A Close Reading of Mother Superior

Last night, The Sound of Music was on and Stephanie and I were, of course, watching it. I've seen this movie 5,000's of times and I can't describe the way this film is in the marrow of my bones. I was recently in Rome and visited the Coliseum. This is a wondrous site, a site of so much violence and history and reminds the spectator of eternal things and human fortitude. But the only thing that actually gave me chills was that, with it's similarly carved archways, it looked a lot like the Salzburg Folk Festival performance space where the whole family sings So Long to Austria.

Well, so perpetually enchanted am I by almost every scene, I was waiting for a good moment to use the bathroom. And everyone knows that the perfect bathroom break is during "Something Good" the fucking terrible song that Fraulein Maria and Captain Von Trapp sing about childhood in the gazebo after they make out. But, I've used this as a bathroom break so many times I didn't actually remember HOW the confident Captain was finally able to woo the devout Maria to break away from her Jesus. Well, he does it fairly easily. A raised eyebrow here, a look downward there, a simple stroke of the jawline. Poof! Farewell convent! Really, there's no going back from that kind of passion.

But there is this moment before they sing, when it seems like they are just about to kiss again but instead they just go in for a little cuddle and Maria brings up her Mother Superior and how Mother Superior, so old and so wise, always says, when God closes a door, he opens a window. And the Captain looks kind of amused and says "Oh? And what else does Mother Superior say?" (but he's probably thinking BONER KILLER) and Maria pauses for a second and says "She says you have to FIND your life."

I swear I've never heard that line before. I know you have to climb every mountain and ford every stream and follow every rainbow until you find your dream, but I never heard it put that way before. As is in, your life is actually something you really have to go FIND in a way that is tangible and real and even physical.

But what is this life? This dream that you must go out and actually find yourself? Mother Superior only gives us a clue, in one important, identifying lyric: it will be a dream that will need all the love you can give.

This is an excellent wisdom and also, a line I truly never internalized before because I was too preoccupied by what the "ford" meant.

Everything one needs to know, one can find out from The Sound of Music. I completely believe this.

Wellllll. Really, this IS probably true. And I guess Maria does FIND her life. She goes on her honeymoon and comes back like a drugged animal, tagged and branded, and wearing a suit the color of vomit. Gone is the open-eyed wonder and childlike flair, no more hills being alive.....just a mild curiosity about Liesl loving a Nazi, followed by giving terrible advice to Liesl to sit around and WAIT for the Nazi (or another Nazi, it only takes one) to come to their senses and deliver another "telegram"..... and she's a brace of wordless support to the poor Captain in his high waisted slacks, who doesn't want to join the Third Reich navy OR see his kids sing in public.

So I guess you have to align yourself with Uncle Max now. Who up until this point has been a punchline, a tireless self-promoter who cares only about glittery glamour and mooches off the smouldering Captain and his stunning lakefront property. But that homo saves their lives in the end. Him and those nuns that pull out the Nazi carburetors with an almost alarming swiftness (hint, hint).

I always did wonder though, when the family is heading for Switzerland, trudging up those flower-covered Alps and that song reaches it's heaving crescendo, as if an entire chorus of invisible nuns is beckoning them, calling them to keep moving forward....if Maria ever thought to say to herself "Listen you old wimpled broad, I didn't know you meant LITERALLY EVERY MOUNTAIN."

But no, I am sure she did not. She was happy in the life that she found, vomit clothing and all. After all, in real life they made it to Switzerland and then to Vermont where they opened a big, fancy hotel. Once, I visited this hotel where an aged Friedrich, the oldest Von Trapp male, was pointed out to me. He was making his way slowly up some red carpeted stairs. He seemed unaware of the young girl gaping at him, wishing she had a whistle to call his attention so he could turn and say something, anything. The Sound of Music is real! It was my life! Come and visit with me and I will sing you songs! But, no. He just climbed with his crutch, one stair at a time. Cue the song...