Rating:
4 Bowls of Popcorn (enjoyed at Tiffany’s)
I have been reigning in my excitement for this one, really I have. I knew Josh wouldn’t like it (“hate” is a strong word, but probably is pretty accurate…), so I didn’t want to rub it in as this movie drew closer. That just seemed mean. But I was hard for me to not dance with glee as this movie got closer; I love Breakfast at Tiffany‘s.
OK, now for the why. Wow, how do I narrow this down? Years of movie love boiled down into one blog post. 400 words or less. Yikes. That’s a tall order. Well, here goes.
- Holly Golightly gives a name to that feeling of being afraid but not being sure why you are afraid. She calls it the “mean reds.” Most humans feel this feeling, but don’t know how to word it; Holly doesn’t just word it, she names it. (“The blues are because you’re getting fat and maybe it’s been raining too long, you’re just sad that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?”)
- Holly has a cat named “cat.” Why? Because she doesn’t feel she has the right to give him a name. After all, he doesn’t really belong to her, they just found each other. How profound is that?! (“I’m like cat here, a no-name slob. We belong to nobody, and nobody belongs to us. We don’t even belong to each other.”)
- She calls a mafia boss doing time in Sing-Sing a “darling old man.” The best part? She truly believes that he is just that, a darling old man. She is that naive, that innocent.
- She’s straightforward. Lines like this – “It should take you exactly four seconds to cross from here to that door. I’ll give you two.” – makes you sit up and take her seriously.
- She’s wise… “Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.” Bam.
- Holly has the ability to word things in such a way that put life in rather harsh perspective. For example, “It’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.”
- She understands that she is brazen and embraces it. In fact, she knows that “it’s useful being top bananas in the shock department.” How’s that for self aware! But she’s not shallow. She seems like it, but in truth, she’s just scared.
If I could live for 72 hours in someone else’s life, I would choose Holly Golightly. To be that unihnibited for even 72 hours would be liberating.
And then this happens. This brick wall of a speech by Paul Varjak that stops Holly (and the world, really) in her tracks.
You know what’s wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You’re chicken, you’ve got no guts. You’re afraid to stick out your chin and say, “Okay, life’s a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that’s the only chance anybody’s got for real happiness.” You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
Paul-Baby is right and the audience knows it and Holly knows it, but Holly is scared, terrified really, of what might happen to her – to her heart and to her very soul – if she lets herself fall in love. She wants to desperately to believe that Paul is just like all the other men she has known (the rats and the super-rats), but he’s not. Anyone who has been hurt by love knows how Holly feels.
Bottom Line: Perhaps on the surface, this movie seems like the silly story of a silly girl, but it’s so much more than that. It’s the story of someone who has been hurt by life and love. It’s the story of how that person runs from life and love because she just doesn’t know how to cope. And finally, it’s the story of how that damaged person learns to take responsibility for her life and live (and love) again.
If you haven’t given Holly a chance to melt your heart, do it! 40+ movies down! Next up? The ever-classic Breakfast Club.
So this is actually 740+ words. Sorry about that.
The Movie Marathon 
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