The Way Way Back by Jim Rash and Nat Faxon is a movie I have to rewatch every few months. Like many comfort movies, there are themes, moments, and images that I find so close and dear to my heart. Although the movie itself is a part of the rewatch, the moments leading to my first viewing are what I feel every time I watch this movie.
Maybe I’m sick with nostalgia, but it’s nice to have a movie remind you of a moment - moving photographs that take me back to a time in my life when I felt like I was barely coming to the precipice of my own identity.
The first time I saw this film was during a summer in which I spent my extra time watching movies with my friends and walking around the mall as 13-year-olds do.
My mom asked me on a warm midsummer evening if I wanted to go to the movies with her after dinner. I agreed instantly and my father, always curious, piped in and asked what movie it was. I didn't care what the film was, I was excited to go to the movies with my mom. Don’t get me wrong, my Dad and I had our fair share of Marvel Movie 9 pm showings on Friday nights, and of course, there was the infamous Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Incident where I couldn’t sleep. I digress, My mother read my father the synopsis of the movie and he laughed as he proclaimed that it wasn't a movie for him.
It was indeed not a movie for him. It was a movie for me.
This movie came to me at the perfect time in my life. The themes of self-love, acceptance, respect, and tolerance were complex enough that I got something new out of it every time yet so perfectly transparent that at 13 I understood all I needed to. Every time I watch it, I'm taken back to that time in my life: sunburnt skin, baggy plaid shorts, my iPod touch, and the wide-eyed excitement of what lay ahead of the upcoming school year.
The Way Way Back is my time capsule movie now and forever.
The nostalgia of being a middle schooler who doesn’t exactly know how to operate in society just yet is something everyone can relate to. Being 13 is transcendent - a true human experience. Anytime you see a middle schooler, no matter the age, you experience a sonder moment. A realization that everyone must go through that awful time in their life.
I reckon the reason we rewatch movies is that they make us feel more sonder. Understanding the world moving around us, just for a 90-minute run time, we are taken back to a different time in our own lives.
When I reminisce on the Summer of 2013 I have a hard time remembering what I did, but I will always remember that midsummer evening drinking my Coke slurpee and watching a movie that would change my life.
A summer I recall as becoming one step closer to realizing what I wanted to do with my life: tell stories that mean something to people in the essence that The Way Way Back means to me.
I implore you to share a movie that means a lot to you! Maybe we could connect over it. Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.
Talk soon - Nick
Love it. Mine is Lady Bird
Make sure to send this to Jacob!! One of his favorite favorite movies as well <3