Summer Sunday: True Love at Telluride Mountain Film

31 May Summer Sunday: True Love at Telluride Mountain Film

Telluride Mountainfilm has been over for a week but its impact lingers on. For me, one of the most powerful experiences was last Monday’s free showing of the film, Mending the Line, followed by a Q & A with the film’s directors and central cast. The film, which chronicles the journey of Frank Moore, a 91-year old World War II veteran who returns to Normandy to fly fish some of the rivers he last saw when he was a 22-year old soldier, works on several levels.

First, finding depth to a fly fishing story isn’t challenging in a post A River Runs Through It world. As soon as we see fishing line casting out on a large river, we hunger for a story that will carry us away, tug our heart strings, and return us to a fast moving world in a different place.

Photo Credit: Uncage the Soul

This film is also exceptionally well-edited and somehow manages to give us a sense of the war and its lingering horrors, the scope of the Moore’s life and relationship with rivers, and of the return trip to France in only about 45 minutes. Mending the Line is paced exactly like the perfect trout river; it moves along steadily and has plenty of deep pools for fishing.

Yet as my previous interview with director John Waller revealed, the real strength of this film is that it is a love story. Frank and Jeanne Moore have been together for seventy years. Their relationship was tested by the war and Frank’s postwar breakdown, as well as by the numerous trials of life. Despite those stresses, their commitment to each other never flagged. Frank spoke to this in the film saying “They say that love is for the young but they don’t know. You don’t know love until you’re our age.”

In the Q & A after the film, the audience asked them what the key to their relationship was, and Jeanne said something that surprised me. After admitting that it’s never going to be perfect all time and revealing that she often takes a hike after an argument, she said the following: “I always try to think of how Frank might be feeling.”

How simple. How elegant. So often if I’m feeling frustrated with Andy or someone, I think about how I am feeling. And although I teach empathy both to my children and to my students at the Telluride Mountain School, I realize I can be pretty lousy at it myself. Especially when it comes to people who are close to me. Especially when it counts.

Since seeing that movie, I’ve been feeling this unmoored happiness in my heart. Because here’s the thing that Jeanne didn’t say, that she didn’t need to say. When we walk around with more compassion in our hearts, we feel more love for the world. And love is far important than anything else we might achieve: it is only through love that Mountainfilm’s indomitable spirit truly spreads.