In his final years, after my Mom passed away, he sang a lot to fill the silence of his empty home, and his song choices tended to be older and sadder. After I made him a CD of Merle Haggard songs, he focused on one song, so typical of Merle’s songwriting, a sentimental ballad about surviving a lifetime of hardship and only at the end, looking back at what had turned out to be a good life.

Someday We’ll Look Back (performed by Merle Haggard)
Written by Merle Haggard

Someday when our dream world finds us
And these hard times are gone
We’ll laugh and count our blessings
In a mansion all our own
If we both pull together, tomorrow’s sure to come
Someday we’ll look back and say it was fun

We lived on love and pennies
And a daydream out of sight
And I’m amazed at the way you smile
When things don’t turn out right
We climbed each hill together, each step one by one
And someday we’ll look back and say it was fun

Someday when our dream world finds us
And these hard times are gone
We’ll laugh and count our blessings
In a mansion all our own
If we both pull together, tomorrow’s sure to come
Someday we’ll look back and say it was fun
And someday we’ll look back and say it was fun

My Dad worried in his final years if he’d done enough for my Mom to deserve her. He’d often ask me — a total failure when it comes to women — “What did she see in me?” The key lyric to him seemed to be “I’m amazed at the way you smile when things don’t turn out right.” And although they often didn’t, in the end everything worked out. There was no doubt that they had succeeded as a team. They had three devoted children, a handful of grandchildren and a herd of great-grandchildren, along with a home and a lifetime of memories. No one remembered the doubts they had and the mistakes they made, but my Dad did, and when he sang the final line of the song, it wasn’t boastful and it wasn’t funny. He seemed relieved, and a little bit surprised.

I can look at photos of my Dad (1924-2008), who loved to share jokes and listen to music. A guy who loved the old ways of doing things, who berated me for “running out and buying a solution” when your hands could do the job. A grown man who would drop to the floor to play among his grandkids. A man who rarely showed anger, who without complaint took care of my ailing mother so that she could live out the rest of her life in her home, and die in her own bed. A hard-working, determined man who was born at dinnertime, he said, and was thus always hungry.

I can look at photos of his dad, Frederick (1886-1974), whose mother called him Ted. He ran a team of horses in a logging camp before opening a store along the highway in Lemington, Wisconsin. Tall and thin, I can still picture him sitting in his chair by the window, reading the paper. As I sat quietly in their house while the adults talked (back when kids were required to do that), he’d fold up the paper and take me into the store and let me choose candy from the glass-partitioned case — chunks of bulk candy that were impossible to choose between. He was famous for his soft side too, known to walk the floor for hours coaxing a crying baby to sleep.

I get my looks from his father, Frederick (1858-1938), whom I never met but my Dad admiringly remembered as a “big, fat German.” Dad remembered helping lace up his boots while my great-grandfather sang “Ach du Lieber Augustin.” Frederick worked for years for the Knapp-Stout Lumber Company, which cleared much of the northern Wisconsin forest, where he could look at a stand of timber and estimate the board feet of lumber it would produce. My dad recalled an old-timer telling him, “there’s no one I’d rather have in the woods with me than Fred Scharlau.”

My paternal grandmother told us about her father, James (1865-1928), who was born in New York but moved with his family to Wisconsin and established my branch of the family there. He was working at the Rice Lake gravel pit when he died, at age 62. I have a tintype of him, poised and handsome in a studio, that is one of my favorite photos.

His father, Luther (1834-1876), was as far back as my grandmother could remember, but she could remember his red hair. Luther fought for the Union at Fredericksburg and elsewhere. My Dad and I were happy and surprised upon finding his grave a few years ago in a little cemetery off the road in Royalton, Wisconsin. Even though this veteran died more than 125 years ago, someone had thought to decorate his grave with a flag.

On my mother’s side, I never got to meet my Grandpa Charles Carlson (1890-1949), but feel close to him, possibly because I can visit his grave in nearby Fort Snelling National Cemetery. Charles was the first of his brothers to emigrate to the United States from Sweden in 1901, and though a citizen for only three years, enlisted to fight in the Great War. His company fought at Meuse-Argonne in 1918, and he was the victim of a mustard-gas attack, which weakened him for the rest of his life and led to an early death. My Dad knew him, and said he loved to talk and enjoyed going to Masonic lodge meetings, where he would allow himself a beer.

