![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/266\/2013\/02\/Try-to-Tell-the-Story.jpg\" "\\"Try")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe answer, in large part, is that the critic grew up in a home with an absent father who carried on a cross-town affair with a woman Thomson knew very little about. And Thomson suggests that he, in some way, may be to blame. \u201cMy father did not want children. And a time must have come when he made that clear,\u201d Thomson writes. But his mother, in her words, \u201ctricked him.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe went into the nursing home to have me,\u201d Thomson writes. \u201cThey were living at 10 Thirlmere, and that\u2019s where she took me afterwards. But my father was already gone. Just as he had said.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thomson\u2019s disappointment at the lack of two fully present parents is understandable, but his concerns go deeper. He fears that he will follow in his father\u2019s footsteps\u2014letting down, if not abandoning, those who would depend on him later in life, and never expressing his true feelings toward those whom he would love.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt times in my life I played with the notion\u2014the hope\u2014that my father had been someone else. \u2026 But this was a rough case to make in that I resembled my father in so many small, irritating ways.\u201d (11) And yet \u201cI never heard him say he loved me,\u201d Thomson remembers. \u201cIn all our time together he never made that incriminating statement.\u201d (18)<\/p>\n
Thomson\u2019s love of cinema manifested during his adolescence, and nothing would ever top that love. Certainly not church, which proved a weak competitor for a young man interested in vibrant, visual storytelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cinemas were immensely decorated, utterly beyond the limits of realism or the lifelike,\u201d Thomson writes. \u201cChurch paintings and stained-glass aspired to one gloomy message. But the d\u00e9cor in cinemas was crazed and extravagant, and perfect preparation for the films or the pictures. I never thought at the time that the messages of church and cinema were in competition. What chance did the churches have?\u201d (97)<\/p>\n
Still, Thomson\u2019s father looms large in the background, as does Thomson\u2019s struggle with his father\u2019s legacy. Two-thirds of the way through the book, a conflicted Thomson wants the reader to have \u201cno doubt\u201d that his father, who once punched him in the stomach as apparent retaliation for being called out as a liar by his son, had \u201ca certain love \u2026 for me,\u201d (166)\u2014even though Thomson\u2019s next memory is of \u201ca real physical fight for my life\u201d he had with his father. (167) Such impulses aren\u2019t mutually exclusive, but what comes through more than Thomson\u2019s desired impression that his father loved him is Thomson\u2019s own need to feel that fatherly love in this life.<\/p>\n
He never found that sort of acceptance from a Heavenly Father. When his girlfriend dumps him and \u201cslip[s] a small gold cross out from under her shirt,\u201d Thomson remembers that he \u201cfelt like Dracula being repulsed by one of his maidens, and she explained that she had promised herself to another boy, a fellow Roman Catholic. That was another club.\u201d (181)<\/p>\n
After Thomson settles into his professional calling, personal happiness proves elusive, then temporal. In a coda, Thomson accelerates the time frame of his memoir, letting us know that in 1976 his marriage \u201cbroke down (entirely because of my own behavior\u2014so you have fair reason to wonder how deeply my father had affected me).\u201d (211)<\/p>\n
Thomson concludes his book with what transpired when he showed the memoir\u2019s manuscript to his second wife\u2014outside confirmation that he was, in some ways, blind to the lasting negative effects of his father\u2019s behavior. \u201cShe said she liked it and she thought it was accurate in terms of what she had seen and observed,\u201d Thomson writes. \u201cBut she said I had cheated a bit: I had written the book of a person who felt happy and lucky because of life. Whereas, she said, quietly and kindly, I had been damaged by it all. And I know she\u2019s right, and I accept that in the telling I have neither explained it nor healed the damage.\u201d (213)<\/p>\n
Having experienced the rejection of his earthly father, and having rejected the greatest story ever told, Thomson concludes, bleakly, \u201cEvery one of us, for better or worse, is the center of our universe for a moment. And all we can do to signal our dumb longing to posterity is to leave a photograph and children or try to tell the story.\u201d (214)<\/p>\n
