A Few Good Men passed me by – pregnant, I was living in a different reality. Misery was terrifying because it tapped into something primal about vulnerability. But The Princess Bride became something else.
I found it at the local video shop when my daughter was about five and getting over a tonsillectomy. To this day, I’m jealous of anyone who hasn’t seen it and still has that experience ahead.
Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.Credit: Twentieth Century Fox
True love, exploding swamp rats, revenge, a feisty heroine, Mandy Patinkin swashing his buckle, a six-fingered villain (yes, Tap’s Christopher Guest). We watched it a dozen times in as many days.
The boys got sucked in too. The whole family sometimes still intones, “I am the Dread Pirate Roberts, there will be no survivors” a la Andre the Giant, just because it’s a thick vein of nostalgia that links us all.
In 2023, an orchestra performed The Princess Bride score live to the film at the Plenary Theatre at South Wharf. When Cary Elwes, aka glorious non-soppy hero Westley, bounded on stage after the film, Sadie and I both teared up.
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It was physical recognition that this ridiculous, fabulous film had been ours for so long. It took me back to early motherhood, to a life that balanced adventure and challenges like the movie. I hope it took my girl back to a safe, happy childhood where love lasts.
One winter afternoon this year, Pies and I saw Spinal Tap II in an Adelaide cinema. We were the only people in the joint. We wore glasses to see the giant screen, nursed water bottles, debated getting ice-cream on the way home and laughed our arses off.
The symmetry – same friend, same franchise, four decades later – felt like grace. We weren’t kids any more, trolleyed on Jim Beam and independence. But sitting in that cinema, we were also still those kids.
Reiner understood that. How we carry all our previous selves around.
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At 19, he gave me faking it ’til you make it. At 24, he gave language to the mess of modern love (and faking it again, in a different way.) In my 30s, The Princess Bride became a touchstone for belief.
And in midlife, Reiner’s last movie reminded me true friendship survives all else. He made movies that marked a time and place, that we could return to and find new meaning in.
That’s the mark of something real. Thank you, Rob Reiner. Sleep tight.
Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.
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