I need to learn more about my mother’s grandfather, Andrew Elias Steel (1846-1922), who emigrated from Sweden to Lake City, Minnesota, where he worked as a blacksmith, until moving the family to St. Paul in the 1880s. I have a photo of him, standing proudly with several of his seven daughters.

I wish I could spend today with any of these men, to learn more about their lives, and to thank them for mine. I know their struggles were greater than mine, and I am grateful for their work and their sacrifices. The best I could do was acknowledge them and remember them a bit on Father’s Day.

My Dad was fond of an old country song, “The Letter Edged in Black.” He recalled that, back in the day when all communication, however urgent, relied on mail service, letters bearing bad news were enclosed in envelopes marked with black around the edges. The intent was to warn that the message inside was not routine correspondence, and that the recipient should be prepared to hear the worst. The shock of learning some things without warning would only amplify the message.

The next of kin (”NOK” in military parlance) of service members are prepared more than most to hear such news, but the shock is handled differently. When combat hero Staff Sergeant Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) is assigned to the Casualty Notification Unit to complete his final months of service, he views it as a bit of an insult. Delivering bad news, adhering to a stiff and cold script and watching the impact on loved ones resulting from his visit seems like a lousy chore to someone who has seen as much as he has. His partner, Captain Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson), trains him to exercise detachment, stick to the script and avoid touching anyone. Speak only to the primary next of kin, don’t park out front, and don’t wait around, drawing attention. His professionalism masks a detachment from his emotions, necessary not only to the successful notification of death in the line of service, but to his own well-being.

The Casualty Notification officers encounter anger, resentment, nausea and deadened shock, reactions that the seasoned Captain Stone warns his protege to expect. But, as The Messenger takes its time to show us, they are not prepared for the reactions they experience themselves, particularly when they make an official visit to a new widow (a surprising Samantha Morton) and the heartbreak and grief manage to get around everyone’s defenses.

The Messenger shows a new viewpoint on war that is devastating but not divisive. The cold violence that the officers deliver to the loved ones waiting back home must be an awful burden to bear, but they always speak on behalf of the Secretary of the Army and repress both pain and empathy in the name of military professionalism. Alcohol occasionally seeps inside the Captain’s self-defense, while the distance of an ex-girlfriend wears away at the young Staff Sergeant, putting him in a dangerous situation with the new widow whose life he’s just destroyed.

“I think they ought to show every damn funeral on TV, live,” Harrelson’s character growls at one point, and that’s the argument I’ve tried to make. Pretending that the deaths don’t represent real lives cut short, that the mission doesn’t result in orphans and grieving parents, makes war too easy. And makes all of us too willing to ignore the network of pain behind every fallen soldier. There are letters edged in black being delivered today, somewhere in America, and we should be witness when that bad news is delivered.

2009. Starring Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Directed by Scott Cooper.

I’ve probably watched a total of 15 minutes of American Idol over the years, usually early in the season when they focus on those who perform, well, less Idol-like. Those not-ready-for-prime-time singers get a inordinate amount of airtime — enough so the audience can relish the dream-crushing coups de grace from the show’s judges. Whether the early cuts take their discouragement in tears or by rejecting the judgment they lusted for minutes earlier, they have to accept that they have failed. Their belief in themselves has betrayed them.

I’m guessing that most of those rejected abandon their dreams as a result of their nationwide embarrassment. That’s too bad, because a real artist would find inspiration in that rejection, defiant reinvention in that condemnation. They should find pain in every rejection, and their development as a real artist — not one stamped out of the standard reality-TV mold — should be built on steps of heartache.

Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges in a well-deserved Oscar-winning role) is a throwback country-western singer, one who takes little phrases, assembles them into rhymes, backs them with a fingerpicking and steel guitar, and sends shivers down the backs of his fans. But he’s become preoccupied with money, with the two-month tour his agent has put together, the grim bowling alleys and bars where he finds an audience, and the envy he feels toward a protege (Colin Farrell) who has eclipsed him. He’s also an alcoholic who has lost faith in his own talents. He grinds it out, with little joy, until he meets Jane (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a writer, and falls for her.

