I just watched a wonderful film, more than 20 years old, but hey– I had never seen it. Jean de Florette, starring Yves Montand, Gérard Depardieu, and Daniel Auteuil, based on a novel of the same title by Marcel Pagnol. I’ll probably read the book sometime.
The movie is about water. Water we sometimes hold back from each other because we fear there is not enough to go around, or because we worry too much about whose water it is.. It’s about the scarcity mentality, human pride, and devastating selfishness.. the error of thinking that there isn’t enough to go around, when in reality, there always will be, and to spare.
I can’t spoil the plot for you. It’s too good and you’ve got to see it for yourself, but the take-away for me was: give, give, give. Just like the tune we sing with the children in primary: Give, said the little stream as it scurried down the hill. I’m small I know, but wherever I go, the grass grows greener still… [oddly, the little tune is in D Major and the film’s principal theme, if I’m not mistaken, was in d minor]
It makes me remember a story I once heard of an old woman in Siberia. The town she lived in was suffering from a terrible, cold winter and all the pipes in town were slowly freezing over. People were storing all the water they could and carefully rationing it so they could survive the winter. One by one, families around town ran out of water. But this old lady, she never ran out. Why? Because she was always filling up buckets and giving them to others. The running water kept the pipes from freezing over. She gave and there was. A great lesson there.
So go watch the movie. Maybe in a few months it will show up on iTunes Movie Rentals, since it’s an MGM release!
Poplar Lane Arts 