Topic The Last Best Year from the General Chit-Chat forum.
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| Author | Topic: The Last Best Year |
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Anonymous
Anonymous Poster
From Internet Network:
81.75.132.x | posted: 7/31/2004 at 1:09:07 PM ET
Was it a true story?
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 7/31/2004 at 2:16:44 PM ET
I don't think so, although Mary Tyler Moore's character was based on the script writer's wife. Here's an excerpt from an article that was in the Chicago Tribune when it was first broadcast:
"The script, written by David Rintels, is an almost autobiographical treatise on the career of his wife, clinical psychologist Victoria Riskin, the daughter of Hollywood screenwriter Robert Riskin who wrote scripts for such early movies as "Mr Deeds Goes to Town," It Happened One Night" and "Lost Horizon." In a network release, she said his death, when she was a child, left her with a profound loss, not unlike the one suffered by Wendy Allen."
There's nothing in the article indicating that there was ever a real-life Jane Murray.
|  Surfergal1013
Registered User
Registered:
3/22/2004
From:
Long Island | posted: 7/31/2004 at 2:40:10 PM ET
I loved that movie... are my morals wrong for saying that?
Caty
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 7/31/2004 at 9:56:10 PM ET
I love it too, so much so that I feel protective when it's criticized. Interesting what you say about morals. I've always found the film's subtext to be profoundly affirmative of Catholicism and its moral beliefs. It's deeply respectful of priests and nuns, and without ever mentioning the word "abortion," its viewpoint is very obviously and implicitly one that might go by the term 'pro-life' (for better or worse). It could almost have been produced by the Catholic Church, although, of course, it wasn't. That's not necessarily good or necessarily bad, it's just something that I've observed. As someone raised Catholic, but not practicing for many years, my position is total ambivalence. However, although I interpreted the film as very pro-Catholic, Bernadette apparently did not. In the article I quoted above, they also quote Bernadette this way:
"Peters, herself a Catholic, said she believes some of Jane's problems were religiously induced, and that their resultant stress contributed to her fatal illness. "Catholic guilt is incredible," Peters said. "I'm not one to really follow manmade rules; I think religion comes from inside of you, but Jane followed the rules of guilt. She did the worst thing in her life when she got pregnant and she couldn't tell anybody. She gave up her son and it made her feel awful. Because she feels unloved and lost in the world, she wonders if she has made her son feel the same way--unloved, pushed aside. Did he think she didn't love him? Was he abused? I discussed this with a psychologist and she said definitely, someone who suppresses feelings like that is a set-up for cancer."
So perhaps it's a critique of some aspects of The Catholic Church, and an affirmation of others. Or maybe I'm just reading more into it than is really there. Who knows?
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