Bad has earned his nickname through the traditional vices, and he’s also a long-lost father who has never spoken to his son. He drowns his loneliness, his disappointment in whiskey, and seems doomed to sabotage a career revival. He returns to Jane and befriends her son and imagines a meaningful future, but his self-destructive nature won’t allow it. Bridges plays Bad as the grizzled, chain-smoking outlaw hero familiar to country-music fans, but he’s not a likeable character until he tries for something out of his reach.

I had hoped that Crazy Heart would focus more on his career, the triumph of authenticity over phoniness, the satisfying scratching-out of a tune that would redeem the broken hero. When I saw the romance coming, I was ready for the film to go off the rails. I was wrong. There are few movies willing to portray romance this realistically. His pursuit of Jane reawakens something inside him. The physical distance between them, the regret and, of course, the spell of the bottle all combine to force the songwriter to huddle down with his guitar and try to tame the awful, demanding desires by expressing them. When he returns again and again to a fragment of a song, he knows he’s onto something.

Two musical aspects make Crazy Heart even better. The Bad Blake songs were written by Ryan Bingham (who has a small role), which are appropriate for the aging honky-tonk singer, including an old hit with the defining line “Funny how falling feels like flyin’, for a little while.” The film’s soundtrack was produced by T-Bone Burnett, and includes the Louvin Brothers and Buck Owens. Appropriately, in an odd scene featuring a hot-air balloon, we hear “If I Needed You” by Townes Van Zandt, the late, great songwriter and singer who squeezed every ounce of pain from his talent before drinking himself to death in 1997.

In the end, it’s not the tickets that Bad Blake wants to sell, or the fans he hopes to win over — it’s the hurt he wants to reveal, the discovery of love and desire he wants to share, that makes him an artist. Baring his pain and doubt, he manages to reach out and touch something in everyone listening. The singer who shares his true self and doesn’t give up will never lack for fans cheering him on. Something those rejected on reality TV should remember.

One of the best-loved of all country songs, Sweet Dreams is one of the simplest, saddest expressions of lost love that I’ve ever heard. Few things are worse than using sleep to escape thinking about someone, only to be ambushed by those thoughts in a murky, twilight world where you can’t deny the truth to yourself.

Sweet Dreams (Performed by Faron Young)
Written by Don Gibson

Sweet dreams of you
Every night I go through
Why can’t I forget you and start my life anew
Instead of having sweet dreams about you

You don’t love me, it’s plain
I should know I’ll never wear your ring
I should hate you the whole night through
Instead of having sweet dreams about you

Sweet dreams of you
Things I know can’t come true
Why can’t I forget the past, start loving someone new
Instead of having sweet dreams about you

I prefer Faron Young’s version. His nasal warble really does pick out the heavy line and base the song around it. And in Faron’s version, it’s “I should hate you the whole night through/instead of having sweet dreams about you.” Whoever coined the phrase about there being a thin line between love and hate deserves a co-writing credit on this song. Being robbed of a good night’s sleep by someone you thought you were over is incredibly unfair. You wake up, and can’t deny that she’s still in there, somewhere.

Leo McCarey’s Make Way For Tomorrow is known by more than one critic as “the saddest movie ever made.” I think that claim could be challenged if you consider sadness to be tragic, cruel and the result of the too-often human disregard for humanity. In that case, you’ve got Schindler’s List, The Killing Fields and Fires on the Plain to compete with. No, the kind of sadness that permeates Make Way For Tomorrow is a sentimental weariness concerning the passing of time and the changing role of parents as time overtakes them.

Bart (Victor Moore) and Lucy (Beulah Bondi) portray the aged parents of five adult children. The couple are losing their house and longtime home to an indifferent bank. The children are shocked, and scramble to figure out who will take in each of the parents, but it quickly becomes apparent that they are all selfish and intolerant of such an imposition. Finally, the eldest son makes room for the mother and the father is sent away to live with a daughter.

