Day 18: Beaches

Absolutely didn’t want to watch a film today but I did anyway because apparently I’ve decided to finally commit to something, and that something is this nonsense. So in order to get through it, I went with another of my favourite films. And if you roll your eyes and say it’s a “chick flick” I will go through you. Any film I can painfully sob my way through is a film I like, so clearly this one is perfect.

CC (Bette Midler) and Hillary (Barbara Hershey) meet when they are 11 years old and they spend about all of one hour together but become instant friends. Hillary has to go back to San Francisco but the pair decide to write to each other. They go through marriages and divorces and success and illness together, with a few minor hiccups along the way.

As soon as CC hears that Hillary has taken a turn for the worse she immediately leaves her big concert behind and tries to fly from LA to San Francisco but there aren’t any planes leaving immediately so she drives the entire way. This is straight away in the film and I already start crying. Their friendship is just too much for me, it gets me all emotional. During the drive there, CC remembers the times they spent together.

My favourite thing is that they only knew each other for an hour or so and yet they wrote to each other constantly for years. I’m always impressed by that, considering I can’t keep in touch with anyone. I’ve tried to think about why I do that and I think it’s because once someone leaves they can see your friendship from a new perspective and see it’s maybe not as great as they originally thought; not really worth keeping in touch for, y'know. Better to lose touch with someone than for them to realise I’m more than a bit rubbish, right?

I think I’ll quote from my favourite scene because I can’t talk about this film, it’s too sad.

CC: “You and your damned letters. You know every time I opened one of them I was happy before I even read it. Just to get them made me feel important. All your crappy stories, your big dreams!”

Hillary: “I didn’t know that.”

CC: “Well, what the hell did you know? Did you know how bad things were for me? Did you know my career was in the toilet? No, because you never answered one of my letters. If you’d only answered one, just one! Tell me what a jerk I was, anything!”

Hillary: “I don’t know how to fight back. I’m not strong like you.”

CC: “You took away your friendship without even discussing it with me. That friendship was more important to me than anything. I trusted it. I believed in it. But you didn’t. And now it’s gone. Thank you very, very much for forgiving me… but I don’t forgive you.”

10/10