Movie Review

Touchstone pictures, directed by Mike Binder, starring: Alan Arkin, Elizabeth Perkins, Vincent Spano, Bill Paxton, Julie Warner, Kimberly Williams, PG 13, 98 minutes, 1993.

If you like the idea of Jesus as a camp director you will love Indian Summer! Eight grown-ups return to a camp in Algonquin Park where they had spent many summers as teen-agers, twenty years ago. They bring all the tragedy from the previous years: divorces, deaths of spouses, lost loves and previous camp experiences. It's a nostalgia movie that I found charming and if you ever went to camp you will be submerged in every scene. All the campers come from American cities. None are Canadians though 'Uncle Lou' (Arkin) the director, does wear a Hudson Bay Blanket Coat just so we will know it all happens in Canada.

Uncle Lou is a kind of Christ Figure, a genial bully who cajoles these ex-campers into activities like The Swim Test, The Canoe Race and the Tamakwathon. He looks out for them and reminds them of camp lore from the past. He keeps the tradition and even tells a parable. There are however ghosts from the past. One of the campers, Jack, was kicked out of camp for stealing something from Uncle Lou. There had been an incident in the past (1972) when a camp counsellor had been met in the bus depot in Toronto but sent home because he was black. Lou wanted to protect him from the pain of 'not fitting in' with all the white kids from Detroit and Chicago.

The issue for Uncle Lou is handing on the camp and it's traditions to a new generation, a new band of disciples from The Golden Age of the camp. They discuss the possibility amongst themselves, ways of raising funds and hiring someone to take it over while they organize a camp alumni association, a kind of Synagogue Council. But they can't. Their lives are too complicated, the camp market isn't too good and the camp is run down.

Jack is the mystery guest: The Prodigal Son. They can't figure out why he came back. After all, he had betrayed Uncle Lou; their hero and Lou had kicked him out of camp. But Lou welcomes him 'home'. He is The Waiting Father. There is also a marvelous scene by the lakeside where Lou tersely acknowledges the return of the object stolen twenty years before. "It looks like new" says Lou. It is Jesus and Peter by the lakeshore "Feed my sheep".

This is a movie about growing up and its costs and tradeoffs. It is about forgiveness and reconciliation. It is also instructive for those of us who care about the tradition and wonder whether our children are "getting it" What do they remember, even of the mysterious and secret stuff that was given just to them? Research shows that they don't remember much content but they do remember persons; much like the disciples if one reads Mark.

Indian Summer is a nostalgic and simplistic flic. But it is charming and has lessons for those who want to ponder the parallels in our contemporary experience and those of the Christian Community through the centuries.