Movie Review

Directed by Jay Russell, starring: William Hurt (Tuck), Sissy Spachek (May Tuck), Ben Kingsley (mysterious stranger), Alexis Bledell (Winnifred Foster), Disney Pictures, 90 minutes, 2002.

Just imagine that you could be young and in love-forever. Immortality, its joys and consequences, is the central theme of this delightful movie.

The Tuck family, May, Tuck and two boys, Miles and Jesse have stumbled across a stream, deep in the woods, that apparently gives immortality. It dawned on them after they had traveled on from the stream that after several life threatening accidents from which they did not die that there "must be something in the water". They return and settle close by with a sense of responsibility for the secret for they have experienced something of the tragedy that occurs when people seek out a "fountain of youth". It is for them, a burden.

Winnifred, daughter of a local magnate who has huge land holdings including the forest in which the Tucks live, has a fight with her family and runs away into the woods. She gets lost and encounters Jesse drinking from the fountain. She is thirsty and wants to drink and when his efforts at gently dissuading her fail he ends up kidnapping her and taking her home. This promotes a huge family crisis. In the meantime the two young people (late teenagers, though Jesse tells her he is 104 years old) frolic in the idyllic setting of waterfalls, lakes and forest glens. Who wouldn't fall in love?

Miles, the older brother is a morose character who obviously bears deep pain. He had been married but his wife and children did not drink from the fountain, labeling it witchcraft. She went away and died in an insane asylum many years later. At this point Tuck senior (Hurt) takes Winnifred aside and explains to her the "secret of the family".
It is a brief speech that captures the point of the problem with immortality.
"One day you'll grow up. One day you'll make way for new life. What we Tucks have, you can't call it living. We just ARE, like rocks stuck at the side of a stream.
People will do anything not to die. They'll do anything not to live their life.
Do you want to stay stuck as you are right now, forever?
Don't be afraid of death. Be afraid of the unlived life."

Meanwhile, the mysterious stranger has caught up with them and has bargained with Winnifred's parents that in return for their daughter's safety he would be given the forest. He wants the spring, of course, and is going to regulate its distribution to 'deserving people'. Well, there's a fight, shots are fired, the stranger is killed and Tuck and May are put in jail, she accused of murder. The kids bust the parents out of jail and they are about to make their escape. Jesse tries to convince Winnifred to come with them but Tuck reasonably states that if she does that 'they' will hunt them down. She eventually goes back to the stream, which represents the possibility of being with Jesse, her lover, forever. It is a bold act but she chooses not to drink and goes on to live her life, dying at 100 years of age, a much loved spouse and mother. By choosing death, she really lives.

It is a Gethsemane moment. While Jesus drinks the cup that he prays would pass, Winnifred chooses not to drink and instead embraces the uncertain ambiguity of a lived life. For both Jesus and for Winnifred this is not a moment of triumph but one of victory over death. It has no sting. Overall, most of us probably have many more moments in our lives of the ambiguity of Gethsemane than we do the pain of Crucifixion or the triumph of Resurrection.