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt, was inspired by the 1976 novella Maclean wrote, published by the University of Chicago Press. The symbolism of the Blackfoot River, an extended metaphor for life and all its movement, where most of the story takes place, is the heartbeat of the movie. Norman and his brother Paul walked frequently along the river with their father, a place they “considered our family river (Friedenberg).”
The film opens with the enigma of Norman being asked at a very young age to one day write his family history in order to comprehend it: “Long ago, when I was a young man my father said to me, ‘Norman, you like to write stories.’ And I said ‘Yes, I do.’ Then he said, ‘Someday, when you're ready you might tell our family story. Only then will you understand what happened and why (Friedenberg).’” The narration continues with the pivotal theme, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing (Friedenberg).”
Raised by a Presbyterian minister, Norman and his brother Paul are taught to find the grace in the purity of the wilderness, where the rocks in the water of the Blackfoot are akin to the rocks mentioned in their father’s sermons, beneath which the voice of God is said to speak. The lyricism of the narration sets a gentle tone of harmony with the environment. This daring theme for its time, a minister, and his family finding God outside the church and its laws just as much as within, is enhanced with Norman and his father reciting lines from “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood” by William Wordsworth, a Romantic Era poet who helped shape the notion that God can be found in nature. Wordsworth opens with the affirmation, “There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,/ The earth, and every common sight,/ To me did seem/ Apparelled in celestial light,” suggesting that heavenly presence flows in the water, dressing all in ethereal grace. By reciting verses of the poem through the film, Norman, and his father weave their family belief that time outdoors is a sacred channel to the mysteries of life, in all its majestic glory and heartache.
From the narrator’s perspective, embodying nature is considered as holy as churchgoing, a habit Norman embraced early in life with the free time of afternoons to play outside after studying language in the morning. The tributary is cleansing, a provider of fish, a melody to harmonize with, their father teaching them to fish by a metronome, an outdoor cathedral in the divine order of things. With each step in their lives from childhood to their summers as lifeguards and forest workers that spared them being sent to war, blessed to have education, to becoming professionals, they reunite to fish after each milestone. They become the river, fly-fishing a metaphor for their approaches to life. Paul is an artist, at one with the essence of the river, whereas for Norman, fly-fishing is how he connects with his brother, with the spiritual world and with his authentic self. The landmark joins the brothers, carrying the memory of the night the two of them stole a boat and braved the rapids together. It’s their living home, the place Norman brings his brother-in-law to meet his family.
The Blackfoot also shoulders divide, the gulf between Paul and his loved ones when his drinking problem and gambling debts take a turn for the worst at midpoint, when Norman picks him up from jail and is informed by the guard that this is happening too often. Paul is a charmer, a natural sportsman, a daring friend and brother, someone who stands up against the racism of the time and someone who falls prey to the lure of gambling. As the older brother, Norman wants to help Paul, but doesn’t know how. The estuary is wide at times, yet the sins of Paul’s death in an alleged drunken fight or debt-related mugging are washed clean in the transformative power of water, baptisms for beginnings and endings, a lifetime itself a river.
Some of the final Wordsworth lines reflected on in the narration, “Thanks to the human heart by which we live,/ Thanks to its tenderness,/ its joys, and fears (Wordsworth, Friedenberg)…” allude to the loss of Paul having succumbed to gambling without a rigid adherence to the guidance of the church in human affairs. Paul’s heart and spirit are ever in the river, the peace of becoming a part of eternity.
The river carries Norman's ancestors, his parents and brother, his faith, his own life in all its winding curves, and ultimately, the communion of his body to dust and his spirit to God. “I am haunted by waters (Friedenberg),” he says at the end.
About Cynthia Sharp
Known as Canada’s Mary Oliver, Cynthia Sharp is the Writers International Network Vancouver Poet Laureate. She’s the author of Ordinary Light, a first-prize winner in the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society Book Awards for BC Authors, as well as in the International Impact Book Awards in Sustainability and Contemporary Poetry. She also penned Rainforest in Russet and The Light Bearers in the Sand Dollar Graviton. Her fiction, poems, creative nonfiction and reviews can be found in many literary journals including CV2, untethered, The Miramichi Reader, The Pitkin Review and Prism and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology.
Nice one Cynthia! Thanks.. And a new edition, never could find the original. My wife and I recently enjoyed rewatching the dvd, and recalling how fine Tom Skerrit's acting was. Saw it originally in theatre when my love of Redford's directing had reached heights from which it never wavered.
You may not be too pleased with this "Canada's Mary Oliver" tag, but I am an unashamed Oliver fan and have read her work online more than once. Will be seeking out yours soon.