The legacy Thomson will leave is one of eloquent insight into films and filmmaking, as well as the many debates and conversations his writings have inspired and provoked over the years. His influence has been felt by many film lovers and film makers, yet even that significant contribution to future generations will be, by his own admission, fleeting.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Review of Try to Tell the Story by David Thomson By CHRISTIAN HAMAKER The worldview of most well-known movie critics is anything but Christian. While that doesn\u2019t invalidate their opinions about how art works, it raises the question about the presuppositions those critics bring to their analysis of films and filmmakers. David Thomson has written […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1471,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,114],"tags":[260],"class_list":["post-708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-non-fiction","tag-david-thomson"],"yoast_head":"\n
An Absentee Father\u2019s Legacy to His Movie Critic Son<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Review of Try to Tell the Story by David Thomson By CHRISTIAN HAMAKER The worldview of most well-known movie critics is anything but Christian. While that\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"An Absentee Father\u2019s Legacy to His Movie Critic Son\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Review of Try to Tell the Story by David Thomson By CHRISTIAN HAMAKER The worldview of most well-known movie critics is anything but Christian. While that\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Schaeffer's Ghost\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-02-28T13:11:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/files\/2013\/02\/Try-to-Tell-the-Story.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Christian Hamaker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Christian Hamaker\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/\",\"name\":\"An Absentee Father\u2019s Legacy to His Movie Critic Son\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2013-02-28T13:11:38+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-02-28T13:11:38+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#\/schema\/person\/5525133573a0f86a4c810c7ce0f1d2aa\"},\"description\":\"Review of Try to Tell the Story by David Thomson By CHRISTIAN HAMAKER The worldview of most well-known movie critics is anything but Christian. While that\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"An Absentee Father\u2019s Legacy to His Movie Critic Son\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/\",\"name\":\"Schaeffer's Ghost\",\"description\":\"Culture from a Christian Viewpoint\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#\/schema\/person\/5525133573a0f86a4c810c7ce0f1d2aa\",\"name\":\"Christian Hamaker\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d6ae2a547272a103843bd550831d822?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d6ae2a547272a103843bd550831d822?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Christian Hamaker\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/author\/chamaker\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"An Absentee Father\u2019s Legacy to His Movie Critic Son","description":"Review of Try to Tell the Story by David Thomson By CHRISTIAN HAMAKER The worldview of most well-known movie critics is anything but Christian. While that","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"An Absentee Father\u2019s Legacy to His Movie Critic Son","og_description":"Review of Try to Tell the Story by David Thomson By CHRISTIAN HAMAKER The worldview of most well-known movie critics is anything but Christian. While that","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/","og_site_name":"Schaeffer's Ghost","article_published_time":"2013-02-28T13:11:38+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/files\/2013\/02\/Try-to-Tell-the-Story.jpg"}],"author":"Christian Hamaker","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Christian Hamaker","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/","name":"An Absentee Father\u2019s Legacy to His Movie Critic Son","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#website"},"datePublished":"2013-02-28T13:11:38+00:00","dateModified":"2013-02-28T13:11:38+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#\/schema\/person\/5525133573a0f86a4c810c7ce0f1d2aa"},"description":"Review of Try to Tell the Story by David Thomson By CHRISTIAN HAMAKER The worldview of most well-known movie critics is anything but Christian. While that","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/2013\/02\/an-absentee-fathers-legacy-to-his-movie-critic-son\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"An Absentee Father\u2019s Legacy to His Movie Critic Son"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/","name":"Schaeffer's Ghost","description":"Culture from a Christian Viewpoint","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#\/schema\/person\/5525133573a0f86a4c810c7ce0f1d2aa","name":"Christian Hamaker","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d6ae2a547272a103843bd550831d822?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/2d6ae2a547272a103843bd550831d822?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Christian Hamaker"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/author\/chamaker\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1471"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/schaeffersghost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}