Greats of Yester-year: Pearl Harbor

Let me start by getting it out of the way: I know the two reasons this movie is hated upon -- their names are Michael Bay and Ben Affleck. I get it. You get it. We all get it.

I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to talk about this trailer and a personal connection to the material. I'm here to talk about imagery that settles into your minds' eye and doesn't ever let go. I'm here to talk about an amazing woman who, as well as I knew her, I barely knew.

What does all this have to do with the trailer to a bizarro Bruckheimer experiment into historical fiction starring the other half of Matt Damon's amazing career?

My grandmothers' name was Margaret. Marge. Grandma Marge, to me, my sister, and my two cousins. My memories of her consist largely of sitting in her living room with her and the family, watching television for hours and hours. Game shows in the early evenings. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. And then usually a violent movie after that. Well, violent by 80's standards. Cartoonish by todays.

Those foam, 3-D puzzles that were shaped like famous buildings collected dust around near every inch of her small three-bedroom home, yet I hardly ever saw her building one. The ancient brown carpet in the living room had a crease in it that I used to love to stand on. And there was always that smell that, though in hindsight may have been wood-rot or some kind of mold (the house was very old) always made me feel like I had stepped into a different world. The world that belonged exclusively to Grandma, and we were all just visitors. A select few outsiders that she chose to let in the door.

Her humor was vicious, but her smile when she made the joke was never, ever mean. Countless times I would do as I had been trained as a young boy, leaving her house with an over-the-shoulder "I love you, Grandma," to which she would always reply, "No, you don't." Never did she mean it, of course. Though to this day, I'm not sure if she was trying to teach me conviction or trying to build me a constitution that could respond to cynicism. Perhaps both.

Regardless, the visits were always a variation on the same cycle, which included food, minimal chit-chat, and that crease in the carpet.

But the TV. The TV was always on. I never saw it off.

Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger were staples of the television at Grandma Marge's. Maybe because they were tough. Maybe because they were so tough, they weren't quite real. Maybe because in some strange way, she had more in common with them then the Kathryn Hepburns of the world. Ironic considering that she so resembled a Hepburn in her youth. But her life was never so kind as to let her enjoy that.

In December, 1941, she was a beautiful young woman of 20, living in Hawai'i, existing in a curious life so different from what any of us can imagine. As a civilian working at the base at Pearl Harbor, she spent her days working around military men who flocked to her and begged her for dates, to which she got the sadistic pleasure of consistently letting them down, even though secretly, nothing made her stand up and take notice like a Marine. Arrogant, cocky things that they were. (It should be noted here that my Grandfather was a Marine).

On the morning of December 7, my grandmother awoke to the sounds of airplanes flying very close to the ground. A trip outside revealed a sky swarming with Japanese aircraft. Japanese Zeroes over an American naval base; planes so close to the ground that the expressions on the young pilots' faces could be seen.

My grandmother passed away 59 years later when I was a freshman in college. The childish boredom of my youth had turned into a growing interest in history, especially my family's history, but by the time I was of the age to appreciate what mattered, cancer had started its all-too-familiar damage, and communication was difficult, if not impossible. Combine that with being away during that first reckless year of college... you can fill in the rest.

I never really got to know the woman that I had watched so many hours of television with. Personally, anyway. She remains as present as ever in stories and anecdotes, usually involving her pulling tricks on my father and his siblings during weekly viewings of 'The Twilight Zone' that left them horrified and in need of new shorts.

But one of the few images she had shared with me as I passed from bored-youth to invested-young adult was of those Japanese pilots.

While I can't remember which happened first, this trailer for Pearl Harbor or Grandma passing away, I do know that the moment I saw it, all I could think about was her. The shot of the children on the baseball field, as the Japanese aircraft pass by, hovering what looks like ten feet off the ground. It was a picture drawn from my mind, based solely on her brief description of what she had seen that day.

Words are too indelicate to describe what it felt like to get this brief window into the woman that I had known and not really known for my entire life.

In the most unusual way, a piece of gimmicky advertising from a lowest-common-denominator producer had given me something that I could never have imagined. Perspective. Every conversation I'd ever had with my grandmother came into new light. Her every pause when telling a story. Every far-off look in her eye.

Perhaps that's why she liked those Bronson/Eastwood/Schwarzenegger movies so much. Maybe she'd just seen enough reality for a lifetime, and now merely required cartoons for tried-and-tested adults.

This trailer has long stood as an important piece of work for me. The music and imagery in it capture an epic sense of tragedy and loss, a vicious rape of freedom and pride, arguably not felt again until the second September of the last decade.

But mostly, whenever I see it, I am reminded of a fact I still believe today: that big things, little things, anything can be a window for you to gain a fresh perspective. And I remember how lucky I am that a little bit of that general childhood disinterest was forgiven for me, and I got to know an amazing woman just a tiny bit better.

Michael Bay can make as many Transformer 2's as he wants, and you can all hate him with as much hate as you can. I'll forever owe him at least a little bit.

Until next time.