Rob Dufour - A River Runs Throught It

There are certain things in movies that either provoke to like them or dislike them. One of the main things I look for in a movie is if there are any stories of self-actualization and growth. I also look for relationships between characters in the movies and see how they pertain to me. In the movie A River Runs Through It I feel most closely associated with Norman, the older brother. Norman and his younger brother Paul are both raised in a house by their mother who lives at home and takes care of it and their father who is a pastor for a Methodist church. The movies shows Norman at various stages in his life: when he is young and developing into an adolescent and is somewhat wild, when he is a teenager and some of the mischief he gets into with Paul, when he is finished with schooling and preparing for college and meets a girl, when he’s at college, when he gets back and becomes a professor and when he is an old man. Through this storyline we can see the development of Norman from a child who is ignorant of the ways of the world into a man who inspires those around him to better their own world. He is a man of deep religious feeling and strongly agrees with his father in their views of Christianity. My favorite part of the movie is when Norman gets back from college and hears his father in the study reciting his favorite passage from the bible; Norman finishes his father’s sentence and then together they recite the rest of the passage. The two come together and rejoice in happiness to see each other after such a long time. Another main aspect of the movie is the relationship between Norman and Paul. One can see that as Norman was progressing through his life with successes, Paul was having some success, but failing to fix his gambling problem. We then get to see how Paul’s gambling problem ultimately and fatally affects his life. This movie instills some feeling that I can’t really describe; happiness for Norman and his life of religion and good deeds while at the same time a sadness for the problems that Paul faced, which ultimately affected not only himself, but his family too.