The Whales of August

Being a twin has made me very fond of “Sister Movies”. Not films with multiple sisters such as Little Women or Pride and Prejudice but those with only two sisters. Ladies in Lavender come to mind and The Whales of August…

I first saw The Whales of August when it was released over thirty years ago and I re-watched it recently. It did not disappoint and again, I felt the same tender tug of my heart as when I was a young woman seeing it for the first time.

The film’s score is very Our Town, the passage of time is in every note of music. But it’s the sisters, Bette Davis’ cantankerous Libby and Lillian Gish’s Sarah and their dialogue that brings the “November into my bones”, as Libby says to explain her melancholy. It’s hard to believe that Davis was 79 and frail from a stroke and Gish was a mere 93 when they made the movie! And it’s the sisters’ relationship, the back and forth, the history they each have of one another that brings the poignancy to the story. Libby is blind and feels she is too old “to be considering new things”, while older Sarah still feels there is still much left to life to enjoy and savor. One of the events is Sarah planning and hostessing a lovely dinner party for friends in their old cottage.

And what a cottage it is! As soon as we peek through the wooden window frame on the front porch, I can smell the pine walls that cover the interiors. Having spent my girlhood in New England cottages, I can assert that the smell of pine walls can linger for over a hundred years and then mingled with salt air and tide create a scent concoction that is never forgotten.

The sisters spend their days strolling, chatting, and entertaining charming local characters. Sarah does the housework, including hanging laundry on the line, picking flowers and wild blueberries and dusting their handsome dark furniture. It was a pleasure seeing Sarah’s dinner plates, filled with local catch and prepared as pleasingly beautiful as a fancy New York City restaurant in her primitive country kitchen.

The obvious theme in the movie is whether the sisters can agree to transform the two front windows of the bungalow into a more modern picture window. And of course, the whales which visit their sea front every August and remain a long-ago happy and cherished memory for them. I don’t have to tell you which sister wants the picture window and which sister does not.

And that brings me to the underlying theme…how to reach very old age with joy still intact even as days dwindle down and losses multiply. There is a wonderful lesson in The Whales of August that would serve us to learn and remember.

Such a lovely inconsequence of a movie, my readers. It’s sweet and funny and oh so poignant. Like the whales in August, it’s not to be missed.