Separated and isolated, they don’t fare well in their new homes. The mother is a burden to the social life of her son and daughter-in-law (absolutely ruining bridge night, heaven forbid, and sending the only clean tuxedo shirt to the cleaners). She also fails to be a benefit to her granddaughter, a somewhat slutty teenager who runs off to meet various men of varying ages. Meanwhile, up north, the father pathetically entertains hope of finding work in his new town, and succumbs to several colds that require nursing by the suffering in-laws.

Bart and Lucy live for the next communication allowed between them, through loud phone calls and hard-to-read letters, and their children take no joy in having them around. When the decision is made to send the father off to live with the prodigal daughter in California — for his health — both realize that they may never see each other again.

According to Peter Bogdanovich, who provides some history of the film on the Criterion Collection disc, when director McCarey was given the Academy Award for The Awful Truth — made the same year — he said, “You gave me the award for the wrong picture.” I’m not going to take up that argument, but will say that McCarey has an very deft touch in dealing with what could be a maudlin, melodramatic story. Instead, he gives us a bittersweet but honest tale of growing old and then getting out of the way, and finds room to let in some much-needed humor. Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi play characters much older than their own age, but their portrayals are genuine and complex. Their kids, who could come off as real villains, are instead just a bit incompetent and caught up in their silly modern lives, circa 1936.

Much has been discussed about the ending, which won’t tug so much on your heart as pull and twist. The revealing scenes to me, however, are those when the old couple — useless to all whom they trouble — are briefly reunited. In those scenes, the sweet old couple encounter many strangers while wandering around New York City on the last day they will spend together in their long lives. Knowing them only for minutes, those strangers show kindness and appreciation for those the old-timers, who are full of stories and clearly in love after 50 years of marriage. Why their children do not see them in this light is the saddest thing about the film, and may be the awful truth that McCarey tries to show the rest of us.

American movie portrayals of “vengeance” are crowd-pleasers. Mel Gibson has practically adopted the motivation as a screen persona. Vengeance as a plot device kept Charles Bronson employed for many uninspired years. Picture Harrison Ford in almost any movie in the past decade-and-a-half and he’s probably yelling, “Give me back my daughter!” or “I want to know what happened to my wife!” while the veins in his neck threaten to secede.

The Korean director, Chan-wook Park, has explored vengeance in a trio of movies — Oldboy, Lady Vengeance and, in the first of these, Sympathy of Mr. Vengeance. Vengeance in Korea seems to be served slowly boiling, bitterly seasoned and with excruciating violence.

The plot is not a simple one: Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin) is a deaf and mute factor worker with a dying sister, who desperately needs a kidney transplant. He turns to the black market and not only loses his money, but one of his own kidneys. With his anarchist girlfriend Cha Yeong-mi (Du-na Bae), he decides to kidnap the daughter of the factory owner (Kang-ho Song) to raise the transplant money. His girlfriend suggests that it would be “fun” for the child and, because they wouldn’t ask for much money from a rich man, it would level off the unfairness of society just a bit.

Plans often go awry in vengeance movies. When the kidnapped child accidently drowns, the factory owner exacts intense and almost wordless justice on the plotters. What follows is — and it’s worth being prepared for it — suicide, murder by baseball bat and scalpel, torture, dismemberment and sweet poetic justice. And a dark surprise at the end.

Instead of the roaring lines familiar to fans of Harrison Ford movie trailers, the director uses haunting and beautiful imagery to increase the impact: Ryu hitchhiking along a highway in the early daylight, naked and scarred from his kidney transaction; the kidnapped child’s orange dress floating in the river; the bleak and grimy factory whose noise is invisible to the deaf Ryu; even the scenes of violence, often shot with a comfortable measure of distance or blocked perspective.

I’m haunted by this movie’s slow, relentless build. I woke up through the following night, thinking about the twists and turns of the plot, how good turned to bad and back again, everyone cheating and being cheated, and how violence was met with deserved violence somewhere down the road. What proves to be especially challenging for western viewers isn’t the violence — although that is pretty graphic — but the measured pace of this film and others like it (like the excellent Memories of Murder, also starring Kang-ho Song) that do not build to a predictably frantic conclusion.

