Notes on ‘Stand by Me’ (1986): The long memory of small tragedies
What is youth: a sun-soaked time capsule of memory, a lesson on the tragedy of being alive, the stories we tell ourselves around a campfire. The group of friends you grew up with. Realizing the truth for the very first time in your life.
When you’re young, it’s the smallest, most unassuming things that leave the deepest marks on you until you’re older. If only the summer between when we leave our childhood behind and begin to grow into adulthood could last a whole lifetime long. If only the transience of time were less cruel. While it is an inevitable tragedy to grow old, finding hindsight is such a privilege, in retrospect — sometimes it is the only precursor to some form of healing and coming into terms with what we live through.
The tragedy of its transience is only made twice as cutting by our loss of River Phoenix: one of cinema’s best, kindest, and gentlest we will ever have.
“we’d only been gone for two days but somehow the town seemed different, smaller.”
