FROM THE ARCHIVES (11/2021): 1941, FOR JII-JII

 

We laid my father-in-law to rest three years ago this month, and I am reminded of something that happened just a few months before we lost him. Jii-Jii was a US World War II veteran *and* an internment camp survivor (think on that one for a bit), so I’d always approached showing him one of my favorite movies, 1941, with understandable trepidation. It’s not a movie that denigrates the Japanese, even as it satirizes and depicts some of the ways that the Japanese (the army, anyway) were denigrated by patriotic Americans at the time. Even so, I wasn’t sure how he would respond, or if he’d even be interested in seeing it. Well, a few months ago, when he was still feeling well enough, we had both Mommy and Daddy over to the house and I felt like the time was finally right. So we fired up my 1941 Blu-ray, and darned if they didn’t both love it. On the ride home he just kept saying, “Boy, that was one crazy movie!” and laughing at my stories of the multiple times I’d seen it and how, no matter how low I am at any given moment, it always cheers me up, gives me hope, makes me look at the world a little differently. It’s entirely probable that 1941 was the last movie Jii-Jii ever saw, and given that it made him laugh so much I couldn’t be happier that it was.

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