zoey marley

i watched a movie last night that i expected to laugh and and walk away with a light feeling of a family comedy.  when selecting a movie with jennifer anostin and owen wilson you do not expect to learn a life lesson about yourself or to have it touch you below the surface.  had i read the small print on "marley & me", i might have seen the summary "a family learns important life lessons from their adorable, but naughty and neurotic dog".  i never went beyond the cover with a gorgeous lab puppy and the subtitle, "life and love with the worlds worst dog"

i should have known better.  i should have taken the time to read the full description and to have seen my reaction coming.  there has to be some grading system built so you don't stumble over a movie that will impact you from nowhere.  we have PG, PG-13 and R to help us protect our children from sex and violence in film.  where is the PD rating.  this would help us with both post-divorce and post-death cinema experiences that impact adults and children.

for full disclosure this movie simply carried too many parallels for me to get through it in one piece.  the movie is well written and surprisingly well acted, if the writers had not elected to use the life of a lab as the central metaphor for a families life, i would have been able to take this movie as the simple pleasure i had hoped for when placing it in the DVD player.  the fact that marley was a "clearance dog", and suffered from separation anxiety should have warned me to turn off the movie and go to bed early; it didn't and that is clearly my fault.

the movie and the dogs relationship with the family starts early in the lives of a couple, they choose to get a dog as they begin to build a family.  the dog is quickly understood to be one with issues, issues which are used as a foil by the couple to point out fractures in their relationship.  marley is always ready to jump into the husband's arms as the wife is pressed by the level of effort required to feed and care for the family.  there is a touching scene when jen demands that the dog be given away.  john asks if he will be given away also, because he is also trouble to take care of.  man and dog both end up staying; because they are each clearly loved; despite their issues. 

as i said, parallels were clear.  a family who lives in a house set back on a big lot, trees all around, two sons and a beautiful daughter.  husband and wife who are both professional and begin their relationship with all the hope and promise in the world.  the full american dream, three kids a beautiful home, a volvo and a mini-van in the driveway.  friends who time and space take away, but a family that stays together.  all of it witnessed by a neurotic lab...  

our lab was named zoey, she as taken-in very early in a relationship, she was just a neurotic as marley and was just as loved.  zoey was tragically taken from us in an accident.  she was pulled under the wheels of our SUV as wife and kids climbed our steep driveway.  the symbolism of our dog being killed as she chased after the retreating car has never been lost on me.  

a neurotic dog, whose primary fear was being left behind would obviously give chase; even at the risk of being crushed under large wheels.  accidents happen, including those that you can see long in advance, but seeing of the impressions of a crush injury can take your breath away years later.  the feelings of loss and pain can be resurrected by the ghosts of the past; or by similar images of different families.

marley lasted until the end.  he was buried in the front yard, in a hole hand-dug by the family; they all said goodbye together.  zoey is buried in the back yard, in a hole machine dug by a hired-tool; goodbyes where said privately.  marley was a real dog, whose life and death was inside a real family.  he might have been the world's worst dog, but he was one the family loved and kept as theirs forever.

the movie was formulaic, but it had a heart that touched my own.  next-time i will read the small-print before i pop the movie in, good and bad are sometimes just to close.