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53 of 58 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A father and son watch movies together. But that's just the plot, not the point., May 1, 2008
This review is from: The Film Club: A Memoir (Hardcover)
His grades started dropping in the ninth grade. In the tenth, they toppled. He switched to a private school. No difference. Jesse Gilmour just didn't give a damn.
His father --- David Gilmour, a well-known Canadian novelist --- was unhinged. At this rate, Jesse wouldn't be going to college. At this rate, Jesse would be flipping burgers at minimum wage --- if he didn't completely fall apart.
Dad had to intervene. And he did. He had been a movie critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. His son liked movies. On that frail connection, he proposed that Jesse drop out of school and watch three movies a week. Dad's choice. Just the two of them.
The film club began with Truffaut's "400 Blows". European. Arty. Certain to bore the kid. But important because Truffaut was "a high school dropout, a draft dodger, a small-time thief." They watch. They talk. You're interested.
Then Rebecca Ng enters the story. She's mature, mysterious, unspeakably hot. Jesse's smitten. David's worried. Seeing Rebecca and Jesse together was "like watching him get into a very expensive car. I could smell the new leather from here."
Girls and movies make for a more complicated story. Now add another element: David's writing career. Suddenly it's going about as well as Jesse's schooling. It looks as if there are two dropouts in the Gilmour residence.
But David perseveres with the film club. In the course of the screenings, he serves up terrific tidbits. Did you know Alfred Hitchcock built a second set of stairs so Ingrid Bergman's long walk at the end of "Notorious" is doubly tense? That Stephen King didn't like the film of "The Shining" and had no affection at all for its director, Stanley Kubrick? That director William Friedkin got a great performance by a priest in "The Exorcist" by asking the guy if he trusted him --- and then slapping him in the face?
Yes, you learn lots of cool trivia from "The Film Club", but that's not the big takeaway. This easily digested memoir is about something much bigger than film --- it's about people, and how we see them, and how we treat them.
There are, if you think that way, "good kids" and "bad kids". And there are "responsible parents" and "permissive parents". You can put those grids over relationships and make some easy, smug judgments. And I'll bet, if you're that sort of reader, even this brief description of "The Film Club" is enough to lead you to conclude that Jesse's a bit of a loser and Dad's a bit of a flake.
If you're that kind of reader --- what am I saying? I'm that kind of reader! I judge like mad! And of course I feel superior to this father-and-son team. Why not: I loved school. And as a stepfather and now a father, the kids who have lived with me have also loved to learn --- even in school.
So if you're that kind of reader --- if, like me, you think of yourself as a rebel, but you don't color too far outside the lines --- this is a very subversive memoir. Three years in two lives. Father and son really getting to know one another. Boundaries broken. Generalizations shattered --- David and Jesse's first, but yours most of all.
Don't think this is a small book just because it's short (217 pages) and intimate. David Gilmour took a chance. A big chance --- few parents would tell their teenaged kid he/she doesn't have to go to school. To ask "Did Jesse's life work out?" is to reduce this complex story to a Hollywood movie plot. It did and it didn't. It's real life, not a movie.
On the other hand, "The Film Club" does have a pretty great ending.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly dull, August 3, 2009
The premise of this book intrigued me. When the school system fails to engage his son, Jesse, a father allows the boy to drop out, and attempts to teach him about life through film. And when the book stuck to that plotline, it was actually pretty engaging; I enjoyed the descriptions of many classic movies, and Gilmour writes about them with the passion and knowledge of a film critic, yet with language accessible to the average person. However, this kind of thing obviously can't fill the whole book, so the author pads it out with random things that feel like scenes from the life of your next-door neighbor. Not in the good, relatable, "I feel like the author's a personal friend" way, mind you. More like an acquaintance who you run into in the grocery store and delays you for 20 minutes chatting about basically nothing, while you desperately try to end the conversation. So in that spirit, we get some rather whiny and self-pitying talk about the author's difficulties finding employment; an unintentionally hilarious account of Jesse's career as a "white rapper", which Gilmour relates with a tone of dead seriousness and even pride; and most of all long, excruciatingly dull tales of Jesse's relationships with various girlfriends, none of them particularly remarkable. In fact, these sections even made me a tiny bit uncomfortable; I'm no expert on father-son relationships, but is it really normal for a dad to take such an interest in his son's love life? It's almost like he's living vicariously through Jesse. Even the sections on film begin to wear over time, as Gilmour starts name-dropping the famous people he's met and dispensing his "expert" opinions ("Richard Gere would do better to focus on his acting and stop trying to sound so smart all the time," he opines). Most annoying is how the author gives Jesse more or less a free pass on all kinds of behavior--trying cocaine, nearly getting himself killed in Cuba, taking a job scamming people--while continuing to insist, without any sort of irony, that his son is a bright and gifted boy. I read all the way to the end, hoping to learn about the "shocking decision" of Jesse's that's advertised on the book's cover. SPOILER ALERT--it's no big deal, the kid just decides to--gasp--finally get his diploma and go on to college. A fine choice, but not surprising or even interesting. And that sentence pretty much sums up the book, too; it reads as a man's attempt to glorify and give meaning to events that happen every day, to all kinds of people. And none of them felt the need to write a book about it.
