Goodbye Mr. Chips - In the greatest year in cinema history (1939), an actor playing a mild-mannered teacher beat out Clark Gable (Gone With The Wind), Laurence Olivier (Wuthering Heights), Mickey Rooney (Babes In Arms), and Jimmy Stewart (Mr. Smith Goes To Washington) for the Oscar. Robert Donat, in possibly the only bildungsroman perfectly adapted for film, gave a monumental performance that is timeless and mythical. At once, he was everything I knew I should be, everything I could be if learned my craft, and learned how to love people.
This movie taught me about legacies, human and intangible. In a profession where nothing concrete emerges by the end of the working day, teaching can be disappointing if one needs direct feedback other than the ephemeral nuances the learning cycle produces. A smile, that momentary look of epiphany, the apple left on the desk, are not always enough to fuel a lifetime of passion and dedication. This movie elegantly expresses the true potential of schooling, the human intercourse that changes student, teacher, institution, and society alike. Hope and glory through simple daily gestures. Dignified and noble endeavors, diligently pursued from tedium through devastating circumstances. It is a movie that teaches patience and the virtues that follow. I can't think of any other movie that moves me as this one does.
Robert Donat ages sixty years in the movie. As a young man, the movie made me ponder my grandfather as a young man, wondering what path molded him into the man he was. It gave me hope that there was time for me to evolve, for my few virtues to triumph against my vices, for me to become a good man with a great legacy. For the first time, I envied a boring life(not for long, but romantically so). His graceful acceptance of failures, his perseverance through the worst tragedy imaginable, and his undaunted sense of propriety were so foreign to me. I doubted I could ever be that majestic (a new form majesty for me), but I could try. And in my way, I have tried, and I have changed for the better. But at this rate, I will need to live a few decades longer than Mr. Chips.
Greer Garson, in her first film, set the standard for all future women in my life. She was unfathomably attractive, gentile and practical. Her character is the perfect embodiment of a woman - intelligent, intuitive, attractive, and compassionate. She was certainly out of her husband's league, but completely devoted to him. I have never been as devastated by a scene as I was when Mr. Chips leaves the bedroom where his wife and newborn child have died. The scene was quick, it wasn't drawn out, and it nearly killed me I think.
And perhaps the greatest impact of the film on me was the message of tradition, duty, and honor. To that point, I had little affection for such things as they reminded me of the class variances I grew up in. My step-father fought the world and it fought back with disdain and prejudice; my siblings and I were guilty by adoption. I disliked authority and and what I saw as pretenses of normalcy. I never related to The Waltons, Happy Days, or any other family oriented shows. I should have come of age in the Sixties when sentiments like mine were common and heralded. Ten years later, my discontent was neither noble or purposeful, it was just aimless and painful. But I saw what those students in that school walked away with, and I saw the resolute and dignified process education can be.
Today I find that I cling hard to educational traditions and practices. I see kids like me that rebell against everything institutionally driven, to their own detriment. Holding them to a path, as I was eventually held, is their only salvation. Consistency is fairness, it does promote justice. I don't know how often I have heard minority students criticize their more liberal instructors for their inconsistent actions. Deep down, we all need to know there is a system we can rely on, a system that will treat the same behaviors from anyone equitably. Changing ideals and guidelines on a whim for every student that appears unconventional only leads to the chaos that probably created the student in the first place. I am not speaking of unjust practices or mindlessly repetitive gestures aimed at differentiating and destroying diversity and dissent. I am speaking of a culture, a tradition that might connect me to my peers, my ancestors, and my progeny.
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