Keanu Reeves Week: Parenthood (1989)

2 months ago

LIFE IS WHAT HAPPENS TO YOU WHILE YOU’RE BUSY MAKING OTHER PLANS.

by Brianna Ashby

I sat on the toilet for at least ten minutes, crossing and uncrossing my eyes, trying to make sure that the faint pink line that had appeared in the window wasn’t a figment of my imagination, or an optical illusion, or some strange shard of refracted pinkness that was magically hovering just over that particular spot. I put the stick on the edge of the tub and watched as the line grew darker and more definite and my heartbeat grew louder and more deafening and I think I said something like, Holy Shit. I left the urine soaked harbinger of change where it lay and walked into the kitchen on legs that felt like petrified wood, and even though the look on my face very clearly said it all, I had to force the words out so I could begin to believe them. After a few minutes of Are you sure? I’m sure. How sure? Four tests sure. Holy Shit, the shock began to soften. We walked the fifteen paces from the stove to the couch hand in hand, and sat, our fingers intertwined and resting atop my unsuspecting belly, the air around us imperceptibly vibrating like a cloud of hummingbirds.

We’re having a baby.

By nature I am a worrier, a perfectionist, and a hypothetical soothsayer; a mild neurotic who thinks she can ordain anything that could possibly happen at any time in the future. (I also find planning ahead tremendously advantageous, which coupled with the aforementioned traits, makes me a real tour de force among obsessives.) So, naturally, the second I saw the fuzzy pink apparition of a line start to appear on my fourth home pregnancy test, my mind took off in all directions. Having children lends itself quite freely to lying awake at night sick over the pitiful state of the world, the oppressive cost of higher education, and whether or not the paint in your window sashes has been tested for lead, but these superficial worries are nothing compared to the deep intestine wringing fantods that only come with one late night thought.

Am I a good parent?

Shouldering the responsibility of growing and raising a well-adjusted child with all ten fingers and ten toes is staggering, and even the smallest hiccup in the process can feel like the most epic failure. Parents tend to take everything personally, from the mundane to the earth shattering. A toddler’s distaste for spinach or a teenager’s rebellion, those things are the stuff of sitcoms and laundry detergent commercials, and yet, they still resonate as failures, no matter how hilariously insignificant. Any imperfections in our children magnify our own, and so it becomes that in the pursuit of the best life for our kids, we set lofty goals and hold the unrealistic expectation that the universe has not only signed off on our plans, that it’s going to help us along. If you’ve had any dealings with the universe, you’d know that this is not the case.

Watching the trials and tribulations of the Buckman family unfold on film is an exercise in humility for those of us trying to raise our kids so that they don’t become serial killers, but it’s not so child-centric that it becomes irrelevant to everyone else. We all have people in our lives whose function or dysfunction have helped mold us into the humans that we are, and whose both obvious, and poorly disguised, neuroses become fodder for ribald holiday jesting and sessions with our therapists. The Buckman children are all products of their upbringing, the sons and daughters of a hard-drinking abrasive father (Jason Robards) and a quiet mostly subservient mother (Eileen Ryan).

Gil (Steve Martin) is an obsessive perfectionist so hell bent on not repeating the same mistakes his father made with him that he would go to nearly any lengths to be seen as a hero to his children, to the detriment of his own personal and career aspirations. Helen (Dianne Wiest) is an embittered divorcée whose well of distrust toward men runs deep, and whose clear unhappiness and resentment has driven her son into virtual silence and her daughter to blatant rebellion. Susan (Harley Kozak) was something of a free wheeling wild child until she settled down with Nathan, whose fastidiousness and controlling nature seemed like the answer to her aimlessness. Once she felt grounded, and now she just feels stifled. Larry (Tom Hulce) is your run-of-the-mill no-goodnik; the long haired, leather-clad baby of the family, Larry shows up after a ten year absence with a chip on his shoulder, a serious gambling problem and an illegitimate son. The one thing that they all have in common is that they want to do right by their parents, and do right as parents, both of which are a struggle, but mostly against themselves.

When Gil and his wife Karen are faced with the reality that their eldest son is struggling with emotional problems that will effectually bar him from public, “normal,” school, their immediate reaction is complete denial. People tend to react poorly to bad news, and people who depend on a tenuous façade of perfection to hold it together naturally pretend that whatever they’ve just heard is somehow a terrible mistake. It is infinitely easier to live in a fantasy world than admit that your reality is flawed, so we shift the blame (for lack of a better term) to avoid shouldering any responsibility for what went wrong.

