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'No way that's the end!' 6-year-old Luke said, after Snow White's funeral.
The scene couldn’t be more somber. Snow White, apparently dead, though still perfectly beautiful, lies on a bed, surrounded by her only friends at an intimate funeral. As organ music warbles in the country cabin, pearly tears roll down the cheeks of the seven dwarves, like the wax dripping down the candles in the foreground. Even Grumpy is overcome, sobbing into his hands as he turns from our view. The animals, who had pranced at Snow White’s feet earlier in the film, now peer in from the window, shut out, in the rain. Not a word is spoken. Fade to black.
“No way that’s the end!” my 6-year-old son, Luke, said in disbelief, as he watched the movie for the first time recently.
He was right, of course: Prince Charming arrives!
And thus, another generation had discovered the power of the early Disney movies. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was originally released Dec. 21, 1937, an astounding 87 years ago.
Another night, it was my children’s first watch of “The Jungle Book,” which was released 30 years later, in 1967.
It’s full of serious themes: belonging and isolation, the struggle against nature, the struggle within.
Luke was through with the heaviness, though. When I asked him about his favorite part of the movie, it was an easy choice: “The Bare Necessities,” the comic relief of Baloo teaching Mowgli how to live, through jazz.
I was amused to think that “The Jungle Book” was released 13 years before I was born; therefore, to me, it’s always been ancient history. By that same logic and timespan, however, a movie like “Madagascar” would be ancient history to Luke, since it was released in 2005, or 13 years before he was born.
As Luke drifted off to sleep under his blanket, the moonlight striping his little frame through the blinds, I imagined my own father looking at me as a little child, after I first experienced “The Jungle Book,” a movie that didn’t exist when he was a child.
Somehow, some movies both stop time and also speed it along, turning the hearts of the children to their fathers, the hearts of the fathers to their children, as we turn out the lights and also exclaim, “No way that’s the end!”