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Getting
Up and Going Home
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Getting Up and Going Home is an example of a kind of film that one hears too little about – the full-blown male weepie for the Sensitive New Age Guy. Middle-aged Jack (Tom Skerritt) is a lost but lovely man surrounded by an embarrassment of riches: at every turn brilliant, artistic, career-minded women are throwing themselves at him and offering the Deep Relationship of a lifetime. What's a guy to do? – by the looks of it, dream, mope, dither, have a lot of sex, and bond a lot with an ageing, pathos-inducing dog. This is rather like a maudlin Blake Edwards movie about male mid-life crisis, but drained of the saving grace of humour. Here, it's all soulful, sorrowful looks, soft-focus flashbacks and Eric Satie music. Characters earnestly debate the psychological differences between men and women, the place of dependence and fidelity in marriage, the attainment of spirituality and contentment. It's not much of a movie, but anyone interested in the changing media images of masculinity will be irresistibly drawn to it. © Adrian Martin September 1993 |
