Stand By Me: A Nostalgic Tribute to Adolescence review
Tom Elce writes about his favourite film Rob Reiner's 1986 film Stand by me
There were no dead bodies in my childhood but there were those days in which friendships were defined, the comraderie felt between myself and my friends essentially a mighty bond unbroken by the bullies and the parents that came along in disruption of it. There were also those eternally sunny summers that never seem to exist in the years that follow, in which cornfields existed to play games in to the chagrin of a farmer or two, the neighbouring woodlands housed animals scarcely seen in the town that stood only a couple hundred yards from it (border to border) and we'd find adventure in what to adults are mundane and maybe pointless.
There's an innocence to such a childhood that wilts and dissipates as grow older, as do friends move away and disappear from our lives to be replaced by new ones. Such innocence is already being lost for the kids in "Stand By Me," which is a powerful, emotional, sentimental drama ripe to be eaten up by adults who haven't necessarily forgotten what it's like to be a kid.
Helmed by Rob Reiner in a career best directorial outing and adapting from Stephen King's novella "The Body," "Stand By Me" is a nostalgic tribute to adolescent years enjoyed by King himself and countless others that never hits a false note in it's relentless sentimentality and portrayal of a friend dynamic about to enter into the most definitive time of childhood. The bond between Gordie Lachance (Wil Wheaton), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), Corey Feldman (Teddy Duchamp) and Vern Tessio (Jerry O'Connell) is unbreakable for the time being but doomed to be lost as each of them enters adulthood. Such happens in one fell swoop over the course of a weekend in which they journey along traintracks, through woodlands and along traintracks again to see a dead body Vern heard his brother Billy (Casey Siemaszko) talking about.
Their trip winds up being a montage of your typical childhood moments. Stories exchanged over campfires and a million questions (often rhetorical) asked over it to. Daredevil antics of one halted by another in the style of "grow-up" lecture. Heart to hearts in which misunderstandings between the foursome are either reconciled, understood or opened up anew. And more, all with director Reiner not succumbing to artificiality or false-ringing sentiment as he analyses the friends and shares their sorrow for the way in which a crucial stage of their lives are coming to end. Nor does he paint in broad strokes in the introduction of the obligatory bully in Ace Merrill (Kiefer Sutherland), whose propensity for ignorance and intimidation serves to magnify the bond shared between Gordie and company when his presence calls for them to stand up and be counted.
As with all masterworks of cinema, there come the hugely memorable scenes. These include the climactic scene in which Gordie refuses to back down from a knife-touting Ace, a leech sequence half hysterical and half squirm-enducing, the discovery of the missing boy's body and also a closing scene in which River Phoenix's Chris Chambers walks into the distance and slowly fades away, given poignancy by the actor's untimely death seven years later on Halloween 1993.
All is scripted with what can be assumed a magical pen by Raynold Gideon and a charmed word processor by source author Stephen King. Turning in the required level of performance necessary for "Stand By Me" to be one of the truly faultless coming-of-age films are the young cast, with Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell turning in top-notch performances that give their friendship more of the authenticity already injected by the screenwriting and the direction. As the sociopathic Ace, Kiefer Sutherland makes a sizeable impression as the chosen antagonist of the piece.
Classic American movie-making that comfortably ranks alongside the very best, "Stand By Me" doesn't suffer by being a part of a filmic subgenre whose other masterpieces are few and far between. Making a coming-of-age movie, there is a tendency to go for the contrived and cliched in mimickry of childhood nostalgia. As such, few of them feel as authentic and genuine as they originally intend to be. Whereas "Stand By Me" goes direct to the heart in it's appreciation of situations that kids truly find themselves in albeit with one unlikely one thrown into the mix to lend a plot. "Stand By Me" is probably the best King adaptation of all and likely the best coming-of-age flick to boot. Because of all this, it finds it's way into my favourite five.
