Captivated By A Classic

A week or so ago I found myself watching the movie, Lassie Come Home. I had no idea why.

The movie was filmed in 1943. Elizabeth Taylor, who played Priscilla was ten years old and Roddy McDowell, playing Joe Carraclough, owner of the collie, Lassie, was fourteen.

I case you don't remember, the story goes like this:

Set in Yorkshire, England, the Carraclough family is hit by hard times and forced to sell their collie, Lassie, to the Duke of Rudling who has always admired her. Young Joe Carraclough grieves the loss of his companion. The Duke takes Lassie to his home in Scotland, hundreds of miles away. There, his granddaughter senses the dog's unhappiness and arranges her escape. Lassie sets off for a long trek to her Yorkshire home and the boy who loves her. Along the way she faces many perils, but also meets kind people who offer her assistance and comfort. By the end, when Joe has given up hope of ever seeing Lassie again, the weary Lassie returns and is joyfully reunited with the boy she loves.

The story of a dog's journey home: her determination, the trials along the way and the helpers. I'm a sucker for the hero's journey, and this story has all the elements of a classic mythological tale, as in The Hero's Journey, by Joseph Campbell. But this time the hero is a dog.

When a ferocious black dog attacks a rain-soaked, half-starved Lassie, I was relieved that the worst of the fight was filmed as hidden behind some bushes. At the end we see the black assailant, its face streaming with blood, whining and running away.

The owners of the black dog, a pair of sheep men, decide not to shoot Lassie--seen as a possible sheep predator-- because they grudgingly admire her spirit in the battle.

"That collie is going somewhere," muses the tall, rugged sheep owner with a half smile, as he shoulders his gun.

Right. We know that, don't we? But still . . . the sheepman's recognition of the dog/hero is satisfying.

Another part I loved was the old couple in their cozy cottage hearing "something" in the night and, wrapped in shawls, running outside through the bucketing rain to find Lassie, nearly dead from wounds and starvation. Together they carry the dog into their cottage and lay her on the oval rag rug in front of the fire.The woman, her gray hair twisted into braids and wrapped around her head, kneels and spoons warm milk into Lassie's mouth.

Of course Lassie recovers. By then the old couple have fallen in love with Lassie and want to keep her. The husband scouts about the village and hears nothing about a lost dog. They are jubilant. "she is ours!"

But as they days pass, Lassie becomes increasingly restless, trying to squeeze out of narrow open windows, pawing at closed doors.

Sadly the woman tells her husband, "This dog has a purpose. She is going somewhere," the woman says. "We have to," she sobs,"let her go." And they do.

Freed and standing at the end of their path, Lassie turns her head back toward them--one last look-- as they stand in the doorway, their arms around each other. Then Lassie romps away.

Lassie and Joe are reunited. The Duke and Priscilla come by searching for his missing dog and, realizing that Lassie belongs with joe, they pretend not to recognize the collie.

The last scene in this movie is ideal. A beautiful, long-haired Elizabeth Taylor and a fresh-faced Roddy McDowell are riding their bicycles side by side, followed by a healthy, brushed-out Lassie with a slew of collie pups trailing her.

OK. So this is an old-fashioned, sentimental and predictable  movie. Nonetheless, Lassie's determination to pursue her goal of home--in spite of the unknowable and perilous distance--is heroic.

Her's is a goal of home and love. One way or another, isn't that everyone's story? Aren't there always obstacles? Some of them are gut-wrenching: poverty, cancer, divorce, loss of a child and post traumatic stress. And yet we persevere. We, with help from others along the way, pick ourselves up and putting one foot in front of another each day, we head, we hope, toward home.

Unlike Lasie, however, home for us on our hero's journey is not usually a physical place, but instead a place of renewed love and forgiveness, a peaceful home within our own hearts.