Stand by Me
My thoughts watching this had much less to do with the movie itself and much more to do with Rob Reiner passing, which connected back to the movie via nostalgia. It’s interesting to watch everyone share their stories of how he impacted their lives and inspired them to create art, or how his work led people to important realizations about themselves, or the great interactions with random people always seemed to have. Personally, I don’t really have a story about him beyond watching Stand By Me and The Princess Bride with people in my family many years ago and probably enjoying it but being too young to really care. However, both are moments I still remember and were immediately conjured up by the news of his passing. Despite not sharing the deep connection with his work many do, there was a strong sense of sadness about the man who created the foundation for these memories no longer being with us. It compounded mourning him with mourning the time he was in my life, even if that time was just a few hours. It felt fitting then for the movie I watched as a tribute to him to start with a character experiencing that very same emotion (albeit in a much more extreme sense), seeing news of an old friend’s death and it opening a floodgate of memories. I’m aware of how corny this sounds but it did feel as if there’s still a piece of him that lives in his work, as if the discourses he opened cannot be concluded until people stop watching his movies. All of the incredible things I hear about him as a person are displayed clearly in every second of Stand By Me, and I’m glad we will always get to experience that.
RIP Rob Reiner