This Korean meditation on personal justice isn’t all that different from its American counterparts — the fury of an anguished father translates well — but I think it better demonstrates that the pursuit of vengeance doesn’t end with anyone’s clean hands. Achieving vengeance may require destroying everyone, including yourself.

And, surprisingly, you learn that a documentary about a past-their-prime Canadian heavy metal hair band on a long, long losing streak can be an enlightening rumination on what it means to have a dream, and to keep it alive long enough that it might come true.

I’ll admit to once having a few Kiss and Judas Priest LPs in my collection. I may have turned the radio up to blast “Back In Black” while alone in the car. But I’m no metal fan. When I began to watch Sasha Gervasi’s excellent documentary, I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a “This Is Spinal Tap” tribute. Early scenes capture Steve “Lips” Kudlow working his depressing catering job and the band embarking on an ill-fated European tour. There are so many Spinal Tap moments here: devoted fans “Cut Loose” and “Mad Dog” (who pounds a beer through his nose), a lead guitarist who plays with a vibrator, and the local television show reveling in Anvil’s dirty rock lyrics. Their song “Metal On Metal” even sounds like Spinal Tap’s “Big Bottom.” When band co-founder and drummer Robb Reiner was introduced, I was sure it had to be an homage to the director of the greatest-ever rock mockumentary.

But then something really unexpected happens: Anvil as a heavy-metal joke disappears, and the guys become very genuine people who you wish would find success and fulfillment in their music. Watching Kudlow record an enthusiastic radio-station promo and being told that, oops, we forgot to turn on the tape, you’ll be amazed that he doesn’t stop smiling. Even during the difficult behind-the-scenes moments when he childishly argues with Reiner, with whom he has rocked since a teenager, you can see the nice guy beneath the black t-shirt.

So the European tour is a failure, and the band returns to Ontario to get back to their lives. But they’ve recorded some demos and Kudlow sends a copy off to the producer of their early albums. He refuses to let his dreams die, even as he celebrates his 50th birthday, and despite a music scene that has changed dramatically since the band formed.

The core of Anvil! is definitely the bond between Kudlow and Reiner, who seem to consider each other as a brother, although they continue to butt heads. Kudlow is the overgrown kid who believes in the possibilities of rock and roll, and Reiner supplies the steady propulsion and balance expected of a drummer. Both have families that wearily support them — Reiner’s sister is the one downer — and enough hope shines through to keep them pursuing fame. Eventually, the producer calls back and the band faces difficult decisions that test their commitment. I’ll leave it at that.

This should be required watching for anyone in a band, for anyone who wants to be a musician — not necessarily as a lesson in how to become a success or avoid becoming a failure. The film is really a testament to the tenacity of dreams. Reiner expresses frustration that success hasn’t found Anvil, and seems well aware that their last chance has to happen pretty soon. It seems like only death will stop Kudlow — they will have to pry the Flying V from his cold, dead hands.

There’s more talk about life and aspiration in this film than a thousand afterschool specials. Kudlow’s successful, professional siblings are incredibly supportive. A scene where his older sister states her support for his dreams (and yet fights back tears and a troubled brow) is nicely concluded with his observation that “family is important shit, man.” Lasting fame may not find the band, but I’d say these guys are successful for having the support for their unlikely rockin’ dreams.

I put off watching The Cove because I knew what I was going to see. Sometimes you need movies to escape the depressing aspects of life, rather than focus on them. But witnessing what happens in this brave documentary is important.

The debut of this film was the first I’d heard about the dolphin capture and slaughter in a hidden cove near Taiji, along the coast of Japan. From September to March of every year, dolphins are detoured from their migratory route, chased by boats with men aboard banging on pipes, and herded into shallow waters to be speared and left to bleed out. Some are captured for export to entertainment parks. The local fishermen are extremely aggressive in keeping activists away and, for a long time, were very successful at it.

As much as I dreaded watching it, The Cove was rewarding to watch due to the way the situation is filmed. First, the man who has led the opposition in Taiji is Richard O’Barry, who began as a trainer on the 1960s television show, Flipper. O’Barry is motivated by the wealth brought to him by the show and the subsequent popularity of captured dolphins for performance in venues around the world. After years of exploiting the animals, he regretted what he’d done and began working to free captured dolphins and end the Japanese slaughter.

