In the Weather Man, the director Gore Verbinski presents a middle-aged man’s mingled relationship with his father, ex-wife, children, and job in a special period of time.
In the first few scenes, the main role, Dave Spritz, lost his decent job with high payment. And the
longtime marriage problems with his wife emerged from being underwater. He was informed of his father’s cancer being in the last stage. Almost at the same time, his two young children, a son and a daughter, had the underage problems separately. In spite of all these hindrances mentioned above, Dave went all out to adapt to resolve them. On one hand, he applied to different kinds of jobs. On the other hand, Dave made efforts to reverse the bad combination with his family: he accompanied his father to the hospital, went to the psychological doctor with his wife, spared some time with his young children. However, those efforts seemed that they worked very little. Dave and his wife got divorced, and the two children were given to their mother by law. Very soon, the woman got married, which struck him a great deal. Whatsoever, Dave recovered from the bitter reality bit by bit through his never-ending pursuit and perseverance. In the end, he managed to save himself from these problems and to achieve social reputation.
What impressed me most in this movie was the relationship between parents and their underage children, since we (the two children and I) were almost at the same age and I could easily feel as the same way as the minors of their age. At the beginning, I noticed one detail. When the daughter Shelly got ?100 from her father, she paid for cigarettes. Judged by her proficient actions, I saw a girl’s depravation as a result of family problems.
As a girl of Shelly’s age, it was too young to bring herself a release from the irrecoverable painfulness caused by her unconcerned parents. “Family is the harbor of the heart.” But when a house became the first scene of parents’ frequent wars, people would lose earthly joys, and children always were the victims. They not only suffered from the body, but also from the spirit. There was another detail that I paid much attention to. Dave failed to buy what his wife had told, after returning they quarreled with each other violently. On hearing these, the two young children left the table at once. The son went to watch TV, and he kept turning up the TV; meanwhile, the daughter laid in bed with her ears covered, tears rolling down from her face. We always hear people say:” Children are guiltless. ” But why children always had to undertake the worst result from family wars? Being unable to converse the serious family problems, the girl, Shelly, learnt to smoke. Worse still, her brother began to take drugs and was sued for stealing. These were the young children’s childish actions to fight against the severe situation which they had to confront with. They wanted to solve all these problems, and most importantly, they would like to win their parents’ attention and get their cares. As a spectator, I could say they were babyish, and I could say they were immaterial, but as a matter of fact, they had got all sympathizes of mine. If you asked me who was to blame, undoubtedly, I would condemn the parents. It was their indifference that led to the young children’s crime. They set a bad example when they were having a fierce quarrel over trivial things.
Because of these repetitions, they failed to create an environment filled with love and care, respect and tolerance. This was an essential factor for young men’s growth and development. To my delight, the parents realized their faults at a relatively early stage, “This shit life… we must chuck some things. We must chuck them… in this shit life. There’s always looking after. You have time.” and they did all means to make up for their children. “Better later than never.” At first, what they had done seemed to be useless, but they didn’t give up and continued to do many practical things to help their children. Dave took his daughter to the shooting range, joined in the kangaroo jump with her, and accompanied her to buy suitable clothes. What’s more, his beating to the bad man who treated his son unjustly satisfied me greatly. Gradually, all these he had done changed my earlier point of view. Eventually, in my eyes, he had turned a qualified and responsible father. Of course, the mother’s efforts to take care of her two children deserved my respect.
The movie ended with Dave’s success in his career. What I have learnt from this movie is that love means responsibility. We should love our family members, love our world, love our life, in other words, we should be responsible to what we love.