Tears for the Curmudgeon

Tears don’t become men of certain age. One of the benefits to living this long is life toughens you sometimes to detriment. I will confirm salty waterworks blurring my vision at the movies recently. I won’t admit to crying since Old Yeller though I was in distress both times John Wayne died onscreen. But Bill Murray? He’s never even been shot at except maybe in Ghost Busters. On second thought, he may have just got slimed in that one.

Bill Murray has filled some of my favorite comedic roles over the years in Stripes, Ghost Busters, Ground Hog Day and of course, any golfer’s delight, Caddy Shack. He is just a step behind the late Robin Williams in making you laugh. But he’s never pulled off a serious role in my opinion until now.

Maybe I’m just not open-minded to his serious acting chops after seeing him in Razor’s Edge and a couple of other attempts where his semi-permanent smirk simply didn’t work. When he was younger, it was just hard to buy Murray in a serious role as you always expected him to break into something outrageous. In Razor’s Edge, that smirk made any serious line W. Somerset Maugham wrote seem a double entendre. You kept looking for the punch line that never came and left you somehow unsatisfied.

The years seem to be seasoning the smirk. His smirk has sagged along with the rest of his face until it’s morphed into something of a worldly snarl. Not yet a Clint Eastwood but very believable and serviceable in his new movie, St Vincent.

There is a brotherhood link between Eastwood and Murray, as incongruous as that sounds. Clint’s character in Grand Torino and Murray’s St Vincent would likely enjoy a beer together moaning about the people in the world they disliked the most. They are curmudgeons of the first order, darkly grumpy and cruisingly pissed off, the antithesis of Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon in Grumpy Old Men.

The path the characters Eastwood and Murray play are following a similar formula, raging against the lessening light of their lives in a profane, painful poetry worthy of any Dylan Thomas epistle. The fact that Eastwood’s path forks to violence isn’t news but the revelation Murray’s fate ends in sainthood is a surprise worthy of O. Henry despite the foreshadowing of the movie’s title.

For most of the movie Murray as Vinnie is a pretty distasteful cuss who reveals little pockets of humanity every so often to rescue himself from the audience totally writing him off. His mentorship of a the boy next door careens between positive and negative lessons on life to the point where one thinks Melissa McCarthy, the mother, should swear out a restraining order. Turns out there is no need as Vinnie uses his pain and rage to drive a stake between himself and his mentee.

Or does he? I don’t want to give away the plot particulars, but let it suffice to say Vinnie is plucked from his sinner status to sainthood by the boy. Cue the waterworks for old secret softies. Tears weren’t on a par with Old Yeller but easily at the level of either of the times John Wayne died.

So why did this movie hit whatever bone is the opposite of the funny one? Maybe because any curmudgeon who has ever pushed family or friends away or kept the world at arm’s length can identify with Vinnie on some scale or level. Those closest are too often targets of the frustration and rage men of a certain age muster as they sense the dying of the light within, flickering like the candle carried by an acolyte down a center aisle of an old church. Any man who has ever felt guilt at being “an old poop” like Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond should probably see this movie. I can’t promise the secret to sainthood will be revealed, but maybe some inner mirror will be triggered by Vinnie and the viewer will be moved to reshape the image reflected.

Isolation is the biggest threat to the longevity of a man, more dangerous than cholesterol or arthritis. The cure can be as simple as connecting with new friends or reconnecting with old. The fact of life for grumpy old men everywhere is cussedness is a curse.