Who knew the movie I held so near and dear to my music loving young spirit held such an important message? Yesterday I happened to see that St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the movie was showing. This movie (based on the music by the Beetles) was made in the mid-seventies and was the first musical I’d ever seen. I saw this movie before I saw GREASE. There is nothing spectacular about the movie, in fact it is probably a bit ‘B’ grade, but I was captivated by the music and how each song literally allowed the story to unwind without anyone actually speaking dialogue. There were parts to the movie that seemed ‘scandalous’ even though it wasn’t showing anything in detail, I knew by the tune of the music it wasn’t good.
I was anxious to watch the movie again but as an adult. It didn’t take long to begin singing the songs, lyric for lyric and remembering how I would rock in a rocking chair and watch with anticipation. I must have watched the movie at least 10 times before I was 9 (remember we couldn’t tape shows back then)…oh my…’back then’. *sigh*
Anyway, when I watched the movie today I was amazed to witness the underlying message in the plot. The basic idea is about this town called Heartland and how it is all about love and joy. There is a band (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) that brings joy and peace to everyone through all the ‘hard’ times. But there is this ‘bad man’ that wants to steal this love and joy and replace it with sex and greed. He can do this by stealing the bands instruments that gave off the love and joy. When this was accomplished the once peaceful Heartland turned into a corrupt and dirty place. The new band (comprised of a new generation of Heartland kids) were taken to Hollywood to become famous where they too were compromised with sex and greed. But then one woman escapes the trance of the corrupt Heartland to go find the band to help save the instruments and restore love, joy and peace to Heartland.
I think you can get the picture of what swept me away. A movie that was made 30 years ago foretold, to an extreme, the enticements of money, fame and lust. All the instruments that were stolen were given to these bad men that had specific desires to ‘change’ people. One was a surgeon that wanted to change peoples bodies to make them plastic and perfect (take in mind, NO ONE had breast implants in this movie!!! Yet, that is what this mad doctor was implying…it is like they foretold what the our future had in store). And another mad man was a greedy business man that brainwashed people to ‘hate love’, ‘hate joy’ and ‘love money’. I could go on and on.
At the end of the movie the brave woman who had originally broken free of the trance to get the band to get the instruments back ended up dying. Again, nearly 30 years later I cried. But then as you think there is no way the movie can end with joy they have the magic ‘weather vain’ come to life and sing ‘Get Back To Where You Once Belonged’. The woman wakes up and Heartland returns to being peaceful and full of joy.
I wonder… I really wonder if God wasn’t giving me some strange gift to ‘get’ that movie all along? I feel like I’m that woman that is going around trying to ‘get the instruments back’ and reignite joy and peace.
Just a crazy correlation. 🙂
Blessings
Shannon