O’Barry describes the dolphin’s smile, loved by millions of visitors to Sea World and venues like it, as a cruel joke of nature. The animals are highly intelligent, capable of communication and gentle when encountering humans in the wild. When confined and isolated, they suffer depression and anxiety. Those same people who love them performing in a water park wouldn’t want them captured and confined if they knew how the experience destroyed the dolphins.

Second, the film includes a high-tech adventure story, as director Louis Psihoyos assembles an “Ocean’s Eleven” team to elude the local police, infiltrate the cove and plant audio and video equipment that will document what happens out of sight. Thermal cameras, night dives and reconnaissance missions add some suspense to the substance of the film, which also tackles fish stock depletion, international whaling debates and the mercury poisoning that results from the overfishing.

The most telling aspect of The Cove is the acknowledgment by the fishermen that if the world found out what was happening at Taiji, the killing of 33,000 dolphins each year there would end. The few who benefit continue to hide behind claims of tradition, but most Japanese didn’t know it was taking place and don’t support it. Many don’t realize that inferior dolphin meat was being passed off as more expensive and scarcer whale meat. When the fishermen tried to give dolphin meat to a school lunch program, despite its heavy mercury content, two Taiji city councilmen stepped up to oppose it, endangering their own lives and livelihood.

The footage and sound recordings captured by the activist team is presented without comment, but there really is no need for any. But it’s clear why none of the Japanese involved wanted their faces and actions caught on film. The question that remains is, if they are so ashamed of what they are doing, why are they still doing it?

The irony is thick in Up In The Air. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a happy air warrior who specializes in firing employees for timid employers all over the country. He is summoned back to HQ for a change in direction — a young colleague (Anna Kendrick) has devised a means of firing people through videoconferencing, effectively terminating Bingham from the profession he has perfected.

Bingham sees the benefit of a face-to-face dismissal for every kind of unwanted employee, a way to soften the blow and minimize the blowback, however insincerely delivered. “Everyone who has ever ruled an empire or changed the world sat in the same seat as you, and they would not have accomplished what they did if this hadn’t also happened to them” — that’s his line, polished and appropriated by all his colleagues, meant to disarm and distract the newly axed. “What we do is take people at their most fragile,” he later admits to the colleague, “and set them adrift.”

The new method of firing employees online will take away his constant travel and disrupt the life he has also perfected — living without roots, collecting perks from every transaction, slipping away effortlessly from every interaction. He travels light, using his executive status to dash to the front of lines, maxing out his per diems, and eventually meeting his complement in the form of Alex (Vera Farmiga) in a hotel bar. They flirt over preferred membership cards, and have a nice, commitment-free romp before catching their morning flights.

Bingham takes his young colleague on the road with him, to show her the complexities of their trade that can’t be summarized in a dispassionate script. She’s wound as tight as he is loose, but as she unwinds on the road, we learn that she’s vulnerable to the painful toll of relationships that he has built his life around avoiding. He’s even written the book on unburdening yourself of human baggage — a self-help book he travels to promote on his days off.

Eventually, his protege inspires him to examine all the miles he’s traveled and to question where he’s going. “Call me when you’re lonely,” Alex says as they part once again at an airport gate. “I’m lonely,” he replies in an untypical, unguarded moment.

Up In The Air is a terrifically entertaining film, and prescient enough to be released in the middle of our great recession, when downsizing and career-shifting and existential doubt are familiar to many of us. Unburdened by the weight of others holding him down, Clooney’s friendly executioner floats from town to town, helping dismantle the American dream for one middle-class worker at a time. He suggests to one that now might be the time to chase those dreams he’d left behind, that the end he’d been hired to deliver was really a beginning of sorts. Some of those receiving bad news are angry and resentful, and some are ashamed. Most will find a way to land on their feet. But it doesn’t matter to the messenger, because he’ll be long gone before they land anywhere.

Bingham’s approach to his career seems like it should be successful. Without the weights of conscience, commitment and purpose, a guy could really get somewhere. What he finds up above us all, up above the clouds that hover over the rest of us, is that a life without them can be lonely and cold.