"The hope and defiance that weaves through it like a tapestry" : Celebrating the The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music will be celebrating its 60th birthday on Sunday - well, the anniversary of its American release anyway. We have to wait until March 29th for its UK one, but who’s counting?

Looking around at the world, it seems like now might be the perfect time to re-watch this phenomenal piece of art.

It is a film that has always gives me hope.

Childhood memories...

I watched this film with my mum when I was very young.

So young, in fact, that I can’t actually remember the first time I saw it. It just feels like I’ve know every word, every song, every beautiful moment inside and out for my whole life.

It’s a bit like John Hannah in the movie Sliding Doors, when he’s talking about how people are just born knowing all Beatle song,. I was born knowing the Sound of Music.

When I was a child, the film was warm, and pretty, and colourful. Julie Andrews sort of reminds me of my mum, and that made the film somewhat of a safety net. Something that wrapped itself around me when I needed it.

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There was so much about the film that I didn’t understand, or didn’t appreciate then. So much that I cling to now, but that didn’t mean I loved it any less.

There are lots of films we can watch as children that don’t stand the test of time, that can hold a spark of nostalgia, but nothing else of merit. This film, however, got better every time I watched it.

Aging like fine wine

I suppose I should start with the Captain himself. The joy of watching this film while you’re a bit older, is being able to appreciate how dashing Christopher Plummer is.

A story of an older man marrying his nanny, who was a nun hired to take care of his seven children, could come off as rather problematic, based on a true story or not.

But with the beautiful, and appropriately aged 29-year-old Andrews, and the frankly heroic looking 35-year-old Plummer (with fake grey streaks in his hair to age him up a bit) any possible issues are removed. There is nothing more natural in the world that these two people on screen falling in love.

Revisiting this film time and time again, I appreciated it’s very essence. The hope and defiance that weaves through it like a tapestry.

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The music, some of the most beautiful and iconic pieces ever written, serenade the first half of the film with humour and delight as the characters dance their way around sunny Austria. The dark cloud in the background is reduced at the start to small, broken moments - brief telegrams, sassy asides at parties... Captain Von Trapp, for all his faults, keeping the cruel world at bay and away from his children. Instead we see the story arch of the family, the children learning to love Maria, the Captain learning how to show his children love, and falling head over heels for Maria in the process.

Then the second half hits, and the music stops.

After the Anschluss, when the Nazi’s invaded Austria, there are no new songs. No more dancing in the hills. The dark cloud has covered that beautiful Vienna sunlight and with it, the bright, young voices that filled the air cease.

The only song in the second half, in Nazi occupied Austria, is a medley of all the songs from the first half, sang by the Von Trapp’s as part of their elaborate escape out of the country.

Music and song used in defiance - not signalling joy, but strength and rebellion, and finally, with the singing of Edelweiss, hope.

A film for the ages

There is no time like right this very moment to revisit this masterpiece, or if you haven’t seen it yet, to enter that world for the first time.

Its funny, and desperately romantic and light and sunny, and then, all of a sudden, it is strength and rebellion. It’s doing the right thing.

When Captain Von Trapp is called up to join the Nazis, he doesn’t do what is easy. He doesn’t comply with their wishes. He takes the hardest route because it was the right thing to do.

Because doing the right thing always matters.