Meanwhile, as Gil is over-zealously coaching little league and throwing the full weight of his desperation into positive affirmations, Susan is watching with increasing dismay while Nathan (Rick Moranis) drills their adorable chubby-cheeked three-year-old daughter with flashcards to prepare her for the SATs. Nathan’s rather terrifying hyper-involved parenting has made their child into a tiny robot who has no idea why a child her age would twirl around and around in circles until they fell down, and his unrelenting pursuit of a tangential Nobel Prize win has left Susan out in the cold. Still, their children don’t have problems. They don’t have problems. Other people have problems. Helen has problems.

From the outside, it would appear that Helen, still reeling from the split with her husband, has her hands full with two unruly and undisciplined children that couldn’t give two shits about anything that their mother has to say. The other Buckmans take pity Helen and her kids, seeing them as casualties of our ruthless modern times, but secretly, I’m sure they’re all relieved that this textbook case of familial dysfunction diverts attention from their own equally dubious issues.

Garry (Joaquin Phoenix, known as “Leaf Phoenix” in 1989) is frightfully introverted, sullen, secretive, and unresponsive, having retreated inward since his father’s unceremonious abandonment, and Julie (Martha Plimpton) is torturing her mother with standard teenage fare: yelling, slamming doors, acting out, and dating boys that Helen doesn’t approve of, especially “that Tod” (Keanu Reeves). To spite her mother, Julie runs off with Tod, proclaiming that they’re in love! she needs him!, and all of the motherly reproaches in the world couldn’t tear them apart. Tod is a breath of fresh air in what becomes a pretty depressing domestic clusterfuck. Although he’s not terribly bright, Tod is charming, adorable, and wholly uncomplicated. Until he and Julie end up husband and wife, that is.

Bruised, but not crippled, by the news that her baby girl has married “that Tod,” Helen digs in her heels and allows the newlyweds to live under her roof, and slowly allows Tod into her life. Goofy, approachable, and most importantly, male, Tod is the only person able to penetrate Garry’s defenses, having come from a place where he learned early on that “they’ll let any asshole be a father.” Seeing Tod’s ease in dealing with her children, and the ease with which he found himself a place in her family, Helen stops trying so hard to force herself into Gary and Julie’s lives, and realizes that sometimes, just being there is enough.

It’s easy to get sucked into a sort of vortex after a traumatic event, or an extended run of feeling impotent, or stagnant, or unappreciated, or what have you, and it’s safe to say that the Buckmans are all swirling around right in the middle of it, totally unable to see a way out. Tod’s introduction into the whole mess provides some desperately needed objectivity, and a shot of hope that catalyzes a series of crucial changes in Helen, and Gary and Julie, and more indirectly, in the rest of the Buckman siblings, who finally begin to own up to their shortcomings as parents, and as people just trying to get along.

Realizing they all have to help themselves before they can truly help their children, Helen and Gil and Susan and the rest start facing their fears head on, each small act of emotional bravery helping to pull them out of the mess they were wallowing in. Admittedly, a shotgun wedding between two clueless teenagers is far from ideal, but it serves as a strong example that sometimes imperfect and perfect are one in the same.

What Tod has going for him more than anything else is his simplicity, which is not to be confused with stupidity. He’s young, and brash, and doesn’t know what he wants, but he knows that he loves Julie, and he has the ability to filter out the minutia and focus on what is really important that comes with unfettered youth. As adults, we’re burdened with the supplementary fear of repeating the past, as well as the fear of the future, and both can be paralyzing. When we’re young, our frame of reference is smaller, and the future is more exciting than daunting, so we’re far more willing to dive into our lives without the hindrance of preconception. We get lost in all of the analysis and over-analysis and introspection and worry, and we have so much wrapped up in the idea of leading a “successful” life, that we tend to miss the fact that sometimes things are what they are and that’s exactly what they need to be.

Parents, as a rule, want to give their kids whatever they want, to give them the gifts and wisdom that will allow them to lead peerlessly wonderful lives, and often we end up burdening them (and ourselves) with our good intentions. We try to guide our children down the “right” path instead of letting them be what they’re going to be, especially if they’re going to turn out anything like us. Everyone has their own set of insecurities, and somehow, even the idea of becoming a mother or a father tends to exacerbate them a million fold, and this self-loathing (mild or otherwise) blinds us to the fact that all we can do is our best, and that our best is good enough. We have to be good to ourselves before we can be good to anyone else, and that means giving ourselves a break. Everyone deserves to be happy, even us, as adults, and as parents, and part of that comes from letting go of our fear of failure and accepting that life is a rollercoaster, not a merry-go-round, as grandma would say. Our children will find happiness in their own time and on their own terms and all we can do is give them a lantern, or a Tod, to help light the way. The path is up to them.

Brianna Ashby is the surprisingly well-rested mother of an 18 month old who, since her daughter’s birth, has finally learned to stop worrying and love the bedlam.