My favourite film aged 12: Fly Away Home
My love for Fly Away Home coincided with moving to the countryside; where my mum and I had lived in cul-desac after cul-de-sac, our new home was surrounded by only a cluster of other houses, and then field after field. The Canadian prairie it was not – you could just make out the lights of the out-oftown supermarket from our garden – but it was around that time, I think, that I started to understand the benefits of the great outdoors. Fly Away Home, similarly, begins with a new start, albeit under more traumatic circumstances. After her mother dies in a car accident, 13-year-old Amy moves from New Zealand to Canada to live with her estranged father, Tom. He’s eccentric, a sculptor and inventor with a home full of odd creations, including a replica of the lunar lander. And then Amy finds a nest of orphaned goose eggs. Being the first thing they see when they hatch, she becomes their Mother Goose – feeding them, teaching them to fly and, eventually, guiding them south for the winter with the help of her father and two home-built ultralight gliders.I wanted to be just like Amy, attuned to the natural world. I had grand plans of spending my days in the fields around my new home. I would learn to identify trees and bugs at a glance, and imitate bird calls. I turned out like any other teenager of my generation, of course, watching Friends for hours and spending far too long perfecting my MySpace profile. But now as an adult, especially one living in London, I crave nature. Even in normal times, I become antsy if I’m cooped up inside for too long. I need a regular dose of country air, to stand on top of a hill and feel the wind rattle through my hair and my clothes.
But, it appears that I have idealised Fly Away Home. It’s not simply a film about the beauty of the natural world. It is far more touching than I remember, and it hits me harder than it ever did when I was younger. Less than a minute in, and my eyes well up. There’s the driving rain, the windscreen wipers, and the last moments of laughter between a mother and her daughter, all accompanied by the haunting and beautiful 10,000 miles by Mary Chapin Carpenter. I may have loved this film growing up but I never did like to watch the opening scene, knowing what tragedy was about to occur – and it’s no different as an adult.
And I can’t stop. I cry when Amy wakes up in hospital and realises her mother is dead. I cry when she doesn’t remember her father’s chaotic home, and when the geese first take flight. And then Tom’s glider crashes 30 miles from their destination. He can’t continue, and Amy wishes her mother was with her for the rest of the journey.
“She is,” says Tom. “She’s right next to you. She’s in the geese, she’s in the sky. She’s all around you. She won’t let you down.” It’s too much, I’m a blubbering wreck until the credits roll.
I had thought the predominant feeling I’d have after rewatching Fly Away Home would be a desire to be within nature, a pull to lace up my walking boots, jump on a train headed for the countryside and plod through muddy fields. But instead I yearn for what I don’t – and can’t – have right now; normalcy, family gatherings, sitting in the park, pub drinks with friends. I see now that so much of Fly Away Home is about loss and grief, and I feel bereft. For the first time since lockdown, I am so acutely aware of what and who I am missing, and what we could all stand to lose.
But Fly Away Home is also about surviving those losses and that grief, of creating new normals and finding strength even when everything looks hopeless – and for that I love it all the more.