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "A FATHER & SON MULTI-LEVEL COMING OF AGE STORY.", May 9, 2008
This review is from: The Film Club: A Memoir (Hardcover)
Because my Father was the greatest Father in the world I always wanted to be a Father, and then I was blessed with the greatest son. Since the two roles in my life; son, when my Dad was alive, and Father now, are so special to me, I'm always enthusiastically interested in any literature regarding the magical union of Father and Son. The author of this book David Gilmour has been among other things the national film critic for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and has written six novels. David was confronted with a personal and family crisis when his fifteen-year-old son Jesse was failing every subject in school. Jesse had no real desire to continue going to school so David had to make a gut wrenching decision... a decision that wasn't discussed in the "Being A Father" manual that you weren't given when your first child was born. David gave Jesse the freedom to quit school with one proviso: he had to watch three movies a week with his Dad, and his Dad chose the movies. Jesse gleefully accepted the deal. What the author wound up receiving was three years of indescribable time together that involved way more than just watching movies. The Father cleverly became a skillful teacher without standing up in the front of a classroom and announcing I am "THE TEACHER!" The teacher he became did not have a set curriculum that you would find in any institution of higher learning. The subject wasn't math, English or history... it was much more important! It was "LIFE". Though the author shared his lifetime love of movies with his son, the movie subjects were picked, and schedules changed, based on the curve balls being thrown at Father and son by a combination of destiny and fate.
This book is lovingly written and the reader shares the travails of a sixteen-year-old dropout with no job, girl problems, and a Father trying to feel his way blindfolded, through a darkened twisting tunnel, in an attempt to come out on the other end with a boy who becomes a man, and a loving Father/son relationship still intact. The tools the Father uses are of course great movies renowned and obscure, ranging from "The Bicycle Thief" to "The Exorcist" to "Scarface" and beyond. He reaches into his past experiences as a movie critic to share inside info with his son, such as when he interviewed Dennis Hopper and asked him who his favorite actor was. "I thought he was going to say Marlon Brando. Everyone says Marlon Brando. But he didn't. he said James Dean. You know what else he said? He said the best piece of acting he'd ever seen in his life was that scene with James Dean (in "Giant") when he takes his leave, he stops by the door, fiddling with a long piece of rope, like he's practicing a rodeo trick... he makes a movement with his hand, like he's sweeping snow off a desk. It's like he's saying "F" you to the business guys."
As important as the education by film, are the situations that force the Father to open up his own past, involving hurt and disappointments with women. As a parent, the reader feels the pain of indecision in a place that only one's child can penetrate to, as the Father decides what to share from his inner vault. The author makes it clear that at this stage of his son's life it's more important to be a Father than a friend. When Jesse starts drinking too much the author turns to literature and tells his son about Malcolm Lowry, a rich boy who leaves England and drinks his way around the world, settling in Mexico and writes a great novel about drinking, "Under The Volcano", and almost drives himself insane in the process. "I told Jesse, to imagine how many young men your age have gotten drunk and looked in the mirror and thought they saw Malcolm Lowry looking back at them. How many young men thought they were doing something more important, more poetic than just getting really smashed. I read Jesse a passage from the novel to show him why. "AND THIS IS HOW I SOMETIMES THINK OF MYSELF, LOWRY WROTE, AS A GREAT EXPLORER WHO HAS DISCOVERED SOME EXTRAORDINARY LAND FROM WHICH HE CAN NEVER RETURN TO GIVE HIS KNOWLEDGE TO THE WORLD: BUT THE NAME OF THIS LAND IS HELL." "Jesus, Jesse said, slumping back into the couch. Do you think he meant it, that he really saw himself that way?" "I do."
From there the senior Gilmour segues to a documentary on "Under The Volcano": "Canadian filmmaker Donald Brittain's description of Lowry's incarceration in a New York insane asylum: "This was no longer the rich bourgeois world where one fell about on soft lawns. Here were things that kept on living despite the fact they were beyond repair." Wow! What a powerful literary lesson from Father to son about not over indulging, without coming across like the Father is the only person seeing these possible horrendous pitfalls. On a family trip to Cuba Jesse gets himself into a bad situation at a bar, and Dad saves the day. And it's time for another lesson from Dad on the streets of life, to add to the lessons from cinema and literature: "There are a couple of inviolate principles in the universe," I said, suddenly chatty (I was delighted to be where we were), One is that you never get anything worth getting from an "A" hole. Two is when a stranger comes toward you with his hand extended, he doesn't want to be your friend."
This terrific memoir may have movies as its home base, but the education and bonding of love between Father and son has no boundaries in this book and in life.
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