| Book Review-- "The Film Club" by David Gilmour (Memoir) published by Twelvebooks. |
Back in March, when I watched the Titlepage episode
"The Horror, The Horror" I knew I was going to have to
read "The Film Club." The book is a memoir that walks
through the aftermath of an interesting and controversial
proposition the author, David Gilmour gave his son, Jesse.
At fifteen Jesse was having a terrible time in school, so
David offered to let him quit The catch is he's gotta hang
out with dear 'ol Dad, and watch 3 movies a week. Jesse
bites, and so begins The Film Club.
As the Film Club begins, David and his ex-wife Maggie
trade homes. David takes the house with Jesse, and
Maggie moves into David's loft. The first film in a French
film called The 400 Blows (1959), a film directed by
Francois Truffaut, who had been a high school drop out.
David is good at this. He draws on his former career as a
film critic and picks films relative to whatever is happening
in Jesse's life. At first, Jesse's response to his father's
question is what you would expect from a troubled
teenager, "I don't know, it's just a movie," but as the book
progresses it is obvious that Jesse is learning something.
He becomes more and more insightful about the films he
watches, and even points out things David himself hadn't
seen.
Over a period of over three years the two stay the course
of this unique unofficial version of homeschooling watching
everything from The Godfather, to Basic Instinct to
Breakfast at Tiffany's to Pretty Woman and scores of
movies in between. The book even includes a
"Filmography" listing all the movies they watched and
discussed over the years.
Yet as effective as The Film Club is at encouraging some
good old fashioned father/son bonding the experiment is
not without it's flaws. Jesse's life is plagued with
relationship problems and too many parties. When he finds
his problems cannot be solved by popping in a DVD he
turns to alcohol and drugs that would have any parent's
head spinning like the little girl Reagan from The Exorcist.
Over and over David raises the question within himself
whether he had made the right decision allowing Jesse to
quit school. But the problem, as I see it, was not with The
Film Club, but with the amount of freedom Jesse was
granted outside of it. Parenting a child that the system
"works" for is difficult enough without feeling desperate to
try an experiment. Like any experiment, there's a lot of trial
and error. Some things work, and others don't.
I will not say how "The Film Club" ends -- expect to point
out that the dust jacket is graced with a very nice picture of
the father and son. The memoir, from a literary standpoint,
kept a good pace with both the ups and downs that it
highlighted, and I definitely would recommend it to anyone
interested in parenting styles, or film, or the way we let the
things we see in life effect the way we live -- and vice
versa.
"The Horror, The Horror" I knew I was going to have to
read "The Film Club." The book is a memoir that walks
through the aftermath of an interesting and controversial
proposition the author, David Gilmour gave his son, Jesse.
At fifteen Jesse was having a terrible time in school, so
David offered to let him quit The catch is he's gotta hang
out with dear 'ol Dad, and watch 3 movies a week. Jesse
bites, and so begins The Film Club.
As the Film Club begins, David and his ex-wife Maggie
trade homes. David takes the house with Jesse, and
Maggie moves into David's loft. The first film in a French
film called The 400 Blows (1959), a film directed by
Francois Truffaut, who had been a high school drop out.
David is good at this. He draws on his former career as a
film critic and picks films relative to whatever is happening
in Jesse's life. At first, Jesse's response to his father's
question is what you would expect from a troubled
teenager, "I don't know, it's just a movie," but as the book
progresses it is obvious that Jesse is learning something.
He becomes more and more insightful about the films he
watches, and even points out things David himself hadn't
seen.
Over a period of over three years the two stay the course
of this unique unofficial version of homeschooling watching
everything from The Godfather, to Basic Instinct to
Breakfast at Tiffany's to Pretty Woman and scores of
movies in between. The book even includes a
"Filmography" listing all the movies they watched and
discussed over the years.
Yet as effective as The Film Club is at encouraging some
good old fashioned father/son bonding the experiment is
not without it's flaws. Jesse's life is plagued with
relationship problems and too many parties. When he finds
his problems cannot be solved by popping in a DVD he
turns to alcohol and drugs that would have any parent's
head spinning like the little girl Reagan from The Exorcist.
Over and over David raises the question within himself
whether he had made the right decision allowing Jesse to
quit school. But the problem, as I see it, was not with The
Film Club, but with the amount of freedom Jesse was
granted outside of it. Parenting a child that the system
"works" for is difficult enough without feeling desperate to
try an experiment. Like any experiment, there's a lot of trial
and error. Some things work, and others don't.
I will not say how "The Film Club" ends -- expect to point
out that the dust jacket is graced with a very nice picture of
the father and son. The memoir, from a literary standpoint,
kept a good pace with both the ups and downs that it
highlighted, and I definitely would recommend it to anyone
interested in parenting styles, or film, or the way we let the
things we see in life effect the way we live -- and vice
versa.
| This book was reviewed by Gretchen Lee Bourquin. More